Waterworld

My group are talking about going punting again. It's is a very Oxbridge thing that involves standing on the back of a shallow boat and propelling yourself along with a stick - like Venice, only colder and less fun. It's a tiring and ineffiecent way to travel and I dislike the whole process immensely. Sadly, I learnt to punt in Cambridge, where the river is more like a canal - about six feet deep with a solid bottom. Any idiot can punt in Cambridge. In Oxford the river is twelve feet deep and the river bed is a mixture of thick mud and cartoon quicksand. This makes it a more difficult and a far less fun sport. In Cambridge, punting is the sporting equivalent of a Sunday afternoon village cricket game, in Oxford it's like a professional ice hockey match, physically demanding with a high probability of serious injury. Punting for me is the Oxford's take on tourist torture - where you convince unsuspecting visitors to do something daft on the basis that it is customary. It's like the locals telling you to eat eyeballs and insects because it's a tradition, when actually they are quietly laughing on the inside that yet another bus load of identical camera touting rich people fell for it again.

The last time I fell in the river (this has happened more than once) I remember slipping off the back of the punt, hitting the water, thinking "ah, this isn't right" then thinking "if I find the bottom, I can push myself back to the surface where the air is", carrying out that action then surfacing. It's not that I'm scared of water, it's just I simply don't know what to do once I'm in there. I was suprised that I didn't panic (given I can't swim), but it did make what was going to be a cold and wet afternoon a really cold and wet afternoon. To be fair though, before you start you have to bail out the freezing cold mini mosquito breeding ground out of the boat with an icecream container anyway. Then you have to sit in what's left - so even if you don't fall in you will end up soaked to the core and shivering.

So gentle advice from somebody that's spent too much of her time standing in the Cherwell (and the Thames, and the Cam) - do it once to say you have, then don't do it again. Not ever. Not unless you understand what Weil's disease is and are happy to embrace fecal coliforms as part of your diet.

Well, the theme of this post therefore is water, okay - so it was a tenuous link. Despite not being able to swim and not liking boats very much, I don't actually mind water. I mean, I wouldn't choose to stand in it, but I don't act like a rabid animal around it either. Anyway, I was tidying the bathroom earlier today and I found these chunks of soap. They've been there a while - they came from Lush when they had a promotion on.



I very rarely buy things in Lush on the basis that most of it will turn my skin into a pretty accurate contour map of the Peak district. But my Dad really likes it so I often get gifts for him in there. Anyway, the last couple of times I went shopping in there they gave me a bag of things for buying too much Happy Hippy shower gel. I managed to off-load a lot of it onto friends but I seemed to have ended up with a couple of blocks of soap. I think I kept it on the basis I wanted to make laundry gloop out of it - then realised that if it did that to the paintwork in my bathroom, there was no way I was washing my clothes in it. The blue stuff is called "Father Frost" apparently, the brown stuff might be "Christmas Cake".

When I was tidying the avalanche cupboard yesterday I came across a bag of merino wool tops. Those of you that have read my first ever posts on this blog will know that I bought them to try out felting, but ended up with quite a bit more than I needed. I was trying to think of a way to use up some of it the other day.



If I wrap up my chunks of evil-smelling blue soap in wool tops, I get something like this:



As the idea is to felt round the soap, I need something to keep the fibres in place as I felt it. The easiest way I've found so far it to knot the wool and soap block into the foot of a pair of tights.



Once it's tied up, dribble a bit of hot water onto it and gently rub it until it starts to lather. You have to be quite careful at first so the wool doesn't slip away and expose the soap, but it will soon start to shrink. I find that if I squeeze the water out every so often and replace with m ore warm water, it's a bit faster. Some people I am sure will advocate beating it with a cheesegrater or a sushi mat, but I find the surface of the rubber gloves and the tights provide enough friction for it to felt by itself.



After a while you can stop this and pat it dry.



If you remove the tights and leave it to dry, you're left with a felted soap.



Hopefully it will stop it leaking blue goo all down my handbasin :) Now all I've got to do is work out how to get out of this punting trip :)

Scientific method

Okay, I've had one hectic day. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that the human race would be far more advanced if the concept of "meetings" did not exist. If I spent the time working rather than having a staring contest with an overhead projector, I'd be unstoppable. You can't be unstoppable if you can't get started because you're drawing doodles on the minutes from last week *insert heavy sigh*

This weeks problems have all been "reverse engineering" types ones - loosely where I have an outcome and now have to work backwards to work out where it came from.

Hmmm... excess wool roving... maybe a spot of reverse engineering is in order here :)

If you have a look at the "making section" on folksy, you'll find a great tutorial by glassprimitif (who's wonderful glass things I covet very much) about making felt beads. I have a lot of left over wool roving from another one of those "ooohhh isn't that shiny!" moments, so I thought I'd have a go. Nothing like taking out meeting frustration by pummelling inanimate objects after all. Inanimate objects don't answer back for start. Or write presentations.

One of the major lessons learnt from my last foray into felting is organisation is key. Aims and objectives clearly defined! So, this time I got everything in place to start with. Plastic sheet - check - warm water - check - wool - check - detergent - check - rubber gloves - check. I think that's everything on today's agenda.



Same principle as before - fibres need heat, water, detergent and friction to mat. My rubber gloves are great as they have a grippy rough surface for extra friction. Wet wool, add bubbles, roll into a ball until it mats. Simples.



I carried on until I was bored. Then I made another ten. Okay, I admit, I have the attention span of goldfish - I can't help that.



Sewing together - cubic close packing (geek alert!)



and one on the back... (takes ten spheres to get this far)



A few slightly smaller black spheres...



...and a pattern starts to emerge







...add sticky eyes and true to the scientific method, a little critter that can be broken down and considered as a set of perfect (ish) spheres is born



...and not a set of minutes in sight :)

First steps in felt

I have a destructive nature, I can't help it. I pull things apart to see how they work, I have a go at making things myself in a gungho sort of way. Sometimes it works and sometimes its an absolute disaster.... Usually something triggers it, in this case, it was a beautiful teal evening dress.

I bought a dress. I don't often buy dresses because they don't often fit me, but I was supposed to be going to dinner with my sponsors at work and I didn't think I get away with jeans and a faded NIN gig t-shirt this time. Oh no. The only problem with my dress is that it is teal blue. Nothing I have matched it and nothing I could find matched it either. It's too bright to wear black with and it was too cold for chiffon wraps, and in my head I had a perfect picture of what I wanted to wear. That doesn't help.

I'd never made felt before - so decided to start with something simple. Yeah... right..... that'd be like reading the instruction manual or writing an essay plan... or practising a presentation *laughs*

Well, what do I know about felt? Not much. It's that stuff I had as a kid with a fuzzy background and little fuzzy animals that stuck to the fuzzy background. I remember putting cheetahs in the sky because I was bored (hey come on, it's more advanced than most kids, who'd just eat it). It's what I did to my ex-boyfriends new cashmere sweater. Felt is made of fibres. Fibres have to mat together to form a fabric. Fibres mat with friction, water, detergent and heat.

I needed fibres. I found I could buy fibres on-line (I actually bought them from the http://www.worldofwool.co.uk/) that sort of matched my dress. Then I got distracted with other really pretty fibres in other colours. I bought Merino wool tops (wool roving), I had no idea if I was right or not, I just guessed as I had ten minutes before group meeting to do this. What could possibly go wrong?


So this is what I started with. Lesson 1: If you are going to do this, what I ordered is way too much. Seriously, I have enough woool roving in my house make a fuzzy felt collage the size of New Mexico, complete with life size teal blue flying cheetahs.

I was thinking about friction and decided on bubble wrap as all the little bubbles make for a rough surface. More friction = less effort. I'm liking the concept at the moment.

So I spread out the bubble wrap and started to layer on the fibres, just by pulling lumps of the fuzzy end on the roving skein. It seemed to work, but I will be hoovering them up for the next fifty years. I don't know how sheep cope.


After a while of inhaling blue fur and resisting the efforts of the God of Static Electricity to turn me into the cookie monster, it looked like this:


Well, I needed to make it wet to have a hope of it actually felting, so I went off in search of detergent and warm water, whislt really hoping noone opened a window - or indeed exhaled, for fear of returning to my living room in a flurry of psychedelic sheep fuzz.

Nothing like being organised before you start a project...

Okay - warm water, a bar of soap, a spray bottle. What could possibly go wrong...

...other than a build of pressure because of the steam inside the spray bottle. At that moment, parts of the kitchen got cleaned that don't normally see the back end of a scouring pad, but hey ho... you live and learn... and the burns will heal. Hand hot. Repeat after me.... hand hot. Got it?

Water, soap, bottle, wet sheep. Job done.



I carried on building up layers here as if you've ever dismembered fabric you can see the changes in direction of the fibres helps to hold it together.

That was the logic... I even made it a different colour :)



This process went on for quite some time! Once I'd built up the layers I soaked it and rolled it up in bubble wrap, squeezing it by kneeling on it. I carried on rolling in and unrolling in different directions until the fibres matted together. This isn't as easy as it sounds, as detergent and slippery bubble wrap is not the most compliant material, even if it does make a satisfying popping noise when you kneel on it.


I had to put some towels down as I kept squeezing out the water from the sides and even though my carpet is blue, it isn't that blue. Eventually though, it started to hold its shape.


A quick rinse under the shower to get rid of the detergent, drying on towel on the radiator and it's done :)

Woohoo! A wrap that maches my dress :)


In an odd twist of fate though, my sponsors never made the dinner that night because of the snow - so we took the rest of the lab instead.

Who were wearing faded gig t-shirts and jeans. Ah well.