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...