Remember these groovy felt pieces from the Taos Wool Festival?

It turns out that Abbey is friends with the artist Merce. She took me out to her house to meet her this past weekend.

Here’s me with Merce in front of her amazing stash. She had a whole room for felting and has a stash that made me drool.

In her studio there were a few finished pieces. She experimented with embroidery on this felted skull.

This piece was based on an injury her husband got to his hand. I’m impressed how she turned a painful experience into such a creative piece of artwork.

Merce’s also a spinner and showed us some yarn she was working on. I didn’t manage to get a picture but perhaps I can give you an idea. Imagine a strand of yarn with curly tendrils of fleece all along it. You could knit it as a border around an afghan for fringe. You can buy her gorgeous yarn at Taos Sunflower.

She was a wealth of information about felting. Just casually chatting with her about felting I learned more than I ever have from reading a felt book. I had been hesitant to delve into felting because I live off grid and don’t have a washing machine. But Merce explained how to felt off grid and now I’m excited to try.

As fun as the day was it didn’t end there. When Abbey and I were leaving Merce gave us a large garbage bag of fleece to take home to practice spinning. I’m so full of gratitude. I mean check out these goodies:

You should have seen Abbey and I as we were pulling out all this fleece. We oohed, we ahhed, we shrieked with excitement. Our husbands were laughing at us as we ogled our fleece.

With such an amazing gift how can we not start spinning? We’re recommitted to learning to use our drop spindles. Though really I want a spinning wheel but I want to prove to myself that I’m committed before buying one. We plan to order some carders to start processing all the fleece.

I’ll leave you with a close up. Next post will be all about Samus.