Here’s what I’ve been doing today. This is a pretty lousy photo but I dyed lots of wool today. I needed to dye some for my prize give away. That’s the blue green to the left. Then I needed some for Christmas gifts. I tried to dye some maroon to match Griz colors and I did a very poor job.

I had felted these coasters last week and now I dyed them green. I’ve been meaning to experiment with using thickened acid dyes for surface design and finally got around to doing that today.

I thickened the dye with sodium alginate. And then used a foam brush to put it on stamps…

and stencils.

Here’s one close up. This one is stenciled. This is before steaming.

Here they all are before steaming.

And after steaming and rinsing. It worked!! Now I’m going to do a little stitching on these. This was great fun and even though you can’t get a lot of detail on the felt, it still gives a good imprint if you use a chunky stamp or simple stencil without a lot of detail.

I had left over thickened green dye. So I did some leaf printing on an old wool blanket. Boy was that messy. I will do further work on this later. It’s steaming now. I still have leftover dye. I put it in the refrigerator. Remind me in 6 months to get it out and throw the science experiment away.

Here are some Wensleydale locks that I dyed as well. Some are blue/green and the others are the same green that I dyed the coasters with first.

Here’s a close up. They are drying. Now I have lots of dyed wool to hopefully get through all the Christmas gifts I am making. After Christmas, I always say “I’m not making all those Christmas gifts next year,” but somehow, I always find myself in November and December busy making gifts. Why is that?

I made two hats today. We’ve got another football game to go to tomorrow and it’s going to be cold again. So even though these look like Christmas hats in red and white, they are really maroon and grey. The light today is very poor as it is cloudy and rainy. There was snow on the ground again this morning.

Here’s a close up of the griz paw. There is one stitched on all four panels of the hat.

Here’s the other hat in the opposite color scheme with the hat grey and the brim maroon.

Here’s the griz paw detail. What do you think of the head? It was an old, crummy looking wig stand of Styrofoam. I spray painted it with the spray paint that is supposed to look like rocks. It’s quite textured and came out fairly well. I made two of them for the store for hat displays but they are still at home so I used it for these photos.

If you haven’t signed up for my 200th post give away, you need to sign up now. Tomorrow is the last day. Just go to the previous post and leave me a comment. It’s great hearing from all of you and thanks, as ever, for leaving such lovely comments.

This piece was done for the October challenge on the Felting Forum, “Sea and Sky”.

I used a combination of wools, scrim, silk and a recycled fulled sweater for the backing.

It’s called “Surf’s Up”. It’s all done on my Janome needle felting machine.

Have you heard about the TV program “Talking Threads” in the UK? You can watch it online on Country Channel TV. There will be 10 episodes. The first two are already available. It has some great instructions on various fiber arts. There is also a great series called Inspirations about 5 textile artists in the UK. Just put “textiles” in the search engine at Country Channel TV and it will come up.

This is my 200th post today. In celebration, I am having a give away prize of woolly goodies (merino, mixed breed wool, Wensleydale locks, silk etc.) to a randomly picked commenter. All you need to do is comment on this post and let me know the colors you prefer and I’ll dye them to your choice. If you don’t like to use wool (or are allergic to wool) please let me know and I’ll come up with another prize for you if you win. I’ll do the drawing on Halloween (Oct. 31) and announce the winner on November 1st. Make sure that I have a way to contact you (I get a lot of comments that are no reply blogger comments and sometimes it is difficult to contact people). Thanks to everyone who reads my blog, I always appreciate your comments and suggestions. Hope you have a great weekend.

Here’s a peak at what I’ve been working on. It’s a very large piece currently and I’m considering writing an article on the whole process and submitting it to some magazines. We’ll see how that goes. It was a bit frustrating today as my sewing machine was giving me fits. Not really the sewing machine’s fault as the piece was too thick for sewing really. But I kept going and finally managed to get this step complete. It’s drying now and then on to the next step.

This is my 199th post so keep your eyes peeled. I will be doing a give away with my 200th post. I am going to give away some wooly supplies or if you don’t like wooliness, I’ll get some other supplies together. Thanks to everyone who follows my blog and for everyone who leaves comments. I really appreciate all you cyber friends!