I’m off to my next Level 2 Stitch class tomorrow but I thought I’d tell you about what I’ve been doing in regards to Yurt planning. I have gotten several books from the library that talk about yurts. None of them suggest you use felt for the covering. They all suggest you use canvas but that pretty much defeats the whole purpose of making a yurt in my opinion. So I’m trying to figure out how much wool I will need. I thought it would be possible to felt the covering with raw wool and skip the washing and carding parts. So I made a sample to test this theory. This is the pile of wool before felting. It is 18″ x 18″ after layout and is 5 layers of wool thick.

I thought I had a photo of the finished sample but somehow it isn’t on the camera. Even though it did felt, I still had holes in the finished felt even though it was five layers thick at the start. The greasy wool seemed to slide around a lot more than clean, carded wool. It didn’t shrink as much as expected either. I think that was due to the sliding around problem. I could definitely make the yurt covering with raw wool but I think it will take less wool and be easier to felt with clean, carded wool. I have found a Montana source for raw wool at $3.07 per pound. I have also found a mill in Canada that will process the wool into batts for $7.00 per pound. That price is for finished weight so you don’t have to pay the full raw wool weight which is generally 40-50% lanolin. I think I’m going to need 200 pounds of raw wool to end up with 120 pounds of wool batt. I did speak to Ankaret from Canada (Thanks Ann for the connection) who is in the process of making a 10 foot yurt. She was very helpful about how much wool they used and the process they went through. We are planning on making an 18 foot yurt. No guts, no glory!

My 400th post is coming soon and I’m planning on a give away. So keep you eyes peeled in the next couple of weeks to win a variety of fibers and threads.