New England Felting Supplies and Charity Van Der Meers Felting Course

The last part of my trip to the USA was just as wonderful as visiting my sister in South Carolina and the Vortex Healing Energy Course in New York. I travelled up from New York to Massachusetes on the Amtrax the day before the start of the course and went straight to Park Street B&B where I would be staying with 2 other felters.

La ultima parte de mi viaje a USA fue tan maravilloso como ir a Carolina del Sur a visitar a mi hermana.y realizar el curso de Vortex - energia sanadora en New York. De este lugar viaje en el tren a Massachusetes llegando el dia antes de tomar el curso de fieltro con Charity Van der Meer.

the room i stayed in (thanks Sue)

Patty ouside the B&B

locally hand dyed silks

Charitys course was a 3 day course to make a Nuno Felted Coat, we worked hard from 9 til 5.30 for the 3 days but it was well worth it as you will see from my finished coat.

El curso que hice con Charity fue para confeccionar un tapado utilizando la tecnica del Fieltro Nuno. Trabajamos mucho los 3 dias pero los resultados fueron increibles!!!!!!!!

Charity giving us our first instructions

New England Felting Supplies was a fantastic place!!!. It is a felters paradise as you can buy there anything and everything you could ever need for your felting projects. Thanks Christine, Stacey and the rest of the ladies that helped us all during the course!!

New England Felting Supplies es un lugar donde los que hacen fieltro pueden encontrar todo lo que necesitan para cualquier projecto sea agujado, nuno o el fieltro comun. Se puede consiguir sedas, pañuelos de seda teñido en colores bellisimos, una multitud de distinctos tipos de vellon y mucho mas.

Here I am wearing my Nuno Silk Felted Coat

new england felting supplies

On the last day of the course we all wore our coats and took photos of our creations..... More photos coming in my next post and information about Charitys courses next year here in Buenos Aires and  maybe in Chile.

El ultimo dia del curso con Charity nos pusimos nuestros creaciones y nos sacamos fotos. En mi proximo web post van a encontrar mas fotos de mi tapado e importante informacion sobre los cursos que va a dar Charity el año que viene aqui en Buenos Aires y tal vez en Chile.

New York

After visiting my sister in South Carolina I flew to New York and spent a wonderful week sharing an apartment in Greenwich village with two other girls while we all did a vortex energy healing course. The bar in the photo below was an excellent place to eat Italian pastries and a great coffee.

Every morning with Diane and Meredis we stopped for breakfast on 6th avenue before walking up to 7th and 29th for our course.

Lunch time was a great excuse for us all to stretch our legs after long meditations and so with Cristina, a friend from Buenos Aires we stopped at the whole food store to buy a salad and headed for the sky walk.

After class we walked the streets of New York on our way back to  the apartment and had dinner on the way. I was surprised to see so many beautiful gardens in front of apartments and houses as I walked home and couldnt resist taking photos of the flowers...

South Carolina and Etsy

Before leaving Buenos Aires I followed the example of Jan from  fabriquefantastique a fellow Etsy Expat team members and took with me as many of the items from my Etsy shops as I could. My sister knew of private beach on the Island and one day we set off for the beach with our cameras and bags of items from our shops. Even though the day was fantastic the beach was absolutely deserted.  We walked along the beach looking for the best place to prepare our shoot and stopped when we found some dry tree branches sticking up out of the sand.

Beach bag from Arteentusmanos on Etsy

Silk felted wedding wrap with 3 D flowers from Feltnatural on Etsy

Crystal pave bracelet from Edgeappeal on Etsy

South Carolina continued...

Claire with her camera ready

As you can see I took lots of photos of the local environment, we visited a nature reserve, a private beach, and a private plantation all in one day!!! 1000 photos later i think i had putting into practise most of the tips my sister gave me on using my camera..

Plantation beach

the butterflies at honeywell

 Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
I have been away from this little space of mine for more time than I would like to admit! The year seems to have flown by and here i am trying to catch up with all the events between February and now. I won´t bore you with all the details of how my mother in law had two hip operations in three month, instead i will go straight to the more interesting events like my trip to USA to visit my sister in South Carolina, a trip to New York and then off to Massachusettes for a felting course.

my sister claire loves horses and took me to see some of her favourite ones at a nearby farm open to visitors, while we were there it started raining and i was surprised that i could capture the rain with my camera....

My time with my sister was spent not only on catching up with the 3 years since my last visit, but also shopping and taking hundreds of pictures... here are a few.....

 

coming soon... more of Hilton Head, New York and Massachusetts .....

From knitted berets to hand-sculpted felted hats

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Over the years I have made many hats: knitting them up on circular needles I have always found great fun. Much to my dismay though, my woollen creations, although admired here in Buenos Aires, were never sought after when I tried to sell them at local craft fairs. 

It seems that here in Buenos Aires it is not a common thing for a woman to wear a hat. First of all it never gets cold enough in winter so there is not a need  to wear one and secondly there isn't a hat wearing tradition so even at formal events like weddings you will very rarely see a lady wearing one.                                                                                                                                            

My husband always reminds me of when we met up at Victoria Station in London the day after our first meeting. I met him wearing a bright red  knitted beret, slanted across my head. It was a cold morning in February and of course a common accessory to wear at that time of the year. The look on his face when he saw my colourful beret though revealed a certain embarrassment and lack of knowledge about this long standing tradition.                                                            

This week I am back at my hat making antics and instead of getting out my circular needles I got out my merino wool top, a circular resist and started to work on a felted beret with colourful topped off with a flower and then a sculpted polka dot hat also with a flower on the top.

Both hats were made under the supervision of Andrea Graham during a two afternoon web cam felting class. Once again I had great fun making these hats, now we will have to see what my husband will say should I wear them.

                    
                    VALENTINE´S AND HEARTS



With Valentines day on the calender this month, I decided to make a new collection of Bridal Wraps with a Valentine´s theme to them. Hearts, ofcourse were on the menu.  I started the three wraps by cutting out some different sized hearts out of some previously felted silk.
These same hearts I used to make three quite different Bridal Wraps.

Pongee Silk with silk chiffon frill, felted silk hearts and felted silk collar

pongee silk bridal wrap with imprinted felted hearts and silk frill

Pale Paris Pink Pongee Silk Bridal Wrap with silk felted hearts and felted silk band around the edges and double silk frill