International Day of Felt

October 3rd 2009 will be the first International Day of Felt, organised by Felt United, a non-profit group of felt artists, as 2009 is the United Nation’s Year of  Natural Fibres.

The vision is that felters all over the world will join together to display their felt outside their homes, and the theme will be a slice of the colour wheel, from yellow through red. This sounds so exciting:

“People around the world will be surprised by finding yellow felt on doorsteps, orange felt birds in parks, children wearing red felt vests and husbands carrying bright felt bags to work. There will be felt in museums and felt in markets. There will be felt groups organizing open days and workshops. …felt in trees, on cars on bicycles and on mountaintops.”

Information about Felt United, the International Day of Felt and the call to artists is on the Felt United web site.

felt united screenshot

tagged

Penny over at Fibrefrolics has tagged me with this – the rules are to answer the questions, replacing one and adding another and then to tag 8 other bloggers to do the same. I’m feeling a bit shy about tagging anyone, but it was fun to do, so if you would like to join in, please consider yourself tagged forthwith!

What are your current obsessions? feltmaking, dyeing, breakfast

What are you currently reading? Shibori by Yoshiko Wada, Life without Bread by Allan and Lutz, Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff

What’s for dinner? goulash with soured cream, salad, cauliflower gratin

Where do you plan to travel to next? Edinburgh, for my nephew’s wedding, then Cockermouth for the Woolfest

What is your favourite film ever? Some Kind of Wonderful

Care to share some wisdom? motivation follows action (I wish I know who said that, it’s so true)

Where would you rather be right now? there’s nowhere I’d rather be than here, on Tiree

If you could be an animal other than a human, what would it be? a dolphin

What is your favourite flower? columbine, though to choose just one sorely challenges my decision-making capacity

Favourite textile artist? no, one is just not possible – Jane McKeating, Heike Doll, Jae Maries, India Flint, ……

What’s your favourite word? (my addition) spindrift

I bought a rainbow!

coloured fleece

Sorry about the shiny photo – I think it looks so pretty all packaged up I haven’t opened any of the bags yet!

Most of the fleece I’ve used up to now has been space dyed, which is wonderful for subtle colour changes but sometimes there’s only a scrap of a particular colour, and I’m always pulling little tufts out of the middle of the tops to get at the shade I want!

I’ve looked at various mixed packs of fleece recently, thinking they seem like a good way to acquire a bigger colour palette. In time I’m sure certain colours will be worth buying in bigger quantities but for now it’s more important to me to have a little of a lot of colours than large quantities of a few.

However,  I hadn’t seen any packs with a range of colours that really excited me till I discovered the lovely rosiepink crafts. Believe it or not, I ordered these at about 11.30pm last Monday night and they arrived in Tiree on Wednesday all the way from the south coast of England.

The vibrant coloured fabrics at the bottom are some hand-dyed scrim that Annie and Lyn (aka rosiepink) also very kindly sent along with the fleece for me to experiment with, having looked at my blog and some of the things I’ve been trying out recently! Annie and Lyn’s own blog is very interesting with a number of felt-related tutorials and tips as well as examples of their work – well worth a visit.

As if this didn’t feel enough like Christmas, I had an email yesterday from The Book Depository, to say that this book, which I pre-ordered a few weeks ago, has just come into stock – more exciting post to look forward to. I should confess that I found out about the book by squandering my time watching their utterly fascinating (but ultimately expensive) live mashup of who’s buying what books and where. So much more fun than “Customers who bought the items in your Shopping Basket also bought…”…