I’ve been really into needle felting lately. I’ve wanted to do something special for my mom as a memorial for her dogs, Squeaker and Sam who died this past year. This might seem kind of weird and morbid to you, and I kind of thought so at first too. But my mom had given me some of Sam’s fur and I had quite a bit of it saved up. I was planning on spinning it up into yarn. She also clipped some of his fur from him when he died so I had some of that too. I thought it would be kind of nice to use some of his fur in the little sculpture of him. So I did. And it didn’t feel weird at all. It felt like the right thing to do. Sam had beautiful fur so my little sculpture of him is almost made entirely of it. I used a bit of regular sheepswool on his legs to stabilize them a little more. It was really fun to do. I spent a lot of time looking at his picture and thinking about how he looked. Then I used the needle to just sculpt my blob of fluff into a dog.

Squeaker was a little more challenging. she had really short hair and I’ve tried and tried to spin it into yarn but have been frustrated with the process every time. I had to start with wool to make a base. Then I tried to felt some of her fur onto the base. Still didn’t work that well. I bought some alpaca yarn that was the same color as her fur and felted that on the base. Some bits of her fur shows through which is nice.

My mom loved them! so that’s good. Hopefully her cats and puppies will stay away from them.

It was really, really fun playing around with this. I can see how sculpting can be a really fun way of creating. When I was doing this I really focused on my subject and thought about the shape of their body, their head, their face. It really forces one to see the details. I like that. I’ll probably explore this more in the future.