Creationism

You saw the little bear.  So you know I’ve found another fascination: needle felting.

This is the skeleton I made for my first try at a horse.  He’ll fill out.  I promise.  At least, I think I can promise that.  I made him up myself.  When Liz showed me the right way to do it, I was pretty pleased to have gotten this close.

Yeah, well – isn’t it traditional for people to sit around working over the question “why?” in their personal journals (however public)?  So I’ve been trying to figure out—why the drive to keep making all this little stuff?  January is usually my month for getting back on track with the money, cleaning out the frivolity—back to the clean Swedish lines of minimalist life, all crafty ambitions tucked away with the boxes of supplies.  So why do I still want to make these little things?

I’m no artist.  But I love color and shape and texture.  I love to take little bits of clay and find the life in them.  Except at Christmas (when I dabble in stars) and those times when beads-hunger hits, I am drawn to fashioning creatures, things with a look in their eyes – things with at least a little bit of soul.

Maybe it’s just in my nature.

First time I did this was at church girls’ camp when I was maybe thirteen.  Camp Wakoda?  Camp Bernie?  Can’t remember which, but it was in upstate New York where they keep a lot of trees.  It was the camp with the cabins and the dinner staff and the pool and the horses.  Heck – the place was a YMCA spa.  And they had a long craft lodge stocked with just about everything a scout could want.

We drew secret buddies, and, of course, we were supposed to come up with surprises for them every day.  I don’t know where I came up with the idea, but I started getting together all these itsy-bitsy rocks – picture me, sitting in the dirt, looking for bits of gravel that just beg for eyes.  I took them over to the craft place, gave them beads for sight and bits of feathers and leather for feet and wings.  A little bit of cardboard were the top and bottom of a cage made mostly of twigs.  I stuck my animals into it and called it “Dr. Scuzzy’s Traveling Zoo.

You remember it Chris?  I made it for you.  And I think I’m still kind of proud of it.

So take a look at Liz’s stuff.  You should hear how eloquently she praises wool and felt as the perfect medium for sculpture.  Or this (beaded saddle), or this mighty horse, or this simple fat sheep.  And here is the place Gin found my blue winged sheep angel.

A small, but wonderful sampling.

Of course I’m intimidated.  But when has that ever stopped me?  (Not counting that time when we moved to Texas my senior year and they wanted me to audition for the marching band.  And maybe some other times. Probably.) But I really, really want to make tiny dogs out of wool and Piper fur.  And horses.  But mostly sheep and polar bears.  Oh, yeah.  It’s just a good thing I’m not taking up painting – I don’t have the eyes for 3 inch canvases anymore.