Thursday, March 22, 2007

15 minutes to relax

It's my first bird's nest. I owe it all to my kids' school, really. I need to find some twig-colored yarn for the next one... and brown speckles for the eggs, instead of the green flecks. Still. I like it.

More writing soon.

4 comments:

Sheryl said...

This is wonderful! I can see the eggs are felted, but how did you do the nest?

Rock in the Grass (Pete Grassow) said...

You are a person of many talents!
PG

Denise said...

Pete! Fiber arts-- the realm of people who live in the cold.

Sheryl, howdy-- the eggs are wet-felted wool roving. (Um, make little roundish beads of wool then squash them really hard after they've begun to dry.)

The nest is needle-felted. It begins as a pile of barely spun yarn. If you are familiar with felting needles, they jam all the wool fibers together like dreadlocks. So I needle-felted the pile of yarn, in the middle only, leaving the loose loops on the outside. Then I trimmed the loops to look like the ends of twigs. I included some actual moss for realism.

If you are not familiar with felting needles, they are some sort of bizarre magic, and I'm not convinced anyone can explain exactly why these razor sharp things work as they do.

To sell at the school store. Mamas will be shopping for the little ones' baskets.

Sheryl said...

That is so cool! I haven't tried needle felting before, but I have done wet felting (though I never managed to make anything other than balls). The needles for needle felting have always scared me. I don't do well with sharp things. My natural accident proneness really comes out when there is the potential for serious injury.