Felting

Recently Kate and I participated in a workshop on felting, a process in which wool fibers become wool material, which is often bonded to other wool and silk fibers. The workshop was interesting and quite fun, and we both produced something we liked. I left the workshop inspired to create (always a dangerous moment in my life and the lives of those around me). I came home and spent hours shopping online, buying wool fibers and wool and silk yarns; I had a great time thinking of the wonderful creation that was heading my way. Every day I sorted through the yarns, coordinating color schemes and thinking of possible designs. I spent weeks mentally rehearsing the steps in felting and preparing myself emotionally for my creative process. (This is where I would play Beethoven, if I could hitch music to this blog. You'll have to hum along on your own.)

Last Friday I decided the day of creation had arrived. I carefully assembled all the necessary materials and meticulously arranged them on the counter. I KNEW this was going to be fun. Huh.  I prepared the water with soap.  Spread out the plastic on the table. Unwrapped the wool batt and layered it on the plastic. I realized I was not quite sure what constitutes one layer of batt and, not wanting to bother the felting expert with a question, decided I could figure this out on my own. I tried pulling the batt apart in layers, until I was surrounded by little chunks of batt. Oops. And then our Tibetan Terrier proved that she is truly Tibetan by diving into the wool like she was cornering a Yeti. I spent the rest of the day alternately yelling at her to "drop it!!" and picking up little bits of woolly fluff all over the house. I did not let this deter the felting process. I continued layering batt, although I suspect each layer was probably more like 3 layers thick, but I figured that would make for a hardier final product.

The next step was layers of wool roving, long fibers placed perpendicularly in another three layers, interspersed with chasing Izzi and fishing wool out of her mouth. Of course I started out large, because wool shrinks in the felting process and my very first piece ended up being about 2" by 3", and I didn't want THAT to happen again. After layering and shingling, I was pretty sure I had used up enough wool for an entire herd of sheep. I had what looked like a dead sheep on my kitchen table. The layers were about 18" thick. It looked a little thick to me, but at that point there was no place to go but full steam ahead, so I placed all my embellishments on the wool base and stood back to admire my work....and chase Izzi to fish wool out of her mouth.

The workshop lady had cute little watering things that cost $25 apiece. This seemed expensive to me so I bought a watering can at Christmas Tree Shop for $1.69.  This might have worked okay, except it wasn't painted very well, so big paint chunks kept pouring out onto my sheeplike creation. (It was beginning to feel a little Frankenstein-ish here.) I gamely plucked them off and kept watering. The idea is to saturate the wool with water. I guess I got a little carried away with the saturation thing...before I knew it, there was about 5 inches of water on the table (and the floor and the dogs and my clothes). I covered the floor with towels and kept on working. I pushed more water out of the wool, spread more towels, yelled at Izzi, squeegeed water off my pants, and...at this point I was a little breathless. I didn't remember our felting workshop being an aerobic process, but hey! who can complain about burning off a few extra calories?! At least now my fleece was only 4 inches high. It still seemed a little high, but maybe my workshop memory was a little faulty. 

Okay. So now it was time to roll it in plastic and towels. As I rolled, water sloshed out of both ends of the roll. I spread more towels and squeegeed my pants again and kept rolling. After a few minutes I had a roll that was a tad larger than my workshop roll. I estimate its weight at about 85 pounds, and come to think of it, it looked a little like a body rolled up in a rug. I expected Robert DeNiro to pound on the door. I hauled the stupid thing (Have you noticed that all my creative products at some point turn into stupid things? There's a message there, I'm sure.) into the laundry room, bent over by its weight. I opened the dryer and pushed and grunted until I got it in, turned the dryer on and returned to the kitchen to sop up more water.  I let myself feel just a little satisfaction...and the dryer made a funny noise and stopped. I pounded on the damn thing, punched buttons, swore and...nothing. 

I fished wool out of Izzi's mouth, toppled out to the car with the sheep roll, and headed to the laundromat. People looked at me kind of funny when I staggered in under the roll but I pretended I didn't see them and threw it into an extra heavy duty super duper dryer, drying and rolling and drying and rolling, resolutely pretending there was no one else in the building (the other people were trying to pretend I wasn't there either. Huh.) An hour later I hauled my body in a rug back to the car and heaved it into the trunk. A few more rolls and it was FINISHED!

That was two days ago. The felt still isn't dry (perhaps I used a tad more wool than necessary), my back and hip and shoulder hurt, and I figure that between a herd's worth of wool, gas for the car, laundromat charges, getting the dryer fixed, and doctor's bills for my pain, I probably spent about $1,000 producing something that I could sell, on a day when buyers felt generous, for about $1.29.  And this was one of my more successful projects. Wait 'til I write about my metalworking with torches (who knew propane tanks could leak like that?!! Geesh.)