Variegated Yarn made from Felted Scraps

After last week when I tried my first felted join, I then wondered if it would be worth while to make variegated yarn from felted scraps. I have been keeping all of my wool scraps to felt at some time in future, so I decided to start trying it out to see if it was worth the effort.

scraps of pure wool no shorter than 3 inches

At first, I sorted my scraps of pure wool. I decided I would try some of the luxury 8 ply from Bendigo, pieces shorter than 3 inches were obviously going to be too fiddly, so I started with ones from that size up. It was quite time consuming, so the mix of colours should make the extra effort worth while. The pink, green and white was coming up quite nicely. I then spun it using the drop spindle my father-in-law made for me, because some of the ply were unravelling when I was felting the pieces together.

hand-spun felted variegated yarn made from wool scraps

I was short on time, so I only tried a small length of variegated felted yarn, just enough to make a 5 petal flower. I really should have just done a few colours, like white, pink and green, and not the one piece of purple, because one petal is purple while the other four are pink. I then gave the flower an extra felting treatment, to see if it helped the finish. I think when felting flowers in future I'll need to be more vigorous, so will probably pop them into the washing machine.

5 petal flower made with variegated felted yarn

variegated flower after extra felting

There was a small pile of tiny single ply scraps left over from making the felted yarn. These were the 1 inch lengths that I cut to thin the wool to make a place to join. I gave making a pair of tiny felted beads a go, they required a bit of elbow grease and still need more work, but I now have the general idea. I hope my mum can help make them  into a pair of earrings.

tiny 1 inch scraps of wool left over from making felted joins

I just love how I can make things from the tiny scraps of wool left over from other work. This is yet another reason why I like working with this natural fibre. It's more expensive than acrylic, but not a single strand is wasted!

a pair of tiny felted beads to make into earrings