Wool crafts at Hidden Villa

by Ziad

Making a felt pouch:

Wool has thousand of tiny hooks on each hair, and when we felted the wool we were trying to get them to hook together. I don't think mine did.

In the beginning, the wool was kind of soft and all tangled, with the hairs going in different directions. It wasn't in threads, like yarn is. We put it in these paddles that were kind of like hairbrushes, and we pulled them apart to spread them out to straighten out the hairs. This is called carding. Then we put them in a cross and put a tennis ball on top. We wrapped the cross around the ball and dunked it in soapy water. Then we squeezed the water out and dumped it in rinse water and then squeezed that out. I was doing fine until we put the wool into a ball and soaked in the soapy water and then started rinsing it. I just hated that. Then we dried it out and cut a cross-shaped hole at the greenest part. We gradually pulled out the tennis ball.

Spinning:

I hated the spinning because my wool kept ripping and I couldn't get it together. I couldn't get the bits of wool that I was making into the yarn thin enough.