Has Been NOMINATED!!!
By the readers of the Long Island Press
With your help and your vote, I will win the honor for 2010
Here’s how you can help. It’s quick, free and easy.
Simply click on this link below
http://www.longislandpress.com/bestof
And follow the instructions any time between today and December 15, 2009.
(Note: You must complete a full category in order to have a valid ballot by clicking "Done" at the bottom of the screen.)
Go to category Health and Wellness
Then go to Best Psycho-Therapist
and click on Loraine Alderman, Psy.D.
Thank you for helping my mission to be among the Best I truly appreciate your support.
Today, Vick and I went to a friend's home in Athens to learn how to felt Iggy's fiber. Vick did the actual felting, because there is a lot of soaking, soaping and rubbing, which my blistered fingers would not have taken kindly to, so she worked with Dawna, learning the felting and I spent the day using carding paddles and a carding machine. I gotta tell you... carding fiber is much easier than it looks! When we first started carding with a pair of old paddles we have, we pulled with all our might trying to transfer all the fiber from one paddle to the other like they show you on you-tube, but it doesn't take a lot of brute strength or pulling...you simply whisk them over one another lightly and allow the curved needles on the paddle to comb through the fiber which instantly straightens and aligns the fiber hairs, ready to spin into yarn or felt with. The felting process is a very simple, yet... amazing process that can be used to make a multitude of different and beautiful art forms. Today we saw coats, vests, shawls, hats of many sizes and shapes, curtains, mats and pet beds. There were also many beautiful wall hangers in different styles of art. We even saw a mask.
Dawna gave us a pair of carding paddles that a friend of hers wanted to give to a needy recipient, since she was going to give up fiber working. We were thrilled that Dawna thought of us and gave them to us. The pair we have must be 200 years old and is missing and bent tines. Now maybe we can card the Alpaca and Angora fiber to use in spinning of yarns and felting. I did learn to card using Dawna's electric drum carder. Now that's the way to go if you have $1,700.00 to $2,000.00 just lying around somewhere. We will probably pick up an Ashford drum carder which you turn by hand. They do a nice job too. You just have to crank them. The electric is nice because you have both hands free to pull and draft the fiber on the way in to the drum. Dawna's made beautiful roving mats that were about eight inches wide by sixteen inches long that were about an inch, to an inch and a half or so thick.
I was totally amazed at the soft, uniform, fluffy mats of Iggy's fiber once it was carded. It is extremely coarse and scraggy looking before carding, but after it's great. I can just imagine how great Bollero or Luke's fiber will card.
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