On Saturday, we took the kids to the local parade. They’ve never been to one, so they were delighted by the entire experience. As parades go, it was ‘very small town’ –mostly firetrucks and tractors, about 25 min from beginning to end, but it was their first one, so they don’t know any better and they found it terriby exciting. Plus, the floats threw candy, and I have never seen such a haul from a parade in my life.

Saturday afternoon, I decided to just go ahead and try the wet felting. I had everything I needed, and a bit of free time, so why not? I decided I would try a sunset type scene, as I have good colours for that.

Two towels down as a work surface, another rolled out to roll with, some bubble wrap, and then I started placing my wool. 3 layers — up/down, side-to-side, up/down of green and blue “background” — with the coloured/’paint’ layer overtop.

Fine mesh overtop of that, and then soap and water until the whole thing is wet. Then rub gently over the net in careful circles until the wool begins to form a ‘skin’. Peel off the net, cover with more bubble wrap, roll the whole thing, with the towel, around a pool noodle and ‘rolling pin’ a bunch of times. Repeat from every side of the art.

The actual felting part didnt take a great deal of time. The fulling/shrinking part took longer. The kids enjoyed that part, as they got to help wad and scrunch the fabric and throw it violently at the floor over and over.

For a first try, I think it turned out pretty well. I did decide to acquire a felting needle (or several), so that greater detail can be added overtop. That should arrive this week, and I can continue to play with this piece of art, that so far hasn’t cost me much at all to make.

It did reignite my fibre-nerdiness, though. I have been surfing the YouTubes the last few days, learning all sorts of interesting trivia. Did you know that stinging nettles make a lovely linen-like cloth, that is even finer and stronger? I had known that, which is why I planted nettles in the spring, but I did not know that fireweed – which I have here in abundance – can be processed very similarly to nettle and also made into cloth. Did you know that the fluff inside the seedpod of the milkweed plant can be spun into a soft, silky, sheeny fibre? I certainly didn’t!

I tried stripping a fireweed stalk for fibre this morning. It did not go well. Mostly, I made a mess. But I will try again another day.

I noticed that the wild blueberries were beginning to ripen, so kiddos and I suited up after lunch and went to hunt some up.

We have quite a few patches scattered about. Mostly lowbush, but a few surprise highbush, too. Some of the patches had very few berries, others were loaded. It is very hot today, so we didn’t stay out long – somewhat under an hour. We didn’t do too badly, all told