November Single-Day Workshops: Felt in Montreal

Workshops schedule for November:

Make Your Own Felt Wool Scarf, and Felted Soap Loofah
For ages 15 to Adult, the perfect way to make a couple of deluxe Christmas presents!

In this three-hour course, students will create a felt wool scarf, and also a felted soap loofah. The basics of the wet-felting process will be taught.

Choose one day of: Tuesday November 16, 10am - 1pm; Thursday November 18, 6:30pm - 9:30pm; or Saturday November 20, 10am - 1pm. Cost for one of these courses is $40 (materials included) OR $37 each if you take more than one course...



Make Your Own Felt Pouch/Purse, and Felted Soap Loofah
For ages 15 to Adult, A fun three hour session in which we will create a felt wool pouch or purse, suitable for a camera, cellphone, or just to have a nice little purse! We will also make a felted soap loofah for the bath.

Choose one day of: Tuesday November 23, 10am - 1pm; Thursday November 25, 6:30pm - 9:30pm; or Saturday November 27, 10am - 1pm. Cost for one of these courses is $40 (materials included) OR $37 each if you take more than one course (including the Scarf option, above.


These workshops are just three hours, and you will learn skills to make felt obects at home, if you so choose. Please see: (Link to the right of these words!) for more information.

To Jog Or Not To Jog... That Is The Question

I have the sniffles. Should I jog? It's a sunny day. Heaven knows that soon enough I'll be looking out onto overlapping blizzards.

I'll jog. I hear that gentle exercise improves the immune system...

Yesterday I spent the day (well, about 8:30 to 2:30) out in St. Lambert, for a professional development day with ArtsSmarts. I'll be guiding an entire elementary school through making a big wall-hanging of some sort. As with ArtsSmarts projects, a lot of the goal is collaboration and process and spontaneity and hand-on problem-solving. So although I have some lesson-plans worked out, the whole project is really by, for, and about the students themselves. I am really, really excited about this!!! I'll teach 106 students how to make felt.

Speaking of felt, tomorrow I will have 20 scarves at a table in Ottawa, for a cool craft fair my friend is in. She offered to take some scarves in an amazing fit of generosity! In the meantime, I am churning out the things in an attempt to re-build my stock. Considering I now am fully self-employed (or freelance, depending on what term you like) it is important to just keep on chugging. And on that note, time to hit the road... jogging!

Felt Scarves...

The other weekend, a pal taught me (and another pal) how to make felt fabric out of loose wool.

I know there's a term for it, like "roving" or something. Anyhow, loose wool has been washed, dyed, combed, and not spun into yarn yet.

I really enjoyed making this fabric. I have made three more "things" after that initial eve. The first of these is a thick greeny/orangey/blackish short piece of fabric. I had intended for it to be a scarf, but it shrank like crazy. I can use it as a "neck-warmer" or use it as simply fabric to make a little purse or something.

The second piece was a success... a long (perhaps a little too long) white/green/teal gauze-like scarf, with foam numbers encased in it. I think it looks pretty cool.

The third piece was also a success, I do believe. It is a somewhat thicker yet shorter (and still long!) scarf with beads embedded in it. The colours are black, raspberry, and pink. I like it. It's mine.

These are mine, indeed, but my hopes are to find time in my already busy days to make one scarf every day or so. Hopefully I'll increase my speed at it... so far they have taken about three to four hours each, and the process alternates from pain-staking, careful laying of individual fibres... to all-out physical exertion. I would like to sell these objects. That is why I need to:

a)make them different from other stuff out there on the market

and,

b)make more of them more often.

I, of course, am still an artist and cartoonist and illustrator and embroidery-digitizer... but this is a fun and visually rewarding new branch to my work. Photos soon...