Felting - en francais!

We spent a wonderful evening teaching felting basics in French this week.  The workshop was part of the 'Festival de la citrouille' held at Centre Belle-Alliance  in Summerside.

And that pumpkin pie was amazing!!!

Balls, ropes and cord bracelets with little felt beads are all good beginner projects.  The heavier ropes make great pins!

Workshop Action!

We thought it would be fun for you to see a few action photos from that Gaspereau Valley workshop.

Beading and embellishment frenzy!

Finished rope necklace and flower pin

Weighing  fibre for the laptop cozy

Laying out the first layer of fibre for laptop cozy

The fun part - adding embellishments

The end of a long day - final finishing of laptop cozys

Workshop Fun

We had a great couple of days at the Gaspereau Valley Fibre Shop September 24 and 25.  We taught some felting skills to a very enthused and dynamic group of women  (we also ate very well and sampled some superb Nova Scotia wines)!
The 1 day jewellry workshop is a really fun way to introduce people to felting.  They get a chance to work with prefelt as well as combed merino tops and there are lots of opportunities to get creative with color!


Have a look at a few of the possibilities.

Simple earrings

Flower made using prefelt

Crescent pendants are a good canvas for embellishments

A Good Day to DYE

Because we do all our dying outside, today was a good day to dye on PEI.  Warm and only a reasonable amount of wind.  It is NEVER not windy on PEI.
We painted 8 seaweed scarves as well as over dying some handspun skeins.
And since it is Friday and it was a very successful day ( mango,basil,bacon sandwich for lunch ... again) we poured some of Louise's husbands homemade raspberry wine.

 By the way, Louise is not wearing a miniskirt!

We think our sandwich colors appear in this picture - not yet made into a scarf.

Food as Color Inspiration

Keep checking back here for a scarf using these colors.

If you have fresh basil and mangoes you have to try this sandwich!  Since all our tomatoes got blight this summer, this is a good alternative to a traditional BLT.

Recipe

Start with your favorite bread.  This one is a no-knead turmeric and almond bread made by Elaine.

Add good quality bacon ( this one is smoked on PEI - from the Charlottetown Farmers Market)

cooked crisp

Slices of ripe mango

A sprinkle of cayenne pepper

Fresh basil leaves

Serve on Louise's blue glass plates for the best color combo!

Grand Opening at Hutchinson's Pottery Shop

Our friend Jessica's newly opened shop is home to a lot of our creations including the shawl you saw on our first blog. Have a look at some of our handspun yarns, felt hats and flower pins.

More on the Grand Opening in our next post!

Our first blog, and a new scarf!

We're learning to blog, and look on it as a great way to stay in touch with our friends. Bear with us as we dive in!

Here's a new design we've been working on over the last few weeks. It's a shawl-or a big scarf-depending on how you choose to wear it. It's base is a heavy crinkled silk, with a lattice of fine merino wool laminated into the silk.

It's starts off white, and then the fun begins, because we love color! We literally paint the pigments into the scarf, mixing four base dyes into a riot of colors.