A Good Day

Today has been lovely, one of those warm, still, sunny days that promises the beginning of a warm summer to come but tomorrow, rain is forecast. So I made the most of it and worked outside, this is a little bit limiting because you can't really lay-out wool fibres outside; the first puff of wind and all your hard work gets blown all over the garden. But this was just the push I needed to finish a few pieces in my UFO box....

The first was a cat cave inspired by Galina's many and varied fish, if you haven't seen them, do take a look, they are beautiful and lots of fun. They appeal to my sense of humour and that got me thinking about how funny it would be to have a fish swallowing a cat rather than the other way round... silly I know but it amuses me :)

I started this cat cave several months ago, but it wasn't thick / well fulled enough to support its own weight, so today I fulled it to within an inch of its life, it has shrunk quite noticeably, but now it is holding its shape (even while still damp). The only downside to fulling it so firmly is that the patterned green silk running the length of the fish has all but disappeared into the wool. Here it is drying in the sunshine.

The Oak Tree Hat is nearly finished too, here it is a couple of weeks ago where I was just starting to add the leaves:

Before shaping the leaves and final fulling:

Getting ready to shape and position the leaves ready for drying, I'm waiting to see if it needs starch to hold the leaves in position but I am feeling optimistic that they will hold their positions naturally (ideally I would like the leaves to "rustle" in the breeze as the wearer moves). Sorry, this isn't the best background for photographing this hat, my photo-box isn't big enough to accommodate it...

I've also finished the "brain" hat, it's busy drying on a hat block - I'll post some photos of that next time along with the jacket I made in Tatiana Shervada's class at the end of April.... in case you can't wait there is a little taster on Terriea Kwong's blog along with some amazingly creative garments created by the other students.