Felted Friend

Before anyone in Portland "put a bird on it", owls were one of my favorite motifs. (I'm just cool and fashion-forward like that). When I saw a tutorial to make a needle felted owl, it looked so easy that I thought I would try it.

Needle felting is a craft where you take a lump of wool and poke it with a needle a whole bunch of times until it becomes a firm shape. Yep, that's pretty much it. My friend (and the blogger behind one girl one camera), Darci, had shown my mom and I the needle felting basics a few months ago, and when I saw the tools for sale at Michael's, I knew that I was ready to give it a whirl.

These are the things you need:

- Wool roving (it's a clump of wool and comes in lots of different colors)

- A big needle

- Something to set the wool on when you poke I used that comb thing that you see in the picture. It's called a felting mat. You can see that I'm not exactly a stickler for a super-tidy work area.

Lots of people use a tool that has a bunch of needles inside it, so the poking goes faster, but they were all out of those at the craft store.

When it comes to crafting - or most things really - I'm not much for following directions. I read through the tutorial and then just thought I'd try it.

At right, you can see the little guy about half-way through. The hardest part was getting the head to be round. It ended up a little flat - I think I was poking too hard. The more you stab the wool with the needle, the fewer little fuzzies you get. I left a lot of fuzzies because it looked more owlish - plus I'm kind of lazy.

Here's the owlie with his owl friends!
This was definitely fun, EASY, and the initial outlay of money was small (about 15 bucks for the tools and each package of wool was around $2.50). I'm already thinking about how to make a needle felted squid.


Coming soon: The August Pop Culture Round-up