Starting on Saturday Dana is teaching a C10 with kikus with different petal lengths on Twitch
Started with a core of yarn leftovers (from warps mostly) in a stocking. With yarn wrap the ball measures just over 33cm. I expect it to compress somewhat with the thread wrap. The ball weighs a total of 80g so the core must be about 52g
Power wrap - 95g and 34cm… oops, had expected it to go down, not up. Big ball!
Final wrap - ~115g, 34 and a bit cm
June 15, 2022
Finished the first flower last night. Decided to emulate the second kiku I did on this one so using two colors in the layered kiku and finishing off with a third color all around.
I took the instruction of putting the inner points as close to the center rather seriously, I noticed yesterday that Dana’s flower does have a circle center but I don’t mind this one. Had to pay attention with the inner points not getting tangled but I managed that well enough.
I have noticed this ball feels really rather soft. I think I wrapped it with less tension than I should have, and when I think about it, this is the first time I used such a maliable core. The first non-styrofoam ball I wrapped is this C8 but that still had a cardboard construct in the center so that gave a bit more stiffness, so I’m just not used to wrapping such a soft core. There’s a noticeable difference between these two in how easy it is to get a well anchored small stitch in, it works better on that C8.
July 6, 2022
Finished the ball on Sunday, followed Dana’s idea on how to fill the empty triangles but didn’t quite follow through, I had the triwings done and added a trillium (basically an open triwing on top) but didn’t like the look (one pic is shown) so took it out and just added pine needles under the triwing.
I wasn’t particularly taken with this ball, the softness didn’t help but the design is also not something that really appeals to me. I have really enjoyed following along with Dana to learn a lot about Temari and the different techniques but I think I’ve now come to a point where I’d like to pick and choose which ones I will follow and where I want to go choosing designs on my own.
Also with the softness of the ball and the density of the flowers this ball isn’t very round anymore, the parts that have little to no design thread on them are bulging while the flower centers are pushed down. I’ve now ordered rice hulls to get a better consistency for the core.