Although the pattern for these bowls is titled "Felted Nesting Bowls", it would be more accurate to descibe them as fulled nesting bowls (12 of 50). Fulling refers to the process by which a woven or knitted item is shrunk by subjecting the item to moisture, heat, pressure and friction, while felting refers to the process of meshing unwoven fibers to create a dense material by subjecting the mass of fibers to moisture, heat, pressure and friction. 
I used two different brands of 100% wool yarn - Paton's Classic in a burnt orange colorway and Lion Wool in a cadet blue colorway. The large and small vessels were knitted with Paton's Classic while the medium and extra small vessels were made with Lion wool. After fulling, the large and medium bowls were the same size...and the small and extra small were also similar in dimensions. Obviously, different wools full differently. I prefer the end products that were knitted with Paton's Classic and will probably stick with this brand for future fulling experiments. This was my first attempt at fulling, but I'm pretty pleased with the results!
Last weekend, I had a fabulous time hanging out with CD for our 2nd Annual Crafty in Cincinnati. After having so much fun the first time round, we booked rooms at the same hotel with plans for trying new crafts and catching up.
Friday evening, we played with paper and made a couple of chunky houses!
My chunky house "A Virgin of Yesterday"!
CD's fantastic cat chunky house!
Saturday was a busy day! We went to IKEA (boy oh boy!) followed by a visit to St. Theresa's Textile Trove (an absolute gem!). In addition to a good selection of eclectic fabric (hand marbled, hand dyed, African batik, etc.), they also had all kinds of beads, whimsical charms and general kitsch. I won't gab about my fabric purchases, but I did find quite a few things that I had to have!
Porcupine quills. Yep, sharp and beautiful. I hope to inject resin in the hollow shaft and turn them into hairsticks for myself...soonish.
Okay, I wasn't planning to talk about fabric but this particular fabric has such a neat story to it. Apparently, the design is based on "ladies of the night dolls" that were handed out as, erm, calling cards in Mexico. The designer, Terrie Mangat actually had names for the dolls in the fabric, and these are names of her friends and family. How cool is that! 
Fiber, fiber, fiber!!!
First fiber project for the evening - felted soaps! CD chose a good selection of colours for her bar of soap...and it turned out beautiful! I opted for forest green and hunter green shades. It seemed like a good idea at that time...but in retrospect, I shouldn't have. My felted soap looks like a Brillo pad! 
Next, we embarked on making wet felted scarves. I was too excited and didn't get any pictures of the layout of the dry fibers or even take very good pictures of the process...but here's the progress pictures of CD's colourful scarf!
Prewetting the fiber prior to soaping...
Close-up of pre-wetted fiber!
Soaped and partially felted...
It's darn near impossible to take pictures with soapy hands, but here's my soaped and partially felted scarf. I opted for using white wool roving because I wanted to dye the scarf after I was done felting it.
Scarves hung out to dry!
Close-up of CD's colourful scarf...
Close-up of my boring pre-dyed scarf (which is still undyed)...
And then we dyed a couple of skeins of yarn with food grade acid dyes...because we had a microwave in the room!
Close-up of the lovely dye effect on one of the skeins (I love grape Kool-Aid!)
You'd think we would call it a night after all the fiber crafts. Nope, CD promised that she'll coach me on needlework and she made good on that promise.
Awesome scissor fob that she made for me! 
Here's the sampler she worked on to show me a variety of stitches that I could learn:
Sadly, I was getting too cranky and tired (hey, it was now Sunday morning!) to learn them. I could bearly keep my eyes open at that point :P I stitched this...
And partially got this started...
But finished it when I got home!
I can't wait to do more needlework!
And for the record, my hair had pink highlights (it was purple for last year's meetup)!
Whee! I'm back from the STS meet-up in Vegas, and boy did we have fun! Aside from the usual Vegas hijinks, we also managed to fit in some quality crafting time. Before the meet-up, I was frantically working on small craft items (1/50 in 2010) to gift, AND a medium item (2/50 in 2010) for the white elephant gift exchange. Talk about swap anxiety! I knew I had to up my game because I was meeting up with a bunch of seriously talented crafters!!!
It took me awhile to figure out what to make, and I finally settled on sewing a bunch of pochettes (aka 1/50 in 2010). I don't have any pictures of the ones that were given to the girls, but here are examples of some that I made this week:
In the exchange, I received a plethora of small crafted goods from everyone...
My contribution to the white elephant gift exchange, was a knitted scarf (aka 2/50 in 2010) using the April Showers Scarf pattern. Being the procrastinator that I am, I was only 85% done with the scarf when I boarded the plane for Vegas. Thankfully, due to a significant delay in my travel plans, I finished the scarf in time for the swap. Oy vey.
Image provided by NP
And I managed to snag a couple of skeins of squishy yarn in the gift exchange!!
Other highlights of the weekend included...
A buffet of craft supplies looking for new homes...
Image provided by CDM
A mini felting marathon led by NP, in which I completed my first felt!
A duo of cards (destined to be framed and hung in my work office) that I purchased from a local artist at the First Friday event!
I can't believe how much we did in one wee weekend!!!
For someone who was flaked on.
One of the joys of swapping, is the nervous anticipation of finding out if your swap partner likes everything that you worked on. It must be awful, never to know if your crafted goods were well-received. Hopefully, AGS will like the stuff I've made for her! It's a rather odd assortment of items, but everything is based on her wists.
Handspun Yarn
Yarn Dyeing Kit
Earrings
Button Rings
Button Pendant
Sleep Mask 
Eye Pincushion
Matchboxes of Whimsies (oh, some buttons and so much more!)
