Needle Felting

WILF 

Yet another example of my naïve 'how hard can it be' approach to making. Needle felting this time and after the usual in depth research (10mins on YouTube) I gave it a whirl. Very basically you jab at a handful of combed wool with a needle until it compacts into a shape. I hadn't realised that a local shop - Gillian Gladrag, stocks all the materials you need and as I didn't really know what I was doing I would probably have wasted a lot of money buying superfluous supplies online but by coincidence I found her shop on the weekend I was set to order the gear so I just bought the bare minimum (1 needle and a bag of wool)  Needle felting is not for those who are easily distracted (like me) holding the wool in one hand whilst jabbing at it with a barbed and very sharp needle in the other resulted in approximately 5 finger pricks a minuite and I was bleeding and cursing after half an hour. Once you've made the basic shapes ie cylinder for body, ball for head etc, you felt them together and continue to use the needle in a lighter manner to then add further detail. I found the most difficult aspect was judging how much wool you need to start with since it reduces in size as you compact (felt) it. Wool is wrapped around pipe cleaners to make things like posable legs...and that's about as technical as I got! Wilf was inspired by a deerhound belonging to a lovely couple who ran the B&B my parents stayed at when they visited me at college and is a breed of dog I've always dreamed of owning. Instead I got Elf but eh, you can't win em all!

Wilf and his buddy trying to get some attention