The grumpy couple and a bit of wet felting

My apologies to anyone wanting to leave a comment . In my attempts to block the darn asian porn spam that has infiltrated the comments section, I accidentally removed comments all together , I "think" I have changed the settings now, so please leave any questions, advice or other comments to let me know I am not alone in the blog universe .




I honestly do not intend for my animals to look depressed, angry or cranky, but most of them seem to end up with that expression . Rather telling that this also happens to be the facial expression that people often accused me of having when I thought I was being relaxed, friendly or even happy . Yet people were always asking me if I was sad, angry or tired . I still have no idea what they were reading in my expression . So, I think besides our not reading non-verbal expression, we are also often misunderstood as we are giving out communications that we are not feeling or intending . It's as if I new a few words of Spanish but not what they actually meant and instead of saying "Thank you for the delicious chicken soup" ended up saying......"the chicken is swimming in the soup" to some very confused Spanish speakers .

According to what I have read about Aspergers and Autism.... "we" do not read non-verbal communication naturally but can learn some over time with practice and experience . I think that is one of the reasons that watching movies, TV and being involved in drama classes can be useful for Aspies . (I also suspect it is one reason that many aspies like comics, video games and anima where the "feelings" of the characters are so exaggerated that they are easy to read) .

Point being...although I think my animals have some very negative expressions, I am not sure what others see or if they find them cute or disturbing . After 47 years of observing and cataloging human expression, I would think I could read it by now but am still never sure of what my own face is saying to others .

Below are some of my attempts to experiment with felting "simple patterns" using roving instead of prefelt which is very expensive but much easier to control . These are mostly merino with a bit of merino silk blend which is one of my favorite combinations . Although they look scarfy, they are a bit thick for scarves and will probably be cut up to sew bags, glass and camera cases . I still have not managed to make a pure wool scarf using wet felting that doesn't end up to stiff and thick . I shan't<----(is that a real word?) give up .

Also above, I still trying to make balls for dogs that are harder and less likely to be chewed up . I start the same way as always....needle felting balls but then throw them in the washer and drier to harden them . I think the nice thing about these is they can easily be washed in dishwasher or washing machine to get off the doggy slime but I am still concerned that the dogs may want to eat them as they can still smell the "animal" smell of the wool . Even my cats can smell this which they seem to love, but dogs have even more sensitive noses and I don't want a dog to try and eat them and end up choking or messing up there digestive systems . I think they would be fine with smaller dogs but even they should be watched to make sure they don't try and eat these .

Below is a close up of another nuno scarf using silk gauze and merino silk blend roving . These are super soft and I love the texture but I still need to work on my color selections as some of them ended up more garish then earthy .

Happy felting !