Friday, February 17, 2006

Tease(l) me!


I bought a teasel brush about three weeks ago and I've had a bit of fun with it. The brushing had a fantastic effect on the Gloriously Fugly hat (which is still In Progress) and I wanted to show off the effect obtained. I had always throught that a teasel brush only really brought up nice effects on natural fibres like angora but a friend told me otherwise which is why I bought one to play about with.

So first of all, I made a hat from two strands of DK and a 8mm crochet hook - one of my instant gratification hats. I took some pictures, attacked half of the hat with the teasel brush and then took some more pictures.


It's the usual rubbish pictures, but I think the change can still be seen. The fabric does become very soft to touch; this was some Elcheapo bogstandard acrylic I had hanging around and it feels delicious now. I want to see what happens when I tease a very scratchy fabric. If two close colours are used the resulting blending is very pretty. That's what happened with the orange and red yarns I used in the Gloriously Fugly hat, which will be appearing on a monitor near you in the near future. I just have to make three or four pompoms for it.*

So - attacking FOs with a sharp metal implement isn't always a bad idea.

*I know, three or four pompoms sounds excessive and they're not going to be dangling from ear flaps either. It already has a mini-curly whirly and some strange surface crochet.

2 comments:

Minnieknits said...

Nice work with the teasel brush!
How will the effect stand up to being washed? Do you think you'll have to teasel again or will the fabric behave itself?
Why so few pompoms ? Its got to be a hat that complete strangers want to come up to and fondle unnecessarily !( Oops sorry, thats my fantasy hat! lol)

acrylik said...

Love the teaselling idea. Pompoms are good. When I see the delight in people's eyes when they see a pompom you just know the world should be full of them!