Friday 19 August 2016

Pods and cords

We've been exploring resists at the Well Being centre recently, and one of the group said she'd really like to make a round vessel, so I thought we'd follow rosiepink's vessel tutorial. It turned out there was only 2 of us there early enough to have a go, so we did it again this week, but this is mine:


Here's the other side:


I've been looking for 'smoothing tools' for vessels for years, like Lyn's suggestions of a baby's rattle or laundry liquid dispenser, I keep checking the baby section, and dog toy section, even the kitchen section for a ladel, but still haven't found one! I did buy some foam for resists though and  I thought I'd try it out and make a new birdpod. I remembered those coconut ones, and tried to do a similar shape. It didn't get it quite right, but using lots of coarse wools did give it a hairy coconut look, though:


I need to make a cord for it to hang it up. Usually, I make cords from offcuts or make some handspun yarn and felt that, but I had an idea for some garden ornaments and thought I'd give it a go using a bamboo mat. I can't remember which wool I used, I think it was something from Wollknoll labelled just 'Scottish grey'. I had a hard time getting photos of all my things, it went too dark yesterday, so this morning I took them into the garden and tried them in a few places, when I put the first cord down on the paving stones it camouflaged itself, even the pattern seems to match!


That was just the test piece for the idea I wanted to try. The only trouble was, I needed a larger mat than a placemat. I looked at my living room blinds, just hanging there with a huge roll of unused bamboo sat at the bottom. I unrolled it and there must have been two feet of spare blind, so a few snips and a few tied ends later, I had a shorter window blind and a new rolling mat! This cord hasn't completely dried yet, but I know I need to make the next one a bit thinner, and I think that will help it be firmer too, but it turned out a lot better than I expected:


4 comments:

  1. I really do like your rainbow curly cord! I think the 'coconut' pod is ideal for the garden as it looks so natural and I like the way the turquoise peeps over the top of the yellow/green pod.

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    1. Thanks, Lyn :)
      I like the turquoise bit too!

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  2. Great pods and cords Zed. The rainbow one is really cool for sure :)

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    1. Thanks, Ruth :)
      I think the rainbow spiral is finally dry and has actually kept its shape!

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