Small fry

All is good again in Short Lane. It feels like ages since I've been able to show you any new pictures I've felted, but, hurrah, today's the day. This has been a great week for getting back on with it again and it has been very therapeutic after the PTA trials of earlier. "Small" has been the big theme this week; after Arts Week you might remember, if you've visited before, that my brother had asked me to come up with some small pictures to fit on a card 6" x4" for his lovely framing shop and gallery Artfellows. His idea is to sell a piece of art on a card, with the option of a mount to go with it, and/or a frame, so it has to be small. This has been a challenge as I hadn't appreciated just how long the merino wool fibres I use are, and although there is a certain amount of shrinkage every time I do some felting, 6" x 4" is really teeny in felting terms. So a few weeks ago when I thought I could make a quick daisy and a dandelion clock, it took a good hour of rolling to shrink them down to the required size, and to be honest I'm still a little concerned they might dwarf the card behind. This week I managed at last to finish stitching the daisy:-

 

 



It is a sister to the dandelion clock I've shown you before:-

 



Then I thought I'd do some of my favourite beach scenes. I've done one rough-edged one (still to be finished), but also this time for two, to make life easier - and also because some people prefer it - I didn't stress about the size and cropped them after the felting process. Here is the first:-



And here is the second:-



This last one is a bit of an oddity: it might look fine to you but I have tried something new with this one and it is playing tricks with my mind. It is the first time I have put the beading on the right-hand side. Doesn't sound too ground-breaking does it? But the weird thing is that every time I look at it, after a few seconds I've found I've subconsciously turned it upside-down and then wondered why the sky is the wrong colour. When I took photos of it, the resulting pictures were, yes you've guessed it, upside-down. Why do I need the beads to be on the left? I need to get this analysed...