Fluff N Stuff

This weekend was ridiculously fun! I posted some pics on Facebook about the adventures of Ruben and I at A Gift of Art's Needle Felting workshop, hosted by Michelle Houston of The Wild N Wooly. I am absolutely smitten by this craft and am seriously considering converting all the non-superwash fibres in my spinning stash to needle felting materials!

The process is so simple and quick and if you make a mistake, just add a little more fluff or yank some off! Wrong colour? Pick it off and start again. When my husband asked: "So, this is all you need? You don't have to buy some big piece of equipment or something?" I was happy to reply "This is it: a few felting needles, some fluff and a sponge. That's all!"

So here's a complete "gallery" of my creations, which will be making guest appearances at Soper Creek Yarn for now (because my husband asked me "So, now what are you going to do with these?"). My in-class project was the alpaca (which my husband mistook for a giraffe!) After class, in my enthusiasm I whipped off the beaver and the bright yellow chick, and the next day I hauled out a bunch of my spinning fibres and turned some odds and ends into a cute baby owl and a wicked-looking sheep (the outer layer of the sheep is made from my locally-sourced Cotswold lamb locks!).

There's something awesome about being able to use my own fibres in this way because even if they are grubby, stained skirtings from my fleece they still make great felting wools. The lightly stained Cotswold lamb locks give my felted sheep an "authentic" look and the really stained fibres worked just fine as the core wool which I used to build up the initial body shape. Since I hate to waste anything when it comes to my fleeces, it seems this craft was made for me.

When I heard about needle felting and all the adorable felted critters started showing up in my Pinterest feed I knew I was in trouble. For me, needle felting seems like the perfect compliment to the fibre preparation work I do, which seemed like a perfect compliment to the spinning, which seemed like a perfect compliment to my knitting. Perfectly perfect, right? Maybe, but please, don't show me any more cool new fibre crafts (and while we're at it, let's not speak about dyeing wool - at least not around my husband!).