and more flowers....

I am steadily working day by day making more flowers and leaves and I have also started to do some stitching, very simple, just adding some beads.

hibiscus

they are little single flowers sewn on to a 'dreadlock'
together with a purple/copper bead in the middle
I might do some more of the little ones to ad more to
every strand

Long garlands with 'morning glory' flowers and leaves,
a terrible weed here, which grows massive

detail- I made the leaves heart-shaped,
but when we were driving today I had a closer look,
and they are actually in 3 pieces. Nevermind, they are
only symbolic anyway :)

the bell-shaped bead in the centre

blue on blue doesn't really work.....

I think it is soon time to hang the backing piece, so that I can start putting the flowers on.

Bizarre...

... to live here in New Zealand, a country with the wool lots of  felters dream of, but  in fact it is not an easy country for felters. One would think, we have all this wonderful wool avaible, well that is not true at all. Most of the wool is sent overseas and will be processed and sold there. We are here more or less dependend on Ashford and some smaller carders, whos quality is not the best. We have a minimal colour range available but one can dye oneself of course. Not to mention that we pay a lot more for the wool than we would pay for example in Germany. I made a calculation the other day and I buy the cheaper polwarth wool, which costs me undyed 32 Euros a kg, when I look at the cataloge of Wollknoll I can buy there New Zealand wool from 10 - 15 Euro the kg, that is really bizarre........
Even more important is, we cannot really sell our products. The locals don't buy much, New Zealand is a low wage country and everybody struggles, so we are dependend on the tourists and their numbers have declined. A lot of the art/craft shops had to close. There are some markets around, especially when a cruise ship arrives, but they are strongly controlled and it is very hard to get in. The prices we can ask cover hardly more than the material price, so one wonders how to carry on.
I am very passionate about fibre and I love doing things, but there is a limit of things I can afford to make without selling and where should I store all that? Its the same for a lot of friends, which do wonderful work. I need to try harder to sell online, but who is ordering from New Zealand when there is so much already available in Europe and the USA.
Well I am carrying on working for the big wallhanging. It was very fortunate to get this. What comes after? Well we will see....

flowers and leaves and more flowers

After finishing the background felt piece for the wallhanging I am building up stock for the design. I already made a lot of leaves and flower stalks end of the year and then I ran out of green wool. So I had to dye  and also some yellow and red

Today I made some more big stalks for lilies and hibiscus and also some smaller ones and finished a lot of them as flowers

today's work 

the things I made end of last year

that's all what I have at the moment for the wallhanging

It's only  a percentage of what I will need for the wallhanging, but if I can carry on working every day some hours, then I will get there. The goal is latest end of January to have enough flowers and leaves to start decorating the panel. That should give me enough time for some additional work, stitching, beading whatever. It has to be finished until beginning of March.

Happy New Year

The old year is gone the new one is very young. Looking back to 2011 what an up and down it was! Successful - How do you define successful: certainly not in the money way but in personal development, experience, learning, lots of tears and lots of happiness, meeting new people, recovering old connections, watching the grandchildren grow up, and time is running fast
Happy New Year - wishing for peace and love

cards

I made some cards today, a quick decision, just black wool with multi coloured silk cap material on top. Some nice effects I think:

wouldn't do it again...

.... trying to felt such a big piece in one piece

adding more to the length

and more

and more

now I tried to full it

finally put it in the bucket and used my feet

after rinsing

after rinsing and spinning in the washing machine

now it is very visible how bad it turned out.
By mistake I used  different wool, the top was done
in nice gotland and the bottom in crossbred

well thats how it has to be cut anyway, so I might be able to rescue it

working on the background

I have started working on the background piece today. It has to be done in stages because the table is not big enough - well who has a 4m table anyway!

First part is felted, I left it open on 2 sides to add more

Then I rolled it up

and layed out more wool waiting to be worked on now.

Of course there is no turning possible, so it is a process of wetting, surface felting and 'massaging', quite terapeutic, though I could imagine, a sander would come handy. I never worked with a sander on felt, the combination of water and electricity is not really to my taste.
It will need adding another piece for the width and then the same procedure to get the right length. Once this is all done and fulled, I will need less space. Lots of flowers and leaves and strings have to be done, embroidered/beaded and then attached to the background.