Thursday, January 21, 2010

Of Chickens and Felt

Many of the changes in my life over the last four years are related to the death of my mother on Dec. 19th 2005. That was a catalyst for me to try harder than ever to make a good life. I won't go into all the deep philosophical and psychological changes that happened. However, one small step down a path toward trying to be happier with how I spent my time on this earth brought me to the art of making felt and the joy of raising chickens.
I was working for a well known dictionary publisher as THE illustrator at the time. I am not all that well suited to sitting in a cubical in silence it turns out, and a co-worker and I started dream-talking about things we would like to do to make our personal worlds better. Much of the talk was about sustainable living...you know, working less at a job, having less STUFF, making things and making do.

During one of our conversations she suggested raising angora rabbits as a way to start down that road. Theory was that I could sell the fiber and have the enjoyment of those wonderful creatures. Rufus T. Firefly shown here was my first angora. I got him from Chris Morgan (woolybuns.typepad.com) and before I knew it I had five balls of fluff to love and care for. One thing I didn't have was a way to sell that fiber though. The afore mentioned friend told me that I could felt that surplus fiber so I looked it up on the internet and tried wet felting with my lovley angora. When I was done I had a holey piece of felt that looked a lot like a rabbit that had been runover by a steamroller...and I was hooked.
My next endeavor was using a felting needle to make a bunny from the bunny fiber. And then I discovered that a woman named Chris White sold wool in lots of colors from her home in a town not too too far away and so I made my first combination wet and needle felted landscape with angora AND wool.



To Be Continued...





4 comments:

  1. Your writing is great....fresh like you! AND I **love** that picture of Mom...would that I could adopt her. =-)
    So happy I could be the first follower!
    I will link you in my blog with the next post....I just know people will love your work, chickens and how you describe what you see the world.
    xo

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  2. Yes, that picture of Mom is one of my favorites. Thank you for the encouraging comments. I am very uptight about writing. Who wouldn't be after working at a dictionary publisher for years. I wonder if they ever caught on that I can't spell and my grammar stinks!

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  3. Love your rabbit. That tree is wonderful. i love the celtic styles waves to the sea too.

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  4. Thank you Jasmine. I see that you love tree imagery too. Very nice felt forest scenes. I tend to do single trees. I really like your quote from Blake!

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