Como algunas de vosotras sabéis, tengo un problemilla que me impide coser, no sé cuando podré volver a hacerlo. Pero puedo ver otros blogs, si os interesa el fieltro, este sitio es muy interesante. Os dejo el enlace.

http://www.quinama.info/tienda/index.php?show_aux_page=3

Os dejo una foto que me encanta de un kit que tiene.

egg yolk cooked at 65 degrees for 45 minutes

As I settle into the trudge of office hours, it’s hard to not miss the stress of service o’clock in the kitchen. That mad rush when you know you don’t have time to pull it off and you are pretending to chef (Mr Mendes)  that you aren’t feeling the pressure – priceless compared to the monotony of office hours. I think these eggs caused me more stress that every other dish on the menu, but such a sense of relief when it was pulled off. I’d be peeling the shell away as fast as I could knowing that if the delicate yolk cracked, the dish would be a disaster…

Now for the close-up

Seabass with crisy ponzu, apple puree

Imagine the oiliness of the fish skin, hot and crunchy, paired with the odd texture of frozen ponzu speckled with the crispy breadcrumbs and the tartness of the green apple puree – this dish was culinary perfection.

Confit sea trout with spinach puree, salmon roe and pickled spring onions

3-4 hour sirloin with mushroom 'crack' caramel

Always treading the fine line between burning the mushrooms into bitterness and not enough caramelisation, I got there in the end with Nuno’s signature mushroom caramel. Though beware of cheap imitations, because no one will ever make it like the man himself.

More to follow.

Nuno from defgrip took a whole bunch of chilled out photos from the S&M fall fiesta, if you know anything about nuno you’ll know he can take a sweet photo. Head over to DEFGRIP to check out the gallery.

I have placed some knitting patterns over on my etsy shop so head on over and visit me ,I will add more as I get them ready.The majority of items in the shop are felted items all unique and items made to demonstrate techniques or for shows.I have been asked so often if I sell my finished pieces and the answer has always been ‘no’ but now I have had a change of heart and listed them .

So do come over and visit.The vision long term vision is to offer techniques classes online and the opportunity to purchase the worksheet, template/resist and fibre etc all in one pack.

Tomorrow evening I have to show my face at the Golf Club Captain’s Dinner.  Being on a budget I was wracking my brain deciding what to wear (it is informal this year which is unusual) when to my absolute delight I found my ‘lost’ black velvet trousers!  I managed to pick up an inexpensive plain turquoise top that compliments them perfectly so today I set myself the task of creating some eye-catching accessories to glam up the outfit.

Turquoise and black nuno felt brooch with Victorian button

My mother is lending me a gorgeous diamante bracelet of my grandmother’s and I wanted to make a matching nuno felt brooch using this fantastic Victorian button for the centrepiece.   I was lucky enough to pick up the button in a charity shop while in the States and the nuno felt seemed the perfect setting to really show it off!  I cut out a rough circle of pongee silk, laid one layer of short fibred merino on top and within a very short space of time the brooch was made.  Not being too fussy about the evenness of the circle makes for a simple organic shape and I like this brooch so much that I think I will make some more of them tomorrow morning and put them up for sale!

My next project was a small black evening bag and for this I used an old resist that I already had and made it a little bit smaller.  I wanted a clutch (purse for those of you over the water) which was easy to carry and not too big, something just to keep a little bit of money, car keys and the obligatory lip balm that I always manage to mislay!  To jazz it up and tie the whole outfit together I have just finished another nuno flower to stitch onto the flap, this time using turquoise silk felted with a deeper turquoise merino.

A Pati reclamou que não tem foto dela com a Lili na maternidade. É verdade, eu não tirei. Mas quero deixar registrado aqui que o Nuno e o  Pedro foram (depois da família) as primeiras visitas que a Olivia recebeu. Logo em seguida foi a Pati. O Pedro, inclusive levou dois Gogos “nova geração” para a Marina. Vamos tirar muitas fotos juntos, ok?

Os invito a visitar mi nuevo blog Fibra Sensible.

Está aun en proceso de construcción, pero lo estoy creando  para compartir mis ideas, creaciones y cosas interesantes que encuentro por la red.

El fieltro tendrá un lugar destacado en todo el blog porque es mi materia-textura-fibra preferida, pero en fibra sensible hay espacio para muchas otras cosas bonitas.

Os veo allí!

Cala Turqueta

Menta y hierbabuena

Flores de otoño

Crafty Crayons

As mentioned previously, I was furious with myself for not buying any hand dyed silk laps at the Knit and Stitch Show in Dublin last year.   Basically they are like a really huge silk hankie and perfect for adding vibrant colour and texture to any felt project but especially felt wearables.

Hand dyed silk laps and cotton gauze

This year I didn’t make the same mistake and although the photo doesn’t do the silk laps justice (they are sitting on top of the hand dyed cotton gauze) I am sure you can see why I was attracted to the colours!  To make my nuno felt wrap I stretched the hand dyed cotton gauze on my kitchen table and then laid out a thin and uneven layer of short fibred merino on top.  The gorgeous peacocky purples and pinks of the gauze and the silk seemed to cry out for complimentary and contrasting colours of merino so I used various shades of plum and blackberry along with a couple of splashes of hot orange to up the ante! 

Silk, merino and cotton gauze wrap

There was a lot of rubbing and rolling involved to finish the wrap but I love the final textures and sheen from the surface.  Obviously the wrap is reversible and may also be worn tied around the waist like a sarong!  Possibly I could have ended up with even more texture if I laid out the merino even lighter but I did want to make sure that it would be possible to wear the wrap around the waist and if worn this way didn’t want the fabric to appear see through!  More images on Flickr.

Nuno is in California for a conference this week. I would say that Wensleydale misses him, but that would be a lie. Wensleydale is as indifferent to his absence as she is to his presence. *I*, however, miss him.

Écharpe, con técnica nuno, que se consigue mezclando la lana Merino sobre seda. Dibujo de flores en rojo oscuro y hojas verdes sobre fondo en crudo.

So woke up late this morning after dreaming of felt all night —open my eyes and what do I see all these beauties lined up outside my bedroom window –lovely  felting thoughts once more passed through my mind .

Printing on felt is one surface decoration that I have not tried yet but hopefully today will change all that!  I am just off now for my monthly workshop (have missed all during the summer unfortunately) with the South East Textile Group and apparantly printing is what we will be learning, specifically printing on felt or so I believe.  Luckily I have a plain green felt rectangle in my stash and I am hoping it will be fine to try on this, some of the other members are bringing along commercial needle punched felt and possibly some hand made prefelt as well.  I will also have access to a good printer which the group owns so I am bringing some JetFix paper as well.  I want to print on to muslin and gauze and then incorporate this into some experimental nuno as soon as I have a minute early next week.  Anyway, off I go, I will update you on how I get on over the weekend.

Well, my package of fibres and fabric was every bit as good as anticipated!  In particular I was delighted with both the dark grey and the zebra striped 16 micron merino as well as the dyed linen (or flax) fibre and the ponge silk.  I have worked with raw linen fibre before and found it very interesting to use as surface decoration if somewhat ‘hairy’ or scratchy.  This dyed fibre however is beautifully soft and the colours are fabulous, I ordered a sort of apple green, dusky pink and a silver, gorgeous. 

Obviously with all these great colours (excluding the grey and zebra I have white, yellow, orange, two depths of turquoise, raspberry, violet, shocking pink, purple, black and two shades of green) I was hot to trot this morning!  I started by making a few felt flowers, some beads and then a necklace before following these up by trying an experiment.  My idea was to make some felt cuffs and try incorporating some artificial fabric, one fabric was a white net with ribbon and sequins, the other was black and shiny overprinted with silver cobwebs and funky spiders!  Both fabrics worked surprisingly well, neither actually became one with the felt as with normal nuno but because I made sure to catch all the edges of the fabric with the wool as I was working both cuffs turned out pretty well.  The black spidery cuff is perfect for Halloween and the turquoise and white cuff would definitely set off a romantic style outfit to perfection, I will be offering this one for sale as soon as Alan gets back and I can upload some photos.

My last project of the morning took a LOT longer to finish than I was allowing  for, about 3 hours instead of the one I had set aside!  This was a nuno felt experiment using a silk/linen mix wide scarf, short fibre merino and a lot of surface decoration on the merino with some of the linen fibre.  Carmen brought a batch of these scarves back from Spain recently and we have been trying different ideas out to see how best to use them with wool.  The weave is quite open but the texture of the scarves is slightly stiff and almost shiny, I am not sure if they have been treated with something but they do felt well after a LOT of rubbing and rolling!  The colour of the fabric was hot orange with a small white design and the wool that I backed it with was a mixture of orange, purple and hot pink.  I overlaid the merino with a lot of apple green and dusky rose linen and the end result is very nice, a hot and spicy coloured wrap with a great crinkly texture.  In actual fact I think that it looks equally good worn with either surface exposed, the wool overlaid with the linen or the bubbly texture of the fabric side upperside, you’ll see what I mean as soon as I have Alan’s computer back and am able to upload the photos.

Look at my fantastic new necklace!!!  For ages I have been a big admirer of Lori aka Tabmade on Etsy and when I discovered recently that she is having a blow out sale I just had to buy this beauty.

Pod necklace by Tabmade

My first really large order of wool and fibre arrived this morning and in a couple of minutes I have the great task of opening the box and delving into all the yummy contents!  A lot of this order is actually for myself and not to resell but will be used for my new range of winter scarves, felt jewellery and other wearable accessories and clothing.  There is also some new dyed flax fibre which I am interested in experimenting with and some gorgeous colours of silk chiffon and ponge silk to use for nuno scarves and other wearables.   Tomorrow is going to be my first full felting day for a long while and by the end of it I hope to have several completed items all ready to upload to my Etsy shop over the weekend, wish me luck!

Yesterday afternoon I finalised the workshops that I will be offering here at Clasheen from now until the beginning of December.  With the difficult financial climate we are all operating in I wanted to offer a good value, fun way for people to learn a new craft.  If anyone is interested in evening sessions as opposed to the advertised Saturday dates please just contact me and we can discuss your requirements.  

Computer problems have bitten again.  My new(ish) computer is in Dublin at the computer doctor and I am reduced to a nervous wreck trying to get this old thing to do what I want it to do, not happening very well I am afraid.  Alan is away also which means that as I don’t have access to his laptop I may not be the best communicator over the next few days.  It has actually taken me over an hour this morning to read half my emails (I got no further) and over another hour to write this post so please bear with me if I appear to be ignoring any messages, I’m not!

I took the opportunity before he left yesterday evening to update the workshop page and also printed some flyers to drop into Threads of Gold when I am in Kilkenny this afternoon.

Uma das piores notícias dos últimos dias: as Quasi estão em processo de falência. Como disse o José Mário Silva, tinham uma excelente colecção de poesia brasileira (ele esqueceu-se, espero eu, de falar da Ana Cristina César), uma boa colecção de Ensaios (Fernando Guimarães, Pedro Eiras) mas, acima de tudo, não tinham medo de apostar em novos autores. Foram as Quasi que me mostraram, por exemplo, o Vasco Gato (que, todavia, publicou um livro na Assírio), o Jorge Melícias, o Tiago Araújo, o Rui Lage, o Nuno Rocha Morais. Editaram a obra completa do Daniel Faria, e isso desculpa todos os erros. Nestes tempos certamente difíceis, deixo um abraço ao Jorge Reis-Sá.

Via Bibliotecário de Babel e Blogtailors.

I thought it was about time that I uploaded some images of the nuno mosaic skirt that I made during German felter Sigrid Bannier’s visit to Ireland during August.

Felt skirt and wrap outside Kilkenny Castle

The main body of the skirt is made from four cotton gauze nuno mosaic panels and the cummerbund section around the waist is also nuno felt, this time hand dyed merino felted into hand dyed silk chiffon.  Thanks to Sigrid and her expert sewing skills the panels are stitched to just above knee level and then the bottom of the skirt swishes and swings out beautifully when worn giving a very comfortable and interesting fit! 

Nuno felt wrap

The nuno neck wrap that I designed earlier in the year to match some of my linen clothes is made from the same silk and merino.  Sigrid liked it thrown around the neck exposing both the silk and wool textures at the same time, I prefer it with just the silk side showing but it is nice to have the option!

There never seem to be enough hours in a day to fit in all the things that I really want to do.  Luckily my flu is now 90% over so I am starting to plough through all the paperwork and outstanding letters/emails etc. that built up over the 4 weeks while I was away from home.  My exciting news of the day however concerns the Icelandic wool that I will soon be selling from my Etsy store, I haven’t linked through this time because I need to wait until the wool arrives and get the images uploaded first!  The colours are fabulous and as well as offering different weights of the wool for sale I also intend putting some fun kits together with clear (hopefully!) instructions on how to make various different items.  The Icelandic wool is superb for structural work, bags, vessels, sculpture, light shades etc. and also could be used for warm scarves although would not be as soft as merino when worn directly against the skin.  Please let me know what you think about putting felting kits together, I was thinking along the lines of …..  beginners flat felt, simple felt vessel, felt purse, felt flower, felt necklace, felt brooch etc. and then a kit with instructions for a first nuno felt scarf using the fantastic short fibred merino I import from Filzrausch.  I would include all the raw materials including embellishments and any findings, clear but simple instructions and enough bubble wrap and resist where necessary to complete the project.  All comments gratefully received!

This Thursday is the deadline for all Clasheen Autumn Swap packages to be on their way across the globe!  If you have been one of our gang participating this time please remember to get your goddies out and then to leave a message of thanks and pictures to the Clasheen Crafty Swaps pool on Flickr as soon as you receive your own package.  If for any reason you are going to be a day or two late getting to the post PLEASE just leave a message on our message board.  Everyone understands if a delay occurs (so long as it is not every time!) and it just relieves the pressure on both ends of the swap.

Next Monday I will be taking down my felt ‘Cascade’ from Sculpture in Context so if you have not yet visited the Irish National Botanic Gardens in Dublin to view the exhibition now is your last chance.  Check out this article from the Irish Times.

Article in the Irish Times

Nuno Bettencourt (of rock band Extreme) is starring in a music video with Jason Segel for the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother. Known for their love affair with “songs that are awesome,” HIMYM have re-created the famous Extreme video “More Than Words.” Other cast members including Neil Patrick Harris, Cobie Smulders, Alyson Hannigan and Josh Radnor will also appear in the video.

The episode airs tonight (Oct 12th) on CBS at 8/7c.  Here’s the behind the scenes video:

Official video from the show:

~Dan – np: Explosions in the Sky – All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone (Remixes)

My flu appears to have abated somewhat so I am taking this opportunity of posting about the very exciting top that I felted for myself this week while getting fed and minded like a baby at Carmen’s!  I really hate sewing and for a long time have wanted to make some stylish felt wearables for myself but until Sigrid Bannier’s recent trip to Ireland have always resisted the mental thought process that needs to happen before confidently handling such large scale clothing projects.  In tandem with this, for the last 5 months I have been desperately trying to think up my response to the international call for submissions for a juried travelling exhibition portraying the impact of human actions on the environment.  ‘The Climate is Changing’ should be a challenge that I can rise to given the Green Party aspect of my background but until I finally crystallized my thoughts during a recent hike through Lassen Volcanic National Park my brain seemed absolutely dead as to how I could interpret my ideas into a piece of felt.  Without giving too much away I have also been totally inspired by an interview with Thomas Horst (my absolute favourite American felter to date!) and his details of how to make a felted coat, I can’t recommend enough buying the Fall edition of ‘Living Crafts’ to check this out for yourselves.  Thomas uses an electric sander a lot in his work and for the project detailed in the magazine the wool used shrinks by 25%.  This got me to thinking that if I rubbed or sanded my work for a significantly longer period of time than I usually do and coupled this with cooler water and less rolling would I achieve a strong and finished felt garment with less shrinkage than I usually build in?  The answer is YES!  This means that now I have a felting method that achieves a gorgeous surface finish and doesn’t need the gigantic resists that I was always imagining would be required if I needed to allow 50% shrinkage for larger wearable articles.  The unusually styled cropped top that I made for myself during the week is a generous size, has a gorgeous high neck and is made from just over 200g of the softest merino.  I laid it out on a backing of cotton gauze for drape and stability and used some of the gorgeous silk hankies and twists that I got in Denmark as surface decoration, with a little manipulation (read more concentration cutting up the cotton gauze!) this would have made a wonderful reversible nuno top.  Now I have a clear idea of how I am going to proceed to create my submission.  Forgive me if I don’t give a total step by step description or an idea of the shape of my garment but I need to get the application sorted out first and one of the conditions is that no details or images of the work have been talked about or published prior to the juried stage of ‘The Climate is Changing’.

Dont get me wrong there was some great stuff in this but i feel that they completely over hyped the jam, and it left me a bit diaspointed so i guess the lesson here is don’t put out three trailers that end up making your event seem amazing when it isnt all that. But the course is definitely something to look at, I can imagine that riding it must have been insane and im super jealous of the locals that get to shred it every day so go hit up defgrip as nuno has posted up a bunch of sweet photos from the event.