Felting Fun!

At the beginning of October, Felt United Day and Fun Palaces coincided so with the help of Craft Reactor I celebrated them both.  We had a free felt making workshop that attracted 17 people completely new to making felt.  By the end of the day there were 21 felt flags based on the Felt United 2015 theme of "home". The flags were stitched together overnight by Carmen from Craft Reactor and decorated the following day's Fun Palace events. That's them at the top of this post strung along the balustrade at Old College Quad, University of Edinburgh in a photo by Heather Rea who made the tenth flag from the left. There was a lot going on in the Quad to celebrate the arrival of the Mini Kelpies sculpture - chocolate science experiments, circus skills workshops, geometric sculpture building and more. I'll put a full post with lots more pictures on the Craft Reactor site in the very near future.

For about a week around the workshops I felt totally burnt out but it was a great thing to be part of both Felt United and Fun Palaces. Now that I've got some energy back I'm making some new felt scarves for December's Open Studios at Coburg House. I've been spending a lot of time learning about machine knitting over the last year or so. It's very technical, with more investment in the planning than the final act of making. It was nice to get back to something more fluid like these big colourful felt pieces.  There's always planning with felt but there's more scope for ad hoc changes as well and you often get surprised by what the wool does when it's rolled up.  Here are a few phone pictures for a sneak preview of the new felts.  Come to Coburg House on 5 & 6 December to see the finished collection.