The Great Cape Caper

Sometimes you get an itch you just gotta scratch.

My name is Ann, and I like to make things.  Whether I need them or not.  Whether they are useful or not.  Just because I can, or to see if I can, or just because.

People such as I should not cruise Pinterest, because we see things like this:

That's just so wonderfully barbararic.  Me want.  So me make.

Dive the stash.  Some time back (15 years? 20?) a shepherd I met online was getting out of the business and gave me some Lincoln fleeces.  I still had the brown one--I dug it out and started pulling and separating the locks.

I also had some dark brown California Variegated Mutant fleece (my all time favorite sheep breed name).  That felts quite a bit easier than the Lincoln.  I carded it up, laid it into a crescent shape, and felted it--my favorite method of felting is to wet it with a bit of soapy water, cover it in plastic, and then go over it with a small hand sander minus the sandpaper.  This is so much faster than rubbing by hand, even if the vibrations do make you go numb after awhile.  Then I would lay out a row of locks, cover the ends with a wispy bit of the CVM, and felt it down.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.

The fleece had some varigations so I chose some dark and most of the lighter locks to give some depth to the piece.  It came out quite a bit fluffier than I wanted so I did some "monkey grooming" with a bit of hair product.  All in all, this collar took about four hours, which is a heck of a lot faster than spinning and knitting or weaving.

I didn't happen to have any Viking broaches in my stash but I did have some heavy copper wire that I beat and twisted and made into a pair of penannular broaches.  That with some random jewelry made a closure.

Final product--not bad!!

Of course, now it has some crumbs in it because I had it on my mannequin in the guest room and Dingo the flying squirrel liked to escape from his cage and snuggle in it to have a peanut.

So all was well and good and that itch was scratched and now I could get onto more practical things.

Except . . . . this collar really needed a cape to go with it, right?