I am home from surgery, and still quite sore. Last week I was feeling too sore to felt, so tried to keep reading my new book but none of the words wanted to cooperate and enlighten me. hummm. Ok, let me try that again in a few days ( Stupid anaesthetic brain). It’s now a week later and words are not just pretty shaped line, so I returned to enjoying my new book, still a bit slower than usual but then I will just enjoy it longer. I would like to give you my first impressions. But first, you probably want to know what it is I am trying to read.

For Christmas, I received the third felting book in a series by author Cindy-Lou Thompson; A Masterclass in Needle Felting Endangered Species: Methods and Techniques to Take Your Needle Felting to the Next Level. I have her two previous books and was excited when I saw the third listed as soon to be published. My husband seems to have noticed that excitement since it was there Christmas morning. (I found an excellent blacksmithing book about making locks for him).

 1) Christ mass presents from 2024

This is not written as a beginner book. The felter is expected to know how to, or figure out sculpting shapes to create a firm under-structure. She includes an interesting overview of her tools and covers specific techniques as she explains her projects.  She explains she was self-taught and has, as a result, come up with some interesting ideas that I had not seen in other books.  This creative approach makes her books worth looking through and considering for your library.

2) Cover of Cindy-Lou Thompson’s latest book

3) A sample page from the chapter Getting Started, tools and Equipment

Book Content:

• Dedications and acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• Getting started tools and equipment

Projects:

• Snow leopard
• Przewalski’s Horse
• Painted Dog
• Secretary Bird

 

• How to prepare and blend Merino wool
• Fur attachment
• Glossary
• Suppliers

Four endangered species are used as examples, to show some of the techniques she uses to make her sculptures. She uses cabochon eyes and the tinting of fibre with pastels or makers as well as fibre blending to create colour. Again she assumes previous knowledge of sculpting with wool but she does show how she does a lot of her finishing

• Snow leopard – eyes and armature wire, adding spots (blending, markers or powder pastel)
• Przewalski’s Horse – hooves and reverse needling. Silk clay and Mod Podge
• Painted Dog – Short reverse needle coat, clay nails, acrylic eyes, on a grass base
• Secretary Bird – eyes and feathers

4) Sample page of snow leopard instructions

5)sample page of Przewalski’s Horse project

There are odd little bits of information that were left out. Such as,  what kind of mettle is in the coated wire she is using. Ok, I might be the only one really curious about this. I am suspecting it may be steel since the coated garden wire I have found here is steel and not aluminium. This may be a UK vs Canada shopping thing, and there may be coated aluminium there.

I also found her understanding of fibre prep a bit odd, her definition of core wool is a bit unspecific. I have a strong suspicion she does not spin fibre, so has not investigated the difference between Combed (top), whose fibre alignment is generally parallel, which makes worsted yarn, VS Carded (roving or batts) whose fibre structure is more disorganized, thus easier to needle felt, which make woollen yarn. Carded fibre can be removed from the carding drum as a batt or various widths of roving. Unfortunately the word “roving” is missuses by some sellers who sell combed top as Carded roving since they both look like long strips of fibre. If you look carefully at the strip, if the fibres look mostly parallel it’s combed top, if it looks more disorganized it’s carded roving. Core wool is usually carded or carding waste, not a breed or special type of preparation. World of Wool sells both a roving and carding waste version of core wool. I have used both but found re-carding the carding waste made it easy to use.

That said even with a few odd bits of vocabulary, this is a book worth looking at and probably getting. I am not sure I will try any of her projects, but some of her techniques may turn up in something else I do in the future.

Sorry this is a bit shorter than the small books I usually write, but recovery is a bit slower than I had hoped and so far has been an exciting roller coaster of pain, but it’s much better than last week!