Thursday, October 13, 2016

Wet Felted Scarves- Butterfly Style!

The BFL scarf, with a bit of black added
Oh, don't you love it when things converge!? I went to the Black Sheep Handspinners Guild meeting in September with fiber to give away. And the kind person who took it off my hands gave me a bit of BFL (Blue Faced Leicester, for the uninitiated) that was dyed orange, yellow and brown. Now these are colors I just don't work with~ but it was a lovely bit of fiber, so hmmm...  I just happened to have a book out of the library called Patterns in Nature (Publishers Weekly's 'most beautiful book of 2016')~ an excellent book which not only shows amazing patterns, but tells the science behind what makes those patterns occur. For instance the patterns on feathers happen before they split into barbs- who knew?

Three butterfly scarves here!





As I was leafing through the book I came across a closeup photo of a butterfly wing and~ guess what? The colors were the same as the lovely fiber I'd just gotten my greedy hands on. And so an idea was born! The colors, the patterns, the shapes~ it's all good. These days, just about all of my scarves are based on butterfly patterning. There are so many amazing patterns to study and imitate.

Now, of course I am wondering about starting a fish scarf series!