Week 17 – Make a Felted Pod
I derive a great deal of enjoyment from the process of felt making. In particular the process of wet felting rather than needle felting. It offers so much scope for experimentation and combination of various materials. The outcome is never quite what you expected. Sometimes it is preferable not to expect any specific outcome.
The brief is simple and straight forward. I have made pods before, but how to do it a little differently? Once I had sourced the required equipment and set up my space to work, I had the enjoyable task of sourcing the wools from the stock cupboard.
It Takes Time and Work
Over the past year or two while my time and energy has been directed in other areas of my life I have done very little felt making. Quite quickly into the process I remembered the amount of physical energy and time required to make a pod. There are various stages to work through before it is completely felted and reduced in size from its original dimensions.
Work from Rest
Rest and Work
My experience of wet felting has taught me that it is as important to leave the work resting and return to work with it again. This can be minutes, several hours later or even overnight. By coincidence I picked up a booklet this week about an alternative approach and mindset to the way we should work and rest.
In this age of speed we all seem to be filling our time with work and activity. When we are exhausted and have to stop we find ourselves at “rest from work”. But when we turn this simple statement around it looks and feels very different. So that we “work from rest”.
Working from Rest
So this week I have adopted a slightly different approach to my daily life. I am reshaping my days with adequate rest so that the times of work are more enjoyable, more focussed and the outcome of this particular piece reflects that change.
It’s not quite a traditional “pod”. It is experimental and now sits quietly on the shelf in my studio as a reminder of the mindful change I have made in my approach to “work from rest”
Balance
Perhaps if our time of rest is of equal quality to that of our time of work we can reshape our every day into something more balanced. Originally I was going to put the small piece of felt that I cut out to make the opening of this pod on the underneath. The reason I didn’t was that it didn’t seem to balance too well. But now that I have written this piece I think I will remove it from the top of the pod and relocate it underneath and title the piece “rest, work, balance”.