Monday, August 21, 2006

Hey, Look What I Made!

A couple of weeks ago, an artist friend invited a bunch of other artist friends to her home on Saturday morning to "play." Apparently, she has "Sacred Saturday" every week in her home when her husband takes her two boys out and she spends the morning in the studio. Divine! (Actually, Jeff often takes out kids to McDonald's Playland for pancakes on weekend mornings and I am always encouraged to "just do my own thing.") These men are superfantastic husbands and fathers.

Anyway...

There wasn't any specific agenda, but somehow we ended up with a felting book, a big basket of roving and someone who had made some felt balls before. She became the teacher and several of us began rubbing, soaping, wetting and rolling.



I realize now that I should have put something in this picture for scale. I'd say it's slightly bigger than a golf ball. Are you surprised by the color combinations? Of course not. It was really fun. It took quite a long time, but that's ok. We all just chatted away with our wet hands and compared sizes and firmness.

The funniest thing is that we all insisted on slicing the balls open right away. Do they really need to dry? Someone called them felt geodes. Perfect. Now what to do with it? I could sew it to some snappy little wrist cuff and it could be a wearable pin cushion. It could made some wild wacky eyes for some kind of softie monster. Or I could just set it on the shelf to look interesting.

The group is called the Twisted Stitchers. They meet twice a month in the classroom of a local quilt shop to work on projects, chat and support each other. It's an amazing group and I was thrilled to be invited! Of course, I connected with them indirectly through blogging. Ah... let's pause a moment and sing the praises on blogging. Ok. That's enough.

The Twisted Stitchers meet again this week. I'll bring my camera!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, how fun! I vote for a pincushion. I love "sacred Saturdays" -- our version here is "CraftDay" and it's once a month. We all plan our lives around these days off. Your geode is making me antsy to get to work on the big basket of roving in my house....

Gerrie said...

Next month Steph and I are going to the Canby sheep and wool festival. I can't wait to get my hands on some roving to paly with.

laura west kong said...

they're fabulous! my lqs sells something like them as pin cushions. you could even just set them out in a silver bowl and call them art.

Sarah Ann Smith said...

Oh how FUN! I'm so glad you've gotten together with these ladies...a perfect antidote to the Texas heat! I have a couple felty projects, too...including a needlefelted dragon (a loooonnnngggg term project, as in I work on it for an evening, then it sits for a loooonnnngggggggg time before I touch it again!).
Teeheee, Sarah

Jo Griffith said...

My totally favorite pincushion looks like that... It's called the "Ewesful Pincushion". I picked it up at a show years ago. It's about 6 inches across and 2.5 inches high. Very nice work. Hmmm..."Deb's Pincushion Emporium"

Micki said...

That is really cool. I saw a lady doing this on TV (can't remember which show it was) and her pieces were fairly good sized.