A Tale of Needles & Beer (Not Trainspotting, A Felt Workshop)

Needle Felt Mini Workshop 17/09/13-hard at work

Despite my previous blog's assurances that we're still halfway through Helfa Gelf, alas no longer, Evie (unnerving rabbit lady) & I have made it through to the other side of the month long art trail & are looking forwards to a Saturday at home catching up on tv, cakes & drinking (hopefully, wild times indeed). More on the Helfa Gelf experience soon but for today, as promised, here's a quick look at my recent needle felted workshop.

A few months ago I joined a local knitting group (Ein Clwb Gwau, every 2nd Tuesday evening @ The Heights pub, Llanberis) who do a good line in yarn bombing and are currently looking to tempt in new members by trying out different but related crafts. As I spend much of my time trying to convince people of my needle felting prowess, it fell to me to host a mini taster felty workshop. I was very lucky as it was an enthusiastic and it turned out, rather talented group of eight people who arrived to give it a go. Needle felting is a very straightforwards craft as it basically involves repeatedly stabbing fleece & shaping into the thing you wish to create. The skill comes in with the patience it requires (very time consuming for larger/ more complex pieces) and an eye for sculpting the fleece into something original and attractive/ nicely strange. For beginners it's incredibly satisfying as it's completely hands on and the fleece (I use merino tops, lovely to work with & comes in a fab array of colours) is very forgiving, just add more or stab more to change the shape. It's rewardingly cathartic too, you can treat your sculpture as a kind of voodoo doll & happily stab away all the while quietly projecting your nemesis de jour onto the felt (try it!).

Needle Felt Workshop 17/09/13-Looking Good!

The aim was to make a mini felt flower brooch as this seemed achievable in the 2 hour session and it was a measure of the success (let's humour me by attributing it to the great teacher) that everyone went home with a pretty splendid brooch including the two men we had managed to lure into the workshop (neither are related to me & they were willing participants, good stuff!). I'm not sure why more men don't try felting as wet-felting requires quite a lot of muscle power while dry felting uses barbed needles & allows for limitless creativity. There's lots of male artists out there working in all sorts of mixed media, maybe needle felting will tempt some of them one day! I digress, in addition to the brooches I hope everyone appreciated the (very surface!) stab wounds they also got to take home as souvenirs/ battle trophies (that's why it's not good for teaching children!).

My next needle felting mini session @ The Heights will involve creating some ghoulish Halloween inspired creatures (pics to follow soon). Come along to make a spider army to alarm your unsuspecting family/ flatmates with (N.B. I take no personal responsibility for this), mini ghosts or teeny pumpkin decorations. 29th October, 7-9pm, £3 charge to cover costs only (this is a bargain, my future half day felting courses will cost a sensible amount, get it while it's available!). Before then, Fiona Pitts (with me acting as a not so glamorous assistant) can show you how to make wet felted balls (can't think how else to rephrase this for non comic effect!) if you come along on Tuesday 15th October & the homely wonders you can do with them. More details soon.