hanging 2 doll finished

 My visit to the hardware store was successful
so my Tree Spirit is finally finished :
I drilled tiny holes to attach the wooden arm,
fixed the hand and added another twig to the shoulder.

Now on to the next one : a Sea Spirit 

:-)

weavers market in Hoorn

I was very lucky today :

my friend Caroline (of the felting-exchange) had told me

she was going to the "weavers market" in Hoorn

and when I asked, I could go with her !!!

Yippeeeee !

(I had never been there, but heard a lot about it)

A steady drizzle accompanied us to Hoorn

and it only grew worse.

(We met another felting-exchange friend,

Paulien, who lives in that neighbourhood

and much later Anneke who came by train)

Umbrellas up, but it got only wetter,

so after the first few stalls we stopped for coffee !

Mmmmmmmm

these colours make you happy !

"Rest in Felt"

Does that say what it looks like ?

Yes, this lady makes winding sheets (graveclothes) out of felt !

This particular one she has made for her mother,

still very healthy ... and 84 !

The mother explicitly asked for it

and wanted lots of flowers.

So special !

Here we had lunch,

waited for number four of our party,

and I also found my long-time-no-see blogging friend Siets !

It was dry, so on we went.

There were many more lovely stalls

but ... I was too busy 

(feeling all the goodies 

and buying some)

to take more pictures !

Thanks ladies, especially Caroline,

for this wonderful day !

it's not easy being green

It's only logical :

when you like it when you do something

you do it again.

After the mermaid was finished
(I did sew on some more sequins and beads)

I started on a new doll right away !

I had some more ideas in my mind after I had noticed 

that other mermaid on the pinterest board ...

a green man or woman !

You could say, this one is not green of envy, but green of ivy

(that's because I came across this dried ivy leaf in a book ...)

Then I thought about that wonderful BBC programme

"It's not easy being green"

where Dick Strawbridge is focusing on how to live

an environmental friendly, low impact life !

And of course there were the faces ...

the ones I did during Jude Hill's Patchwork Beasts Class

Faces for beasts, for who or whatever ...

never used, untill now.

The leaf, the head and the face

but .... I wasn't happy with the way the leaf veins turned out ...

so I pulled out the light green merino !

(a lot to choose from)

This is more like the original colour.

She got arms and legs, I made a template for a backside

of brown wool, then stitched the two sides together

and filled it loosely up with more wool.

Mrs. Green 

Well isn't it a coincidence that I made this green lady

at this moment ?

Today and tomorrow are special "SAVE OUR SOILS" days !

or here

(hmmmm ... they say : coincidence does not exist)

the tale ( 14 - 7 - 14 )

Yes !

All the last little bits and pieces 

are attached to the bigger piece.

The tale can be told !

I read this tale in the novel 

"Bone House"

by Betsy Tobin.

(the book is set in Elizabethan England  and the tale

 was told by one of the main characters in the book)

"Near a village lives, hidden in the woods, a wonderful mystrerious bird. 

All those who have ever seen a glimpse of it, tell their own wonderful story.

A traveler hears all the wonderful stories and is desperate to find this

miraculous bird. He then roams through the woods, without finding it, untill

in the end he does catch a glimpse of its beauty. He grabs his bow and 

shoots the bird. Then, where it fell down, he only finds a small gray black

little bird ..... At long last, he puts the dead bird in his bag and returns to 

the village. He tells the villagers that he saw the bird in the end ... and that 

it was just as wonderful as they all had told him. He tells them to keep

safe this wonderful miraculous bird and leaves the village, to never return."

The villagers

telling their strories about the beautifully coloured bird.

The mystrious bird 

(everyone tells a different story about its beauty)

The dark woods, with a glimpse of colour

The traveler shooting the bird

and when it falls to the ground, he only finds this.

But the story has to be kept alive ...

THE  END 

the flow continues ...

With this new embellisher "story-telling" piece I'm working on.

I encounter problems that need solving

that need some good thinking before I can continue.

Because I want all of the tale in this one piece,

using two sides was a good starting point :

as a setting where the story takes place.

But there are also some "players"

To give these "players" a clear place

I made them as a separate piece.

But because you'll see the back of that when it is in place

I had to cover up the not-so-nice back with some fabric.

(hmmmm ... that pointing finger was quite fiddly)

Sewn to the big part !

(and on the other side, the green fabric just blends in with the rest)

And boy, was I glad to come up with the best way 

to use my "magic thread" !

Not just somewhere, hidden along some edge,

but prominently and as an element of the tale.

(to be continued)

in the flow (of a tale)

While the little booklet of Sara's Challenge 

is finished now

the  f l o w of the embellisher is still going

so why not take advantage of that.

There was a story in some book that I liked,

and now I want to make something tangible of that

 The start is to make a layer out of wool (and some scraps)

and carry on till it's dense enough.

I want to use both sides of the piece

The story is about a mysterious

and wonderful bird

that hardly anyone has ever seen a glimpse of

A tiny wet felted bird with crochet wings,

and part of the "inside" forest taking shape

.....

I made the tiniest stitches on the chest and back of the bird

and then adorned it with the wonderful silk ribbon

from Emma's shop in France ! 

(it will be a challenge how to adjust the bird to the piece,

but that will be one of the very last steps in the process !)

The bright "outside"

and the darker "inside" so far

(to be continued)

finished Challenge !

I think after almost eight weeks

after Sara started her Challenge for us,

I've finished the booklet.

"Along the Lines"

In fact it has become quite thick :

7 x 7 x 10 cm

That is because I made a lot of pages.

With the first instructions Sara gave us,

she suggested to think of a number of items

you could make for your chosen theme.

(so, I started thinking and made

about ten little sketches for possible pages

for my "lines" theme)

I ended up with 10 pages. 

In fact there are 11 but I sewed two together.

On top of the considerable number of pages, 

I backed every page with fabric,

so I didn't have be careful with the embroidery stitches.

On the backing fabric is machine-written what "line" it's about

The next step was to make buttonhole stitches on the spine-side

of all the pages.

Then, 

stitching every page to an extra piece of felt, and after that

attaching this piece to the cover spine

.....

front and back cover sewn to it, and :

FINITO !

Dear Sara,

it was a wonderful challenge that you initiated 

THANK YOU  for that.

It was a joy to work on it 

and encounter a lot of nice people

who participated in it 

a challenge ... along the line

Sara Lechner is someone 

who's work I very much admire.

(Two years ago I was lucky to be able to participate

in a workshop given by her

at "Hawar's" in the north of our country)

She moved from Austria to Argentina 

some time ago, but she still makes her lovely art

(with the "embellisher" most of the time)

Sara now, started some kind of 

challenge

you could participate in.

It will be some kind of booklet in the end.

While it's been some time since I last "played" with my embellisher,

I thought it would be nice to join the group.

The size was more or less fixed :

7 x 10 cm

but there were lots of suggestions to choose your theme from.

Though I made up my own :

"along the line (s) "

That way, I can make a lot of different pages fit together 

that you can associate with that theme.
I also didn't want to copy Sara too much !

This is my first (?) page

I started with wool under the embellisher,
some snippets of fabric and lace,
and then did start the embroidery
of my first letter
with onion skin - dyed silk
and variegated red cotton (from the shop)
---

I just received the instructions for the second page
.....
I have to make one, with a hole in it,
so you can see the first page.

So now, I'm not sure what to do next :
start with the second page
or
start with another "first" page that's more suited
for that see-through second page

half a hat ?

My online Surface Design in Felting class of Fiona 

has reached it's third week,

and it's no surprise :

I LOVE IT !

BTW, there is very good news 

for all of you who thought you had to wait till the end of summer

for Fiona to do a second run of her class :

the next run starts in April

(till half May)

For this third week 

there weren't as many samples to make as week 1 and 2

So I took the chance to make a piece with

three little techniques in it :

bumps, an enclosed big glass nugget and seed beads.

All of that in a head band

or you could say

half-a-hat

(is that a Mad Hatter or what ?!)

When I made the (first) resist I forgot to enlarge my design ...

(even being experienced doesn't prevent you from doing stupid things  :-(  !)

so then I made a new (bigger) one.

I used two layers merino in blues

One thing : with all these special bits you must do some slow felting !

Despite my calculations the piece stayed too big,

so I cut it in the back 

now I can adjust it to the right size.

front

and the back

(I am definately gonna wear it)