Hellooooo !

Spring is in the air

Yes, you can definitely feel it, smell it, hear it and in my kitchen there is a sign . . . . . 

I'm so pleased with the new "reversed "barbs" needles I can't stop making the new needle felted Barn owls .

You can see the difference : both wings are needle felted with the "ordinary" needles and after that I used the Reverse needle on the wing on the left side. See how the colours blend in ? 

I particularly love the part around his head and on the chest. All fluffy and soft looking :-)

Here is Mom laying on her nest and Pa and the "real " stuffed :-( owl are watching the progress.

She needs a beak and the little dots on her feathers.

I couldn't needle felt the dots, the fluffy effect would be gone so I used Norwegian sock wool ( it's a mixed colours wool) and I embroidered the wool on the grey parts.

Here they are : Mom and Dad :-)

The only thing I have to do is attach her to the nest .

Doesn't she look happy and comfy ?

Helen X

Little sillyness

I found this little mouse today, this was really my first needle felt attempt.

I stumbled upon Natasha Fadeeva ( http://www.fadeeva.com/ ) 4 years ago and was totally in awe of all of her critters. The mice and the cats were my favourite.

I've never heard about needle felting before and had no idea what it was all about.

Her cats are mostly knitted and I thought, well I can give that a try. I emailed Natasha and she was so very sweet to mail me a pattern of the knitted cat. I bought some fluffy wool and started to knit.

Mmmmm, didn't work. I can knit a sweater as long as the pattern consists of squares, square front, square back, square sleeves sewn together and voila: a "sweater".

So after endless research on needle felting on the internet I bought needles ( in a shop where they sold supplies for making dreadlocks) and I started my first mouse. I copied Natasha of course and this mouse was my first :

It had a terrible body and I put it away in a box where I save my "attempts".

I think after about 8-9 months I tried again and made this Pinky:

Well, to get back at the mouse, I found it and I thought her little head was cute, so I cut of her body, glued it on a piece of black cardboard and glued the whole thing on the skirting ( I'm not sure how it's called in English, vertical boarding ? )

Silly isn't it :-)