Noren, felt snakes, and a mobile

Some leftovers from my watercolor class have become a noren (Japanese door curtain) and a mobile. Also dug out some mustard-colored roving and felted it to make a hanger for some cloth pouches. (The latter will hold index cards for a research project I'm doing.)

felted "snakes" support cloth pouches which will hold index cards for a research project

A noren hangs in the doorway of a closet in order to use the "see-through" paintings I made for class -- I have to look through them in order to walk through the doorway.

mobile made out of two-sided paintings

opposite sides of the paintings in above mobile

Fleece lore and painting idea

Alpaca! It's soft, it's dense and drapey, it's exotic, and it comes in lush, natural colors. For Christmas I'm sending my mother-in-law an alpaca scarf. I added some Navajo Churro and some Jacob (both are Heritage breeds) to the yarns I spun for the contrasting stripes. The body of the scarf is naturally-colored alpaca blended with some Border Leicester lamb. Peggy's great-granddaughter carded some of the wool for the pink stripe. This was great fun to make and took a surprising volume of fleece -- 8 ounces -- alpaca has quite a dense "hand."

The decorative painting below is the endpaper from an Hena Khan book -- Mehrdokht Amini is the illustrator. I shot it to capture material for an upcoming project --  no reference to the scarf project, just wanted to capture it before taking it back to the library.

Handspun and dyed (by me) alpaca scarf. Alpaca is from Sherwood, a neighboring city.

Bits of five different fleeces went into the scarf -- all are uncommon breeds raised by Willamette Valley shepherdesses.