Wool Felting

My project that I’m looking forward to doing with my Fiskar scissors is wool felting, I will use the wool from our sheep. I have a sweet Icelandic sheep named Rosa, although we mainly call her sheepy. I'm going to use the wool that we sheer from her. Rosa is incredibly sweet and calls out to us when she sees us, she also loves to sniff our faces and follow us around and when we pet her she wags her little tail (Icelandic sheep are born with little tails). She is also so fun to take selfies with.

Icelandic sheep are one of the oldest breeds of sheep, the breed is over 1100 years old. Their wool is dual coated, with a fine, soft undercoat called thel and a longer, coarser outer coat called tog. This makes for a beautiful fiber that is very versatile (https://www.isbona.com/index.php/about-icelandic-sheep).

Most sheep need to be sheered once or twice a year, if they are not sheered the new wool can’t grow in, also without it being sheered they can overheat and die. When we first got sheep we didn’t know how to sheer them so I contacted my friend who used to own sheep and she explained how to sheer our sheep ourselves. Since we only had a few sheep and to make it easier for the sheep and us we use a little chute and sheer her standing up. My friend also suggested using scissors instead of expensive sheering equipment. So we sheer her with our Fiskar scissors and use a Fiskar scissor sharpener on our scissors to keep them sharp and help them cut the wool easier. We have to keep cleaning the scissor off while we sheer because it gets coated in lanolin. So while we sheer, we take breaks to clean off the lanolin and then sharpen the scissors and then start sheering again.

I've been storing the wool from our sheep while I decide what I want to do with it. A few years ago I bought a little spinning wheel and want to learn to card and spin the wool. But the big project I want to do this summer is, that I want to learn to felt with it. During the pandemic my brother and sister-in-law got some felting kits on Etsy and made some adorable little animals and that inspired me to try this. My teenage daughter is also wanting to learn how to felt, and I think that this will be a fun project that we can do together. So I’ve started a list of things that I will need to get started, the first thing is the wool, which I already and also my Fiskar scissors and then I wll need to get felting tools which include felting needles, felting mat, thimbles, and a felting pen. Once I feel confident in my felting skills I want to make a little replica of Rosa. And then after that, I want to make some replicas of our other animals. Soon I will have a little animal farm of felted animals. I’m looking forward to making a big Shire horse and a little mustang mare, and a Newfoundland and a Healer mix dog, along with our cute cats...and maybe even a few chickens.

Who knows where this felting project will lead...maybe it will just be a fun project that I do with my spare time or to make gifts for family or friends, or maybe I will open up an Etsy store. The possibilities are endless. Whatever happens it will be fun to learn something new and my daughter and I love doing projects together. So now, here I am off on a new adventure, and it starts with a pair of Fiskar scissors.