EVOLVING FELT

I received a gift from a friend for Christmas. It was a Felting Kit to make the chickadee coaster at the bottom of the photo. Amazingly, I'd never heard of felting before or if I had, I never paid any attention to it. But the soil had been worked so to speak. Two years ago, we bought a lamb from a friend who raised them and Stephen was invited to his house one November morning to shoot the purchase. When he returned with the dead lamb in the back of the truck, I sunk my hands into the wool and sobbed my heart out for it's loss of life. I felt the lanolin on my hands and the soothing gratitude in my heart that somehow made it possible for me to come to terms with the death caused by my choice to eat meat. I love lamb. We don't eat much red meat but we both love the flavor of lamb...and the way it smells when it's cooking reminds me of my mother making Sunday dinner for the family when I was a kid. It was the only meal during the week that we shared with our parents. After I had my private mourning for the lamb and my gratitude had been expressed, I cut some of the raw wool thinking that one day, I might make something to honor the life of that spring lamb. Then I sent most of it to a friend who makes fiber arts. That was that. Then I got this kit. It was a small block of foam, two needles, a selection of colored wool needed to render the image and a 5x5 piece of wool felt...a canvas for the image. There were also directions and a picture of a chickadee to transfer. I carefully avoided it for a few weeks. It seems to be a deep pattern for me. Whenever I buy new art supplies or something new that is just for me, it takes a while for me to warm up to it. I might have avoided it all winter if April hadn't invited me over to play with the felting with her. I discovered I loved the process. You can do it beside a fire or while chatting or watching stupid shows on TV. I love the tender softness of the wool...the bright natural dyes that color it, the rhythmic poking, pricking, and smacking of the fibers. I love how forgiving it is...how easy to correct errors and how easy it is to pick up after. I love the fact that it is a process that works with the natural properties of wool fiber and encourages the warm wool to become fabric even in its raw form. I quickly realized that I wanted to do more birds and a field trip to A Wrinkle In Thyme Farm opened up a whole new vista. First and foremost, I wanted to do a larger piece inspired by a photo of the view out my kitchen window. Purchases needed to be made...a multiple needle felting tool...a larger piece of wool felt backing...lots of colors. I spent quite a bit of money rapidly and realized I would not be able to buy kits of birds because the price was inhibitive. My next hurdle was to decide I could render the birds on wool myself...not easy for a person who really doesn't draw well. So it took one more field trip with April to find more colored roving and some real wool yardage to create my own bird squares. Meanwhile...I tentatively worked on my larger landscape while I sat with my Mom in Salem. The landscape was pretty exciting because I really got a sense of painting with the wool. It fed my confidence just enough to get up my mojo for making some birds. That is how I became hooked on felting.

After I purchased a black woolen blanket and centered the landscape on it...I could see it more as an art piece. The January Landscape of a pink sunset and the flowing pink river was a perfect meditation for healing prayers for my sister's breast surgery. The cold winter image and the stark trees amoung snow in the meadows made me feel all that was frozen inside as well as outside. Fears...stoic crustiness...frozen water and the absense of wildlife all seemed bleak. But the light...so pink above and below...thats where the prayer was. And funnily enough, a pink dawn greeted me after I took her to the hospital for her morning mastectomy. Pink is good. It's a happy color...soft and girlish.  A gift of prayer for her healing. As we awaited and I sat with my mother for hours, I felted birds. They seemed to be a reminder and a promise of return...the return of spring...the return of birds and their songs in the trees...the return of my sisters good health. And while I felted birds...my mother and I chatted about her mother's love of cardinals...the Cedar Waxwing that signaled my Grandmother's immenent death...lots of experiences where birds crystallized memories. She would become quiet and doze listening to the gentle pounding of me needling the felt. There was alot of love in the air and I managed to bring it on down to earth by working those birds. And as I worked, each hour was marked by the calls on my mother's bird clock. I wonder...what time is bluebird time? What hour is the cardinal song? Is the Goldfinch ready for tea? And then it seemed quite obvious what I should do with the birds. I thought...I'll make 12 of them and put them in a circle around the Winter Sunset and when I am finished...I will have my mother's promise of return hammered into a blanket that will keep me warm while I sink into my reveries. I like it. I like the whole thing...My Mom...Mother Nature...the deep freeze...the pink light and the returning songbirds. And I especially love my first friend, the chickadee...persistent...undaunted...and even in the dead of winter...cheerful. I will also have something that will forever remind me of my sweet alone time with my Mom as she rested her old bones by the fire.