I know you’re thinking, fish for Christmas? Don’t you raise turkeys? Why are you having fish? Well, we did have turkey and the traditional fixings. In this case, the fish was a present. When I asked my husband what he wanted for Christmas, he said fish.

In the last few years, he has taken to cooking, particularly new things. I appreciate this so much. I have been cooking dinner since I was 15, and I just do not want to do it any more. Anyway, his idea was he does not know how to cook fish and would like to figure it out. He thought if he got them as a present he would get on with doing that.  My thinking was, if I buy fish before Christmas, it will be in the fridge too long before he has a chance to cook it, what to do? I could just make a card, I owe you some fish fillets of your choice. How boring is that?

A couple of days before Christmas I decided to make him a fish.

I drew an image of a fish and traced it onto some fulled wool from an old wool coat.

Then fixed the nose. I didn’t want to needle that close to the edge. Having done that before I know it can distort things.

Then onto the felting. I did well with following the lines not remembering until after that the easy way to do it is to lay the wool across the line, felt the line and then fold it over to the correct side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I decided the front was a bit plain. I thought of adding gull lines but I didn’t want them to show on the skeliton side. Instead, I made a fin separately and added it, completely forgetting to take a picture. You can see the line from it in the first picture below. It was covered by a piece of the skeleton. I didn’t want the bone lines to show on the front so I used “invisible” thread to sew the skeleton down.  the felt Snakes are from scraps. when I cut open a reaist I always roll the cut of bit into a snake and then store them in a bag for later use. Then I carefully cut it out of the background.

And this is the finished fish.

He was thrilled with the fish. He loves hand/homemade gifts. So next week we will go pick out some fish.

This is my first post of 2025 so I will wish you all a Happy New Year! I hope you have a happy and healthy year.