Chain necklace - tutorial

A while ago I promised you a tutorial on the big chain necklace I made.
Last week I made another one, not as chunky as the first one, and this time I took pictures.

I prepared by pulling pieces of roving about 20cms in length and splitting them length wise.
By folding a piece of roving into a circle, you make the first link. Put the part where the two ends meet together on a piece of foam or whatever you use for needle felting and felt them together.
Be sure this part ends up about as thick as the rest of wool to get an even link.

Repeat this until you have the length you want and at that point close the necklace with one last link, pulling the two end together.

As my closing link I used three 20cm pieces of thin pencil roving intertwined to one link.

As a finishing touch a laid out some silk roving in matching colours on only a few links of the chain and needle felted them lightly, just to make sure they will not float away when getting wet.

After that you can start felting the necklace link by link. I only wet a few links at a time.
The water doesn't have to be really warm at this point because it is more about rolling the links one by one between your hand and you fingers, and not yet about the fulling.

  

Be sure your hands aren't too slick and soapy at this stage because the wool needs some resistance to roll round. Otherwise your will be felting a flat piece of wool. (You will know what I mean when the moment occurs.)

After I finish prefelting the whole necklace I put it in the dryer for a few minutes, on COLD (!), to roll some more. When I think the links are nice and round, it goes in the dryer for a second cycle, but this time using the HOT air to start fulling.
Be sure the whole piece is still quite wet when putting it in the dryer, otherwise it will come out all frizzy and fluffy.

And here is the end result of your work: