Friday 14 June 2013

How to felt a no mess pet

Do you have a pet? Well I have 3 dogs ( a rough collie who is extremely handsome, a cocker spaniel who is hyper 24/7 and a scratty black mongrel who I love dearly too), Plato the budgie and one old hardy guinea pig! This is my guinea pig... okay it's not really but I thought it looked quite good.


 I got two male guinea pigs when I finished my SATS, the tests you take when you're 11 years old in year 6. I named them Salt and Pepper as the previous two had also had foodie themed named (cracker and biscuit), typical me I suppose! When we got the  guinea pigs are next door neighbours asked if we'd be willing to take on a third pig, a female one named Angelina. I was planning to decline until she told us it did have a friend but the dog had begun to work out how to open the hutch and they were pretty sure she was on her last legs. That was four years ago. 
Never the less Angelina is still going strong despite the other two guinea pigs dying and being outside 365 days a year through all forms of British weather!


I've got a friend with two guineas too so I thought I'd make her a miniature one for her birthday by felting. Felting (if you haven't given it a go) is great! My Mum described it as 'therapeutic'. All you need is some felting wool and a felting needle which might sound a bit specific but once you've got them the world of felting is endless. All you have to do it stab the felting wool repeatedly with the needle (careful of the needle because it's very sharp)and shape the wool into anything you want.

Making this little pig was really simple, all I did was get lots of felting wool (once it becomes hard it's about half the size) and sprayed it with a little water to get it to stick better. I rolled it into a very thick sausage and started stabbing repeatably. At first it might not look like it's doing much but be patient and soon all the wool fibres will begin to stick to each other and get hard. Once I'd shaped the body and made 2 ears and 4 feet, which you can't really see, by getting a smaller bit of wool and pricking into shape, placing on the head and stabbing the base to stick again. For the eyes and nose you can you wool too but you have to use and tiny, tiny, tiiiny amount so I sewed them on with embroidery thread.

Overall you get a very sweet, very cute and no mess pet! :D

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