Pine Needle Vessel

I've always been in love with fibre and working with needle felting. When I was young I tried my hand at knitting and it was such a horrible fail. I could never get my tension right. I was too tight or too loose or worse...a combination of both on the same project. The two handed thing was just not for me. I tried my hand at crochet before my art days but it just never became something I wanted to keep going with. Needle felting, wet felting...now that's the ticket. I wanted to be able to knit something for the purposes of felting it but I didn't know how to get this look. My issue was that I wanted to make a vessel. I had a dream one night that inspired me to cork...if a child can do it then I should be able to do it. Well corking was what we called it when I was a girl but now it's called loom knitting. I purchased a knitting loom...googled how to get started and I was off to make my first vessel as I had dreamed it.

Not exactly what I had envisioned but I was happy with the results for a start. It was narrower than I wanted but that was ok because it currently holds my some of my collected feathers.

The bottom was made with pine needles from our farm. This was very hard on my hands and I'm not sure I will do this again but I really like the effect. It was quite interesting gathering my pine needles, washing them and preparing them for use along with the information gathered on making pine needle baskets.

This is just a couple of pictures showing me making the pine needle bottom.

Second Kick at the Camel

 I've been having trouble with a piece that I've been working on for months. Actually 7 months. Seems crazy but that's part of the process. I've been mentally blocked at the camel that I wanted to put on my piece. I've tried many times & ended up with something that looked more like a horses @$$. I didn't have the right colour fabric & I've been too busy to think about shopping for more. I talked to Annie about it when she visited last week & she said that I should dye it. I'm really not ready for that process so I figured I would use my water colour pencils & see what happened. So you're looking at the fabric that I started with. If you're interested, check out the process.

On GOEing Inspiration

Welcome everyone, this is my personal invitation to you. I really hope you'll be able to come & visit one of our shows this year. We have many pieces to share & we're aiming at having different pieces for each show. So come as many times as you can & enjoy our On GOEing Inspiration.