Sunday, November 30, 2008

Needle-Felted Sheep

In an attempt to find new ways to make fun, salable items out of small amounts of scrap wool that I would normally just throw away, I've recently taken up a new craft: Needle-felting.

To do needle felting, you just get a lump of wool and poke it repeatedly with this barbed needle, and the wool magically felts.

It's really cool---you can do amazingly precise flat things like this:

But you can also do 3-D sculptural things like this:

http://www.woolpets.com/galleries.html

Here's my first attempt at needle felting: a little Icelandic ewe. She is 100% raw, unwashed Icelandic wool throughout, except for her 2 beads for eyes and her bell on a ribbon. Her body, head, neck, and legs are felted hard, and then soft loose wool is applied like hair over that to give her a fluffy fleece. Because I used unwashed wool, she even smells like a sheep!


8 comments:

  1. She is adorable! I love her! WOW!
    What a neat "thing"/craft! :)

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  2. Thanks Heather! If you come visit me sometime, I'll show you how to make something. It's really easy.

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  3. I haven't been by in so long! How are things?! I lost your link for a while.

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  4. I love your ewe. It turned out great. I will have to try that when we get the sheep.
    Kelly

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  5. Looks really great Nancy.
    cheers
    Ann

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  6. Okay, so I want to learn to do this. First, I need to buy sheep. I have a seventeen year old boy. Will that do?

    And a bigger house. One where they yard grows something besides cenchrus. Oh, and I'll need to drug my wife.

    All so I can have one of those needle sheep.

    Can I do this with manatee fur?

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  7. I do not know what the previous poster was going on about but I like the felted sheep. What a great way to get some use out of the bits of "left over" wool. I have not seen your blog in a while - had computer problems. Is it your busy time of year - do you have lambs yet. Looking forward to an update

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