On Friday, I got to sneak down to Virginia, and without totally abandoning work, hang out with two great fiber buds: Kim Werker and Shannon Okey. For the most part, we hung out at the Holiday Inn where they were sharing a room and we worked on our own projects. Kim was preparing the next issue of Interweave Crochet and Shannon is putting the finishing touches on another book. I was editing my bear book manuscript. We broke for lunch where Kim treated me to Taco Bell, then Shannon interviewed Kim for her Blog Talk Radio call-in show.

That evening, I got to attend Shannon’s class in Nuno Felting. Nuno is Japanese for fabric, and this technique uses very thin fabric, (we used silk gauze), as the base for a new felted fabric. By putting fiber on either side of the fabric then wet felting it with hot water and lots of agitation, the wool reaches through the gauze and binds to the wool on the other side. Its fun, and the results can be very pretty, but my own project was not a huge success. (Due mostly to my lack of patience). I had more fun wandering around the room helping the real class participants and seeing what they were making. Karida of The Neighborhood Fiber Company was there. She brought her own beautiful purple and pink fiber.

This is us trying to use our feet to do the work.
Foot Felting
Here shannon helps someone along using the “punch the fiber” method.
Fist Felting

Technorati Tags:
, , , , , ,

Nuno in Virginia