Wrong Side of the Mirror pt.2

What I made for Easter.

Both Linda and Julie have lovely free patterns for knitted Easter eggs. So I tried them out. Linda’s are knitted with the Magic Loop in the round, Julie’s on the flat. I’m not very good, but here are the experiments. I want to make a cool nest too, courtesy of Linda.

And I’m still trying to needle felt. Here, I’m experimenting with commercial stuffing rather than wool, and working with Lauri Sharp’s instructions.  There aren’t a whole heck of a lot of sheep around here, and there’s a very limited supply of local wool, so I am not as funky and organic as my hero-mavens in the blog roll. But one of the felters I admire says HE uses stuffing as the core of his very cool little guys, so I don’t feel too crass, just playing with this stuff.

My lamb’s head’s too big. And I haven’t finished him at all, really – he needs more body and better ears and a face and tail. But I really like him anyway, so I stuck him up here as a work in progress. I am fascinated by this process. It’s like magic to me. I did learn that you can’t needle felt bamboo fiber stuffing. I spent more than I wanted to on the dang stuff, thinking it looked SO wool-like, and it refuses to cooperate, probably because it’s plant fiber and not animal. I broke my first needle on it. Not Happy Bob (allusion?)  Who woulda thought plastic fibers would outdo bamboo?

When I was a kid, the pagan parts of Easter—one of the most magical times ever.  I loved blowing eggs and making little shadow-boxes out of them.  Dying real eggs for finding on Easter morning.  And those plastic eggs with buttercream rabbits inside.  I kind of wish we just called all that a Spring Celebration and left Easter to its magnificent and painful realities.  But then the very name of the fete suggests eggs/Eucharist, so the combination of celebrating new earth life and spiritual rebirth has long been intertwined.

I love both parts: baskets of life and color and the story of resurrection.  The first suggests that life is one big easter egg hunt, and there are great things for the finding.  The other suggests great things offered for the taking.  Both are for the taking.  And for the refreshment of heart and soul.