Have you ever seen anything like these?

Felted stones - they're all the rage in our house right now!

A few days ago I came across this blog by Lisa Jordan and these stones encased in beautiful hand-made, embroidered felt.  I fell in love! Lisa makes these using combed fleece fibres and the traditional felt-making technique of soap, water and agitation.  There's a tutorial on her blog.

Felted stones by Lisa Jordan of  Lil Fish Studios

Last October a friend gave me a felt-making kit (from Ellie Langley of Fleece With Altitude at Slackhouse Farm) which I've been meaning to get stuck into. Well within 24 hours of seeing the stones, I'd got one of my own!

I nipped out to the porch and rummaged through the box of seaside stuff we dragged back from Colonsay last year till I found a suitable stone, and followed Lisa's instructions.  Didn't take long, with soap, rubbing and hot water, to turn fleece into felt.  Previously I had entertained tame ideas of making flat felt to cut into Christmas decorations or something, but this is so much more exciting - I haven't felt (ha! geddit?) this excited about a new project for a long time!

Once my new stone, soft but satisfyingly heavy, was dry, I tried out some half-forgotten embroidery on it.  And this weekend the kids got excited about covering stones in felt, so we have a growing collection....

A week on, I've made four felted stones in four different types of fleece:




Clockwise from top left, these are felted in Wensleydale, Jacob, Sheltand and Blue Faced Leicester wool. I absolutely love them, and there will be many more. Right now I love the natural colours of these undyed wools, but I might do some coloured ones soon.




This white one, with bullion knots and running stitch, reminds me of a sea urchin.  The felt remained quite fuzzy and loose, the fibres didn't want to knit together any more than this. The pale grey Shetland wool on the other hand formed a very even, dense felt very quickly - and you could see that it was going to even before I got it wet as the fibres were short and very fuzzy whereas the white Wensleydale was sleek and long-fibred.




Keep watching for more felted stones here soon...