When Life Gives You Lemons...

Here's a photo of the scarf from Peru that got caught in my bike sprocket.

 I was in Cusco, Peru in 2018 for a few days prior to heading to Machu Picchu.  It is a charming city perched high in the Andes. While there I bought a lovely red, orange and yellow alpaca scarf with crocheted circles at each end.  It turned out to be one of my favorite go to scarves for complimenting outfits with any of these colors.

Last week I was bike riding on a chilly day in February with my Peruvian scarf wrapped around my neck and hanging down.  Needless to say, I have discovered that this is not such a good idea while riding a bike. Thank God I wasn't going too fast when I felt a pull against my neck.  I looked down and my pretty scarf was twisted around the sprocket.  I tried to gently pull but nope, I had to more like yank it out.  Unfortunately it was greasy and full of holes.  BUMMER!  I Soaked it and washed it trying to make sure I didn't felt it in the process.  

Well the grease never came out so I decided that I needed to make lemonade out of lemons and use some of the scarf to create a felted cowel.  

I created a resist 2" longer than the 17" I wanted and about 14" wide for a total of 28" around.  I allowed for a 35% shrinkage rate.

I cut off the crocheted pieces from my messed up scarf and felted some of them into felted cords that I created using a bamboo blind.  

I worked this piece from the inside out.  I laid out some decorative silk fabrics.  On top I placed the cords and some inclusions cut from the messed up scarf.  Then I laid out one layer of merino roving in a herringbone pattern with one row facing right and the next row left. I used black, red, orange and yellow merino.  Then I added more silk fabric and cut up scarf embellishments.

And then voila, a new nuno felted cowel from repurposed and recycled materials.

A new cowel and definitely the ol' proverbial...When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade!