Winter 2013-2014

Over the winter I was finally able to catch up on some of my needle felt commissions after a very busy growing season on the farm.  Here's a sampling:

Blue-Ringed Octopus

Barred Owl

Nubian Ibex

Mountain Gorilla

Wild Mustang

Fennec Fox

African Spurred Tortoise

American Crow

Magpie
 

The Houseplant Sloth

That's right, sloths for your houseplants.  Now available at ODLCO

Since my friends at ODLCO put some of my pieces up for sale in their shop, articles about my needle felting have been popping up in design blogs all over the internet!

California Quail

Just completed my California quail last night.  A lot of work went into this guy because of all the intricate patterning of his breast feathers and the tiny feathers around his neck. 

ODLCO

photo by Lisa Smith and Caroline Linder

Last week Emma and I had a visit from Lisa Smith and Caroline Linder co-founders of the Chicago-based design startup, ODLCO.   They had contacted me the week before about possibly carrying my felted animals in their online store and I invited them to come see them in person.  They were also very interested in our farm because as it turns out, their mission is quite similar to our own.  ODLCO produces household products on a small scale and supports other independent designers by marketing their products as well.  Whereas Emma and I are trying to support the return to small-scale, local food production, ODLCO is doing the same thing with household goods. 
So as of today my felted animals are on sale at ODLCO's design shop.  So far what's up for sale are 5 simpler, less expensive animals (sheep, donkey, duck, pig, black cat) which depending on how they sell I will produce more of, and 3 more intricate and expensive pieces (grizzly bear, chipping sparrow and dramatic chipmunk).  Also be sure to check out ODLCO's latest blog entry.  I think this may be the beginning of a beautiful relationship!

Chukar

I was recently commissioned by a customer to do a couple of life size sculptures of birds native to his home state of Portland.  I just completed the first of the two, a species of partridge called a chukar.  This bird is actually an old world species introduced to North America as a game bird.  Next up is a California quail. 

Rocky Mountain Soap Company Commission

In early October I got an email from the director of marketing of the Rocky Mountain Soap Company.  The company is basically a Canadian version of Bath and Body Works, but way more awesome.  They make all of their products with nothing but natural ingredients and run every aspect of their company as sustainably as possible (wind power, non plastic packaging, etc).  Anyway, Abby, the director of marketing emailed me to ask whether I could make a series of needle felted sculptures to decorate a new store they were about to open.  The amazing thing is that she found out about me by googling "needle felted animals" and coming across this blog!  So thank you everyone for getting this page fairly high up on the google search results!  So the commission ended up being for 4 sculptures: a barn owl, a songbird, a fawn and a fox, all of them significantly larger than anything I'd done before (with the exception of the songbird).  All of them also had to be done completely in greyscale (to match the rest of the store apparently), so the photos look like they are black and white photos but they actually are in color.  After working long hours on the project for the past month and a half I just finished the final piece this week.