Crochet by Hand
September 12, 2009

With the cord done and the system of crocheting determined I got to work. I went out on the deck and just wrangled that cord — again, be thankful that went undocumented, it was a battle. I learned that I’m going to need to start lifting weights to be able to crochet this whole thing!

Above is the finished product — it may not look like much but it proved the concept and told me how much wool I’ll need. I’ll share the math on this project soon but suffice it to say that now I know how many square feet I can make out of five pounds of fleece, a key ratio to know as I move forward.

If that’s not the face of a happy felter — I don’t know what is! For scale, I like to think I’m not huge, so this is about 2.5 feet wide, 1.5 feet tall and 9 inches thick. Now I know I can make the cord about 1/3 smaller in order to get the yurt to the thickness I want it to be meaning I can get about four square feet out of five pounds of fleece.

Wool Arrives
September 11, 2009

After a layover in New York so I could see what I was working with the wool made it back to New Hampshire! It’s five pounds of wool, half merino and half merino blend, which I ordered from Harrisville Designs to build the prototype for the yurt.

Upon opening the box the wool began to expand out of it’s batts – quickly!

The next task is pulling it all apart into little strips and pieces to lay across each other to felt.

yurt3

Look how much one batt grows — all ten only took a few days!