The most recent fruits of my labor.

I’ve been in a blogging hiatus it seems. With the opportunity to be juried by a new and prestigious retailer, I have been imagining being seen through their eyes when I make my presentation of pieces created in hopes of seducing their acceptance. I am prone during times of self-examination to always believe I’ll be found wanting. That though often I can in a million things, I seldom sit still and thoroughly learn the real “how-to” of things. I’m always too itchy to go “hands on”.

That’s a good thing according to Einstein, who believed that knowledge can only be achieved through experience. Experiencing new art forms and methods, however, often leads me down a rabbit hole of fruitful but lengthy digression. I have always felt blessed with and innate sense of the creative. Having a dependable “feel” for things is often to the detriment of actually learning  the true process.  Tried and true rather than trial and error would save time when I have a deadlines and demands.

True to form though, trial and error have been the order of the day these last few weeks as I teach myself to “wet felt”, an exciting departure from the needle-felting that has consumed this last year. My first few pieces have encouraged me to go on. Getting a feel for consistency and weight is the challenge so far but here’s my very first piece, a seamless tea cozy.

At the onset, wet-felting affords much less control so WAY-Y out of my comfort zone. The results to date have been fantastic! (Of course I might have more control if I had a full grasp of my teaching videos. Turns out the best ones I’ve found are Russian or Scandinavian! Here’s one I love, even though it’s entirely in another language the girl’s face and manner are most endearing:

(my favorite moment is at 4:13 when she flips over the piece and says “Chhhhpook!!) Anyway, I watched the whole video and then I made this!!

It really has been fun. The next pieces are all tea cozies too. One piece is a cool seamless spring one to which I will add a needle-felted riot of flowers, butterflies, bees and lady bugs. I  need a little time to embellish it so I promise to post a photo of  it when it is finished. The other,  a crow/forest design shown below, is wet felted in two pieces and will be blanket-stitched together. For now, the journey is always worthwhile.

Plato stated: “Never discourage anyone… who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.” Oh, and by the way… wet felting involves oodles of bubble wrap!