About Me

I am a fiber artist and a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).  This blog and most of my work will make a lot more sense if I first explain the SCA.  The SCA is an organization that seeks to re-create aspects of life before the year 1600.  Members take on medieval names and pursue study or practice in their areas of interest, be it martial arts, iron age Celts, costuming, beer making, weaving, singing, or in my case felt.   We get together at SCA events and basically geek out over things we’ve made or learned and eat, drink, sing, dance, fight and camp together.  If you are still curious visit this cute little site that tells more about the SCA. http://www.scademo.com/

I have a strong interest in all fiber arts.  I grew up around a lot of sewing, embroidery, quilting, knitting, and crocheting.  So I came to this hobby with an ingrained set of skills.  When I left the farm to get an education I discovered a lot of the world that just didn’t exist in my white bread home town.  Over the years I have developed an intense love of Near Eastern cultures, especially their art and textiles.  I also do Middle Eastern dance and belong to an SCA based dance troupe.  I love to dabble in a little of this and a little of that, and to every now and then pick up something completely new.  I recently started playing oud, a middle eastern stringed instrument.  I’ve no ambition of going pro with it, its just part of being a lifelong learner for me. 

But it is in felting that I have found my “art”, the medium I have chosen to study, practice and master.  I am totally in love with the medium, its versatility and history.  But most of all its the texture.  Felt wants to be touched.  When I have a booth set up at a craft fair, people who have never seen it before are drawn from across the room to feel it.  Hmmm, I wonder how it got the name “felt”.  When making felt I feel that I am having a conversation with it and coaxing it into the form I want it to have.  You have to be continually mindful of how the wool is reacting during the process and alter your actions accordingly, that is listening to what the wool tells you.  (How’s that for artsy fartsy talk?)  Felting is not a craft that can be minutely described and recreated, like knitting that can be written out, knit 10, purl 2 then turn….  There are so many variables: wool, water, temperature, soap, alkalinity, direction of agitation, and so on.  Felters can describe and demonstrate their methods, but not one felter will ever make felt exactly the same, and so if you want to learn felting you are on your own.  Its just you and the wool.  Of course it can all be scientifically explained, but there is a lot to explain that way, its easier to think of felting as a magic that can only be discovered by doing.  Yet wool is much more forgiving than I’ve made it sound.  Wool wants to felt, and most projects that don’t turn out as planned still have function and beauty.  The learning curve is steep.  That is every project teaches the artist a lot about felt making allowing the artist to make increasingly more sophisticated felt with each new project.   This not to say that felt is easy per say, it is actually a lot of work to execute, the way that cleaning your house is a lot of work, we all know how to do it, but how often do we really stick through to the end of the project?  The more work you put into felt the better it becomes.   So this is only a portion of what I find so enchanting about felt.  I hope you will enjoy the rest of my site and be enchanted as well.