Felting a Life Ornament #33.3

Felting a Life
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BRIM WITH A FLIP, hand-felted of handdyed Romney X Merino lambswool
embedded with hand-dyed satin silk
crepe, rare-breed wool locks and
handspun yarns, 2009. Photograph by
Paul Jeremias. Model: Genevieve Yang.
To many people artists seem
Undisciplined and lawless.
Such laziness, with such great gifts,
Seems little short of crime.
One mystery is how they make
The things they make so flawless;
Another, what they’re doing with
Their energy and time.
– Piet Hein
poet and scientist
HAT STACK, conceived by Peter Anger, 2007. Photograph by Helios
Studio, Columbia, Missouri.
I
n 1982 I was barreling along in graduate school when I
was distracted by a blanket. I had been studying clathrincoated vesicles of plant cells. The coat subunit, named
after a game floor seen in the original Star Trek series, readily
self-assembles to form an attractive spherical basket of
hexagons and pentagons. But here I was, transfixed by softly
gleaming parallel strands of fibers in the yarns of early
Navajo textiles at the Heard Museum, in Phoenix, Arizona.
From before the Bosque Redondo, they were woven of
lustrous handspun Churro wool. I experienced a tremendous
compulsion to do “that.”
Later, in Canberra, Australia, I learned to spin (not that
gym-bicycling, please, but real spinning, on a wheel), with
wool fleece—and not recycled pop bottles, but a real fleece
shorn from an animal, long in staple, shiny and full of
fragrant lanolin. They say Australia was built on the back of
Merino sheep; certainly its wool smelled truly wonderful and
glistened in the light.
Some time after, our small family landed in Columbia,
Missouri. I would card wool, comb wool, spin wool, spin more.
My two-year-old got her head bonked by the flyer as I
treadled; she avoided it thereafter. The fibers ran through my
hands as children played on the neighbor’s swing-set or as
they took swimming lessons. People asked me, “What do you
make?” “She just makes yarn,” my husband would insert.
“Then she hangs it on the wall.”
One cold March day my friend, master spinner Sammy
Eber taught our spinning group to make felt balls. I grabbed a
handful of dyed wool fluff and wrestled it into a sphere by
tightly winding with handspun singles yarn (i.e., yarn not plied
with another strand). We stuffed our wool wads into
stocking toes and squished them in sudsy water; the fibers
33 ORNAMENT 33.3.2010
Ruth E. Wiedenhoeft Walker
The embellishments for the crown are the first items laid onto the
ball; that is, the hat is constructed from the outside in (like many
felted rugs). This keeps the crown embellishments from moving
around too much during the felting.
All of the wool is applied to the ball as palm-sized fluffs wetted out
in Dawn Ultracare and water and slapped onto the ball over the
embellishments. The whole wet woolly ball is enclosed in a couple
of pair of pantyhose tops.
The brim embellishments are stitched on because this area
undergoes repeated shrinkage and stretching during the felting
process on the ball. Frequently pliers are also required to pull the
needle through.
34 ORNAMENT 33.3.2010
After the embellishments have felted into the wool, the incipient
hat is removed from the ball. At this time I do the last trimming of
the edge so that it “heals” during the next stage.
bound themselves into a cohesive spherical mass. Best of all:
the yarn I had wrapped around the mass had been caught up
by the wool fibers and pulled into wrinkles, curls, waves.
The very definition of summer here is sunny, 104° F and
humid. Sammy introduced us to felting hats on such a day by
having us drape carded wool over the surface of a kid’s ball,
then drag panty hose around this hilariously fluffy pile. Over
it we poured boiling water—in the sun! 104° F! humid!—and
began to rub, for hours. Exhausted, I easily concluded I would
never repeat that particular experience. On Labor Day
weekend, though, I entered my fetching little chapeau of
deep red-violet, turquoise and royal blue (embellished with
handspun singles yarn) into the Fiber Competition of the
Bethel World Sheep & Wool Festival. It won Best of Show,
whereupon I decided to give felting another look.
A craftsperson is focused on materials and techniques in
solving problems. Determined to work out a system for felting
on a ball (a process pioneered in the 1970s by sculptor Beth
Beede), I experimented with fibers varying in fineness and
length from Andy McMurry’s sheep: Merino (the softest sheep
wool) and Romney (a lustrous carpet wool). In 1994
I began taking felting workshops from established felting
artists, and I am glad that I waited. When I began studying
on my own I did not see anything published that resembled
my process. Fortunately, felting can be approached in
numerous ways: each shares the use of moisture and some
sort of pressure. Everything else can be varied.
Felt has about as much resemblance to sheep as bread
has to wheat. The world’s oldest textile, felt is defined as a
matted, non-woven material formed of damp wool under
repeated compression; additional definitions include
“anything that resembles” this, including roofing felt and
boiled wool. When I talk about felt, however, I am referring
to the first definition.
Only dampened fibers exhibiting “differential frictional
effect” will tangle under repeated compressions. This is due to
microscales along the wool fibers that look like jaggedly
hemmed pencil skirts. When the fiber absorbs moisture it
swells, causing the skirts to become slightly A-line. As the
dampened fibers are repeatedly compressed, each fiber travels
and cannot back up: the swollen fibers tangle by ratcheting
around each other.
How much felting is enough? How long does this take?
These are good questions. I think we can attempt to answer
them by looking at some stages in felt production and what
we are aiming for by considering a different medium, that of
ceramics. A pot is formed from wet clay of some composition.
The pot dries; it is “greenware.” But if that pot were put back
into water it would dissolve again into mud. This is akin to
the brief felting of fibers: when they dry it will be found those
fibers are not only easily distinguishable and will pill readily
but can be pulled apart back into their original pile of fluff.
Greenware is baked to become “bisqueware.” It has
coherence and will not slough back into muck, but it has
limited longevity: it eventually flakes and breaks. Bisqueware,
for example, the humble terra cotta planting pot, is akin to
fibers that have been worked considerably and seem to have
formed a cohesive fabric, yet may show some shape changes
and pilling over time.
Subsequent baking, now at an increased temperature,
vitrifies the pottery, now known as “stoneware.” The
corresponding felt is found in tympani mallets, piano
hammers and masterfully felted rugs such as those made by
Turkish artist Mehmet Girgic (honored in 2010 by
UNESCO as a Living Treasure for his lifelong work as a
feltmaker). There are no wrinkles or ripples, there is no
sponginess. One further analogy is to vitrified porcelain,
which has its felt counterparts in disc brakes and specialty
glass-polishing discs.
What one misses in the pottery analogy is that “felt” is
actually a continuum from lightly entangled dreadlocks to the
extreme density of those polishing discs. The degree of felting
depends not only upon the amount of work put into the
process (w=f x d) but also wool breed (defining fineness and
The glass washboard is a convenient temporary horizontal surface
upon which to roll up the hat and knead it. (Necessary because all
the other horizontal surfaces are full of wool and magazines.)
Rock ‘n’ Roll: A “Walker” in German is one who kneads. I do not
rub because that would make the felt too fuzzy for my taste.
After the hat is rinsed it is steamed in the microwave oven and
forcefully jammed onto a long-necked cloth-and-wood wig stand
to smooth out the crown. The brim is shaped by hand.
35 ORNAMENT 33.3.2010
The hat has shrunk considerably due to the kneading. Evident is its
unique inventory number die-cut from needle-felt.
36 ORNAMENT 33.3.2010
BRIM WITH A TWIST, hand-felted of hand-dyed Merino wool, embedded with hand-dyed silk organza, wool yarns, and
Wensleydale wool locks, 2007. Brim nests handspun Merino wool singles yarn. Photograph by Helios Studio.
scale structure), fiber length, even time of year harvested.
Still, some wool sullenly resists felting.
If “craftsmanship is based on slow learning and on
habit,” as Richard Sennett states in The Craftsman, then
almost anyone can become a good feltmaker. I am the
poster child for slow learning—ask my eighth grade home
economics teacher. Like everything worth doing well it
requires desire, tenacity and reflection. I have also had
encouragement from my “creativity coach” neighbor,
extended family, fellow fiber aficionados, husband
(sometimes critically helpful), and customers who had
every expectation I could make what they wanted.
Just as the shoemaker had only enough leather for one
more pair of shoes until the technically superior elves
stepped in, I can only buy wool if I sell my work. I was
terrified to face the public until I watched speaker Bruce
Baker at a Best of Missouri Hands conference dramatically
sweep one arm up and declare, “This is my work.” Yet, it
still took the example of other artists interacting with my
customers, explaining how versatile and wonderful the
hats are, for me to be able to step into the (uncomfortable)
promotion of my own work.
I dye the wool myself for intense color and to mothproof
it (done with the dyeing), and so that I can buy the wool
I want. I am not interested in processed wool over which I
have no knowledge or control of quality or color. But
dyeing carded wool without felting it is a challenge: hot water
facilitates tangling.
Chad Alice Hagen describes the care in the initial coaxing
of the fibers to intermingle as “caressing a butterfly.” Stitching
into the nascent felt follows, nothing intricate, but utilitarian,
like hemming up hand-me-downs. The subsequent energetic
period entails singing, frequent assessment, then kneading
(my favorite part): ever more vigorous yet focused hardening
what used to be a pile of fluff into an even, seamless object.
Blocking is last, firm stretching of the steamed object into its
final shape with practiced adjustments to disguise what is,
unavoidably, uneven. One of the principal challenges in
making an article of felt is to achieve an even density in
the initial layout.
Clearly I am inspired by color, texture and function. Why
hats? The ball requires very little space; the project is small
enough to complete in a day. (If I would just declutter my
studio, there would be much larger work from me.) Why use
wool? Well, why ever not? It is comfortable, warm, soft, great
insulation; it takes dye beautifully. The felt holds its shape
and sheds water. The fiber structure is complex and has this
strange ability to form a fabric just by pushing on it: use the
right types of wool and it will work every time.
“How long does this take?” is never the right question
because the answer can only be “As long as it takes.” It is one’s
repetitive, focused motions and not the desultory passage of
time that will cause the fibers to entangle. Teaching others
helped me define ‘why I do what I do when I do,’ to paraphrase
Chris Turk of ABC’s Scrubs.
Although I have felted many hundred of hats in the past
eighteen years, I will lose my touch if I slow down, like Balzac’s
lazy sculptor in Cousin Bette. “Skill comes from doing,”
Bonnie Ahrens quietly asserts. When my children were young
I drove them to and from school, the intervening hours
occupied in a succession of technician jobs in research
laboratories. On the weekends I was frantic to felt. But since
about 2000 I have had the great fortune to felt full time, and
have filled over two dozen log books with wool and
embellishment samples of almost everything I have made since
a year spent in Norwich, England.
We are the species that embellishes—our bodies, our
functional objects, our lives. I share with my mother a love of
color and texture—and I would not bother with felting but
for the ability to felt in the embellishments. The distortion of a
straight yarn into waves distracted me from spinning and
weaving. (And the yarn I used to hang on the wall is nested in
hat brims.) My father is a brick- and stonemason; very
thoughtfully artistic is his work. Regardless of the beauty of a
fireplace, he stresses, it has to draw air, it has to function. I
focus on craftsmanship to make certain the product will serve
its wearer for decades to come.
Altlhough there is no mastery without practice, I share
the perspective of violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter: “I never practice;
I only play.” Each hat contains in itself a small experiment, a
question, and is its own sample, its own practice session as
well as being a wearable hat. I orient the fibers this way so I
can stretch them that way; I put coarse lustrous fibers on fine
matte fibers so the inevitable blend does not appear to muddy
the colors. I am always probing and always focused on what I
am doing. I only “play.”
BRIM WITH A TWIST, hand-felted of hand-dyed Merino wool,
embedded with commercial plaid silk douppioni and Lincoln
wool locks, 2007. Handspun Targhee wool band nested in brim.
Photograph by Helios Studio.
Here is what I like: saturated hues (usually), curls, parallel
lines, geometric shapes, shine, comfort. I am very interested
in processes, and it is important to me to be physically invested
in each piece. But it is the freshly shorn wool that I find the
most beautiful, with its fragrant, glistening, curving parallel
fibers. I closeted myself with this odd entrancement until I
read from Thomas Hardy in Far From the Madding Crowd—
“The clean, sleek creature arose from its fleece, which lay on
the floor in one soft cloud, three-and-a-half pounds of
unadulterated warmth for the winter enjoyment of persons
far away, who will, however, never experience the superlative
comfort derivable from the wool as it here exists, new and
pure, rendering it just now as superior to anything woollen as
cream is superior to milk-and-water.”
37 ORNAMENT 33.3.2010
OCEANNA, collaboration of Suza Wooldridge and Ruth Walker,
2009. BRIM WITH A FLIP, hand-felted of hand-dyed Romney X Merino
lambswool embedded with hand-dyed silk organza and handspun
wool yarn. TWICE-DYED POLE WRAP, boiled wool jacket by Suza
Wooldridge, dyed, wrapped, dyed, fulled, sewn. Photograph by
Greg Hall. Model: Hannah Reeves.