Naalbinded lamp cozy

Unfortunately we didn't manage to visit the Viking event last weekend. But it's not that I don't have anything to show you today! *^v^*

Throughout the whole weekend I've been naalbinding. I'll show you some of my creations at the end of the week, but one big project has been finished and is ready to be used (almost, it's still a bit wet after felting).

I took four colours of wool from my stash, made the bottom of the bag in one colour, constantly adding stitches to acquire a wheel, and then continued with other three colours (as you can see, I ran out of the dark brown in about 2/3 of the project, so I finished with only three colours).

Here is a picture showing all four colours meeting at one point - I love the results you can achieve while working in this technique, you lead all colours simultaneously around the bag making one row on top of the previous one.

I really wasn't sure whether I was making the right size of the bag because I knew it would shrink while felted but I had no idea about the amount of this shrinking. Each yarn shrinks differently and each naalbinded stitch shrinks differently - York stitch is very loose so it will tighten a lot, Oslo stitch (used here) is a bit tighter but also rather loose so it may shrink a lot, but when you felt Finnish stitch or Russian stitch - they are very tight from the beginning so they won't change much after felting.

The bag was a bit too wide for its future contents before felting and it turned out perfectly sized after felting! Lucky me! *^v^*

But what is it exactly?

When we went to the medieval market in Ilza last Thursday we bought a lantern to have some light in our tent - it's made of wood and a very thin parchment, and you insert a candle inside.

I immediately decided that I want a lamp cozy so it would be protected from any scratches while transported in a car and here it is! ^^

I created a group on Flickr today called Naalbinding, where I would like to gather many naalbinded projects, so if you know this craft and make things with a needle, please join and share your creations! *^v^*

On other topics: thank you, Didlinaknits and Rho for your support on my post about closing the shop! I'm definitely going to think about this 2,5 year period as a good experience and build on it some new projects and enterprises.

Have a good Monday! ^^