When writing Glamourie I carefully considered how best to introduce felting into knitting patterns. I had three main aims.

First, to provide you with precise instructions for the variety of felted objects featured in the design section of Glamourie so you can reproduce them exactly as shown.

Second, to ensure that my instructions provided you with blueprints for the felted pieces I first created for the original costumes.

My third and overall aim was to show how making the buttons, beads, petals, leaves and stems in the design section would lead you back to the felted pieces in the costumes. Ultimately, this would provide you with the means to experiment further with shapes, sizes, colours and effects and thus set you off on a shape-shifting path all of your own.

Felting your knitting is great fun and with the right material you can produce an endless variety of forms which have a wonderful sculptural and tactile quality. I used both my 2 Ply and 3 Ply Hebridean yarns and so everything I have done with regard to felting is entirely based on my work with this specific medium.

Small objects are the perfect way to begin if you have never tried felting your knitting. You can make beautiful decorative and practical objects using little scraps of yarn left over from your projects. I am well-aware of the cost of high quality wool yarn and I appreciate that the fear of ruining the work can curtail your freedom to experiment. But you can literally and metaphorically plunge in with these little projects and not have to worry about messing up. So start now and save all the little trimmings from your projects and use them to stuff buttons and beads and any other solid shapes you care to make. As little as one gram of left-over yarn is enough to knit a little object for felting.