Have you seen those braids of combed, often hand painted, (wool) rovings that are sold in e.g. Etsy's handmade supplies section? They look so soft and the colour schemes are often gorgeous, but despite all that I've just looked at them, sighed and moved on. Why? Because in my mind they're only good for one thing: spinning yarn -- and I have no interest in spinning yarn. Besides, sometimes the finished yarn isn't as pretty as the unspun rovings. Oh, and they can be used for felting. Forgot about that as the one type of felting that interest me, nuno, require a tumble dryer according to most tutorials, which I don't have and so I've never pursued it any further.
But now I look more closely at rovings as I earlier in November/December stumbled over some pins of weaves which included bits of wool roving. After that I started search on Pinterest and googled for more pics of weaving, embroidery and other crafts made with rovings and now I know better: roving can be a really good material even for those that don't spin yarn or felt. It can be woven, knitted, crocheted, couched (an embroidery technique), locker hooked, braided (and stitched together) and much more. If you scroll down a bit on my Embroidery and fibre inspiration board you'll some examples of it. Except for examples of weaving with rovings which you find in the Woven pinboard.
Now I just hope combed wool rovings (like the ones in JaimeMarie's photo above and the ones I've pinned here) aren't too expensive. As I've not had an interest in them before I've never checked the prices -- and now I'm afraid of doing it!
Photo: JaimeMarie C [via Flickr.com], Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0
You don't need a tumble dried for either wet felting or nuno felting, you don't even need a washing machine, it's all done by hand and left to dry naturally. How about needle felting, does that appeal?
ReplyDeleteThanks for setting it straight. I guess that since I've only seen tutes on nuno felting with tumbler, it didn't really occur to me that it'd be fine to do it the old-fashioned way too.. Because I first learned about (wet) felting as a kid watching a woman felt mittens etc at an event showing old crafts and machines at a so called hembygdsdag at the local hembygdsgård. Or maybe I just thought it'd be too arduous to make it by hand, especially if it's to be any good.
DeleteI actually did try needle felting once. Don't know why it didn't really appeal to me... After at less that successful try at a dimensional piece, I tried needle felting on felt which worked ok. You can see the result here. Not sure why I didn't pursue it beyond that poppy and heart.
Could you make a rag rug type rug from them?That would be beautiful.
ReplyDeleteOh, that sounds lovely! (Unfortunately in my case, the problem would be where to put it -- I don't trust our nine cats around something that pretty and pricey... )
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