Dutch and Russian Wool

I got some 'Yellowish Dutch Wool' from wollknoll, 34 mic 'not suitable for felting', it said. It seemed to felt fine for me:

I don't know what breed it is, I'd guess Texel, maybe someone who's bought it knows? Here's a close up of a corner:

I thought I'd try a variety of fibres again, so the top row is a blend of black Viscose tops and Ingeo, the narrow band in the middle is Fake Angora, and the bottom is black Bamboo and White Bamboo blended.

Different angle:

This is a close up of the Viscose and Ingeo:

And close up of the fake Angora (it has a strange feel to it, and looks kind of waxy):

Another vaguely listed wool I bought was 'Russian-Camelhair'. I'm guessing from the way they describe things on wollknoll, that 'Camelhair' is the colour, it's more reddish though. And this is also 34 mic but 'This wool is especially suitable for felting'. Another guess is that this is Romanov wool. It seems to be double coated like a lot of the ones I ordered. I used Ramie fibre with this:

The circular parts are Ramie that I fluffed up then patted down into little discs:

This is a close up of Ramie just fluffed up and added:

The sun came out as I was taking this, I usually try not to take photos in the sun, but I liked this one:

Over on The Felting and Fiber Studio site, our challenges this year are all going to be based around colour. The first quarter challenge had us looking at the colour wheel, tints and shades and blending. I had some 'Hot Pink' Merino wool tops, quite a lot actually, so I used them with white Merino and black Merino to see what blends I would get. You can read the whole post here and see the batt I made.

Giveaway

We're having a Giveaway over on the Felting and Fiber Studio site. I have raided my fabric and fibre stash and put together lots of goodies perfect for embellishing felt. There is lots of shiny things, including some crinkly synthetic fibres.

There is also some novelty yarns/fancy fibres: some long pieces and some shorter lengths

There are lots of different types of fabric pieces and 'scraps', silk, synthetic fabrics and organza

Some natural fibres and top, Top L-R Egyptian Cotton fibre, Crimped Viscose fibre, Bamboo Fibre. Bottom L-R: Flax, Ramie, Banana top.

Plus lots of other little things I keep adding as I think of them :)
For all the details head over to the Studio site, all you have to do to win is leave a comment on the post
Good Luck! :)

Natural Wools and Fibres (3)

I recently got some gorgeous brown Finnish wool tops and some dark brown Corriedale tops from World of Wool, so thought I'd try them out with some 'other' fibres. Usually, I'll just try one fibre with a particular wool first, but I couldn't decide which fibre to try with the Finnish first, so thought I'd try a few. I really liked how this turned out. From Top to Bottom, the fibres are: Banana Fibre; Soybean fibre; Ingeo; Flax; Milk protein fibre; Hemp and Ramie. They were all in the form of tops.

With the dark brown Corriedale, I used some white cotton gauze

It was only meant as a test sample, but I really liked the way it looked in a frame:

And just for a change, I tried some felted soap. I've never been much good at this, the soap shrinks faster than the wool and it always seems loose. Lyn from Rosiepink, helped me out with instructions and this turned out quite well.

I've noticed that since Blogger has that Carousel/slide show thing when pictures are clicked on, you don't get a large picture anymore. If you right click on the photo in the carousel, choose 'properties' you can get the URL for the full sized photo. Copy and paste in a new tab for a big photo.