As you may have read earlier, I had made Chickadees for all my brothers-in-law and my Mother-in-law. https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2021/09/06/an-army-of-chickadees/ Brother in law #4 brought his chickadee home and hid it in his house and waited to see if his wife would find it. She liked the chickadee but was not so amused that she had to go find it.
While I was in southern Ontario, I was helping my sister in law who is married to brother-in-law number four. She mentioned it would be so cool to have a nest and eggs to go with the Chickadee. I can’t do much about a nest at the moment but I may be able to do something about the second request.
My Mother-in-law’s chickadee was still hanging around the living room. He/she had left the almost empty bowl of nuts and was keeping an eye on the other bowl with different nuts from the coaster holder. Excellent, I can try to get the scale correct.
So off to the internet to do some research but being quite busy with assisting with elder-care, I did not have the leisure of a thorough search of the topic. I did find that the eggs of a Carolina chickadee had been photographed but I had trouble finding images that were definitely labelled as the northern chickadee’s. Well, my sister-in-law (and the chickadee) lives in Virginia so the local eggs would be of a Carolina Chickadee to be correct. (It might confuse the Northern Chickadee but it is unlikely she would find only a Carolina chickadee to date anyways.) Ok, it looks like the eggs are small and mostly white with brownish spots. I can do that.
I had brought the dragon I was working on and a few bags with different colours of wool. So I dug around until I found some white. I think it’s some of the Corriedale roving. I also had a tiny bit of white alpaca and some reddish-brown that was courser than the Corriedale. I am not sure where I picked it up or what it was but it may be perfect for this.
I created the egg shape from the white Corriedale, then made 2 more since One egg would get lonely. (so that is three in total.)
I blended the alpaca and coarse reddish-brown to give a mottled variegated tone. I then broke the fibres into short pieces under ½ inch long. I selected a thin wispy amount and draped it over the egg shape in a band towards the fatter end of the egg.
I tacked down the fibre in spots, trying both the 36 and 40 triangular needles. Where poked, the colour darkened significantly and in between the pokes showed a much lighter and less distinct brown.
At this point, I considered using the sharp embroidery scissors. This would trim the fibres so that only the attached fibres/spots would stay making more distinctive dots. The problem with this would be that I would lose the lighter in-between shade and I would have to be sure that each spot was well embedded before trimming.
Plan B; lay over thin wisps of white to bring down the intensity of some of the darkest spots. This worked well. I wish I had a bit more of the white alpaca on hand for the outer layer but the Corriedale work.
Unfortunately, I was very focused on getting a few minutes at a time to work on this and the little dragon project and I do not seem to have taken pictures as the project progressed! I am sorry! So I can only show you how it turned out.
We had more wildlife in the backyard while I was there.
7 – 10 Sparrow, Woodpecker, Robin, Bluejay
I hope you have been having fun felting and playing with fibre.
Update: I left Oakville promising to be back on Friday evening with my husband. I had planned to sit with my mother-in-law and make Dragon’s wings. (she had been so intrigued watching me bend and twist wire to create the armature. she continued her interest as I added the layers of wool to start the body, so I wanted to let her see what would happen next with the wings.) Unfortunately, my Mother-in-law did not wait for us and died peacefully in her sleep early Friday morning. Her memorial service went very well and I had suggested her minister may like to have her Chickadee as a reminder. The brothers agreed and we gave her the little bird. She was very happy to receive it. We did not know she had a bird collection but did know she was particularly fond of my mother-in-law. She was an amazing woman and will be greatly missed.
11 Chickadee in her new home with Reverend Sheila