Attachment

Last night I went to my first needle felting class with the faaaaaaaaabulous Hagit. The class was taught by Irit Dulman and was really quite an experience - there were about 10 women in this class, most of them in their 50s-60s. Judging by the dolls they brought to show Irit (and each other) those women really don't need a class - it's more of a social event, a get-together of friends with a mutual hobby who sit around and drink coffee and complain about their husbands and stab wool.

Needle felting itself is great. We learned to make ballerinas, and after 4 hours (and a short argument with Irit about my ballerina's dress because ballerinas can TOO have purple dresses!!) I had made this little beauty:

I was so surprised by how easy felting is, how the wool just attaches to itself by the force of its own fibers. It's like sculpting with wool, there's no string holding this ballerina together (although she does have a pipe cleaner skeleton which makes her posable. And there actually is a BIT of string, but it's not holding her together), no glue. Just wool stuck to itself and stabbed into itself and wrapped around itself (and stabbed some more, because I discovered I really the stabbing bit. It's so stress-reducing and has such voodoo-like qualities..).

The best thing about this class for me was to finally sit with other people who share my hobby and hear their views on their crafts. I mostly read non-Israeli craft blogs and forums and I have very few crafty friends, so I'm pretty much disconnected from the Israeli crafting world. For a while I thought I was the only one in Israel who even knew about needle felting, but lately I found out that people have been doing it for years here <blush>.

It was a wonderful and strange feeling to find that other people are sharing "my" space and my interests, that Hagit can talk to me about "a bird in the hand" and I will know exactly what she means.

What I found the most interesting was hearing the opinions about giving away or selling your crafts. One woman in class was offered a lot of money for a large doll she made but she will not part with it. Most of the others (Hagit included ) agreed with her. They have houses full of crafty things they created, which they find difficult to give or to sell to people who want them.

The interesting thing is that I end up giving away most of my crafts. This wasn't even something I was very aware of until the subject came up yesterday and I looked at the big doll and knew that I would gladly sell it (or even just give it), and just make a new one.
Being the hoarder that I am, this was a very surprising discovery for me. I'm usualy very attached to my things (my mom will gladly testify how I refused to give ANYTHING away as a kid and I remember crying for hours once because I lost a hat that I didn't even really like). I'm very sentimental and I tend to keep stuff. But with my crafts, it's exactly the other way around - I give them away, easily, without thinking about it. I sometimes make crafts specifically for other people.

I gave the ballerina to my friend Efrat this morning because she liked it a lot. One of the women in class last night mentioned that when she's giving away a crafts, she feels like she's giving away her "children" and she's not comfortable with that. I'm just happy that my "children" live in good homes where they are loved and played with or worn or keep people warm or just happy.

I hope this is a good thing