I love it when customers give me artistic license.  He just said put some of that swirly stuff on it you like to do.  Cool!  I really do like doing spiral work.  Its very relaxing.  I love the process of joining one spiral to another.  Spiral designs work very well with felt because they are so organic and if they slide a bit during the felting process they still look like a spiral.   The hat was a bit tricky because it is made around a flat resist with a front and a backside.  I have pretty good spacial relations, but it was hard to visualize how the pattern wrapped around the other side.  It was hurting my brain.  Finally I looked at if from above so I could see both sides at once, and it all made sense then.

I made this batch of balls for my nephew last year.  I’ve made so many of these fun little things.  The wool is wound tightly into a ball, a design is lightly needle felted on, then I tie the balls in nylon stocking and throw them in the washing machine.  They come out fuzzy and egg shaped, but I simply roll them into a round shape and trim off the fuzz.

I made this basket for my mom for Christmas last year.  Its made the same way as my flat bags, by wrapping around a cardboard resist.  This resist was oval shaped, then when I cut it open I cut two ovals off the upper corners to form the handle.  Then in the last stage of fulling I simply molded it into the shape I wanted it to be in and left it to dry.  Since wool is hair it wants to stay in the shape it dries in.  (Remember using sponge curlers in your hair ladies?)

These knee high socks are made with by knitting two strands of a very fine and fuzzy mohair silk blend.  They are made using the magic loop technique on size 5 circular needles.  I don’t recomend knitting fuzzy eggplant colored yarn on black needles.  The stitches are hard to see.  This is the kind of sock you don’t rip out if you make a mistake.  The stitches are too hard to pick up again.  I’m glad I finally finished them.  Not sure if I’ll use this yarn again, except to knit up the two left over balls I have.  They doo feel divine though.

This is my first attempt at two color knitting.  It is based on 14th century Egyptian socks.  My socks are ankle socks though and the period ones were knee length.  Here is a link to an article that tells all about them: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dc4j44t3_83hmp5gmc3

A medieval games geek friend of mine told me that a lot of game boards in medieval times were made of felt.  Especially for nomadic type people this makes a lot of sense.  They are light, foldable and very durable.  I made the chess board for him and the alqurques board for me.

Decoration on this bag is made using the prefelt technique, and the red lines are embroidered in wool floss with chain stitches.  The tassels are goat hair.

This is a copy of a Scythian saddle pad.  The original was from about 500 BC, and was a grave find in Siberia.

The design is done entirely of pre-felt.  The whole peice is wet felted.  There is no needle felting of any kind.  It measures about 60×70 centimeters.

Look under the “pages” tab for a more detailed explanation of how it was made.

Lets face it, anything you get paid money to do is work.  And in general everyone is trying to ballance work with a general pursuit of happiness.  When I started my website 5 years ago I was just beginning my felt business.  I was a preschool teacher part time and a part time felt maker.  I really enjoyed setting up my shop at various events and finding lots of people who enjoyed seeing and owning my work.  However this was a lot of work with no guaranteed return.   So after a couple of years I decided to trade it all for the security of a full time teaching job.  I know most everyone knows what its like to have a full time job, well there is only so much time left for anything else.  I continued to make a few felt and other fiber pieces for myself and as gifts.  All the while I’ve missed having more time to create and “play store”.   I haven’t updated my website much since then, so at this point it seems quite out dated to me. 

After finding the right full time teaching job for me this year, I am able to take time off as I please (without pay of course), and as it stands now I have one afternoon a week off to do creative things.  And just as I started taking those afternoons off I started getting commission requests.  I’m finding it very rewarding to be working at this slower pace, and think I’m making better felt this way too.  I hope to proceed with Wandering Sheep in a more artsy way and may be re-opening my shop at a few events… with a new business model.    In the coming months I hope to be finding a good way to archive my old website and developing more of a blog based website, so that it is easier to document my work as it progresses.    The first few posts to this blog will probably be old or back logged items I’m transferring over to this format.