I was inspired by Alpaca Farm Girl’s Amigurumi Fiber Arts Friday and had to try it out for myself. I have a short attention span so I ended up making small things for my cats and dogs to play with.
Cat toys are stuffed with a bell, catnip and some alpaca as filler.
Dog toys are stuffed with alpaca of course and a squeaker.
My mother-in-law is the one who really got me into crocheting and interesting in working with yarns. One of the first projects she worked on for me was custom made ear bonnets for my horses. They turned out to be beautiful works of art that get tons of attention any time I dress my horses up in them.
To those of you who don’t know what these crochet ears for horses are they are to keep flies out of their ears and the fringe keep the flies away from their eyes.
Materials alone to make the beaded bonnet came out to $40! Now that’s some serious equine bling! Best of all they match my barn colors perfectly.
I had some fun with needle felting today and made this little chickadee. I think next time I make a bird it needs to be much bigger. It’s very hard to needle felt small objects!
I”m sorry for the poor quality of the photo, I took it with my cell.
Don’t forget to check out Alpaca Farm Girl’s Fiber Arts Friday!
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New 8/7/09
Here’s photos of the above Chickadee’s bigger friend.
I had a nice quiet weekend and with mother nature constantly raining on us I had the opportunity to spin on my drop spindle again. I spun up a nice 3 ply yarn out of my boy CoHo. The fiber I used raw neck fiber. No washing, no carding, just brushed the top out and spun. I’m very happy with the result. It’s fuzzy and very soft.
Since it is neck fiber it did have some guard hair in it. I picked out some as I brushed but in the end it didn’t seem to add any scratchy feeling to the finished yarn. I put the skein around my neck and it was cuddly soft so I’m not concerned with the guard hairs I missed.
This skein will hopefully be enough to finish my scarf I started last week. Since I’m using a small drop spindle I usually only can spin and ply about 50 yards at a time. Blah.
The photo was taken before I put the twist in it so it’s loose, you can see it’s a nice tight spin 3 ply. Some of the plys came out really neat black, grey, and almost white stripped. I can’t wait to crochet it.
Check out Alpaca Farm Girl’s Fiber Arts Friday for more fiber things people are doing.
One of my favorite things to do with raw fiber is to felt soap. Not only is it a fun activity for both kids and adults but you get a usable product that everyone can enjoy. Felted soap also makes great stocking stuffers or toppers for gifts.
I’ve taken photos of the felting process with instructions along the way. Should you have any questions or would like to purchase raw fiber to felt your own soap send me an email or visit our Farm Store.
Some tips for your finished soap:
Should your soap get too dry and not suds up any more run it under warm water and place the wet soap in a Ziploc bag and run in your hands until the suds start flowing again.
If you’ve finished your bar and the soap is all gone the felted part is still usable! With the soap missing the felt now has a pocket in the center where the bar of soap used to be. You can cut one of the ends off and use the felted pouch to house jewelry, cell phones, change or whatever else you can think of!
Happy felting!
As always check out other fiber projects at Alpaca Farm Girl’s Fiber Arts Fridays!