OGT DAILY Day One Hundred and Fifty FELTING and OLD STUFF

Man do you ever need arms muscles to make felt.   That's what today was all about.   We stood out in the bright Maine morning sun with piles of raw wool in all sorts of colors soaked with soap and hot water and rolled away until my arms were all bruised.  You have to roll the felt around a PVC pipe and then inside a bamboo mat just like a giant sushi roll until the water seeps out and the fibers of the wool stick together forming a solid mass.  The Mongolians used to, and may still, drag such a roll around the steppes behind a horse to make the felt for their yurt houses.  The combination of heat, moisture and agitation cause the scaly wool fibers to grab on and felt.  Unlike other fibers wool is a protein with particularly sticky qualities.   People who used to do this for a living; felting hats and other garments or saddle pads for instance were called fullers - as you are fulling out a pre-knit object.   Hence the surname Fuller which some people now go by.

My wrist is still hurting!   But I made beautiful piece with piece of curly lamb hair stick in it.
Here are some beautiful examples of work:  

Dagmar Binder

Felt rocks

This evening an artist named Zeke Leonard played the old blues tune "You Got to Move," on a one stringed instrument he calls a "canjo" which he made from a large can, several screws, an amplifier pick-up and a broom handle.   His manifesto is "Make stuff out of things, not things out of stuff," as a critical assignment for us all in our communities to think about the loss of "making" to default consumerism.   An inspiring guy.

Check it out:  http://zekeleonard.com/home.html