Taking the shape of the thing in my mind

Those are inches on that ruler.

The whole pear thing started with a trip to Sydney with my sister. In a large chaotic clothes & jewellery shop in Balmain, she saw a pear pendant - I think it was enamelled - and agonised over whether it was worth the price or not. She didn't buy it. It was nearly her birthday, and later as we wanderered further up the street, I had an opportunity to sneak back and get it for her. And I didn't.

It stayed in my mind though, and a few days after that I had the idea to try a felted pear. On a much bigger scale of course, and since then the felted pears have just kept coming. I've only just remembered that at the same time I also tried to needlefelt a little pear for a pendant much like this, and it didn't work out - both the materials and the skills were lacking.

When I did that felted bead course I didn't know if I would ever use those techniques again. Well, they came into play for this year's Christmas presents. First up was this little pear pendant for that same sister, about the size of the original one that we didn't buy. It started as a standard round bead, and I started to shape it while it was still quite soft.

I wasn't sure if she would wear it - though I knew she would like it - but she does! (wear it, that is)

These pears, on the other hand, are not made of felt.

They are real pears - I found them at Choku Bai Jo, the farmers market shop at North Lyneham. And about the same size as the little pendant. I haven't tasted one yet but they have that lovely fresh pear smell.

Those who say they love you would never dare

Sister D's felted birthday present was a pair of pears.

The larger one, the container, I wrapped up and gave to her just after her birthday, a couple of weeks ago.

Then I borrowed it back to photograph it. This gave me the perfect opportunity to wrap it up and present it again on Sunday night when we had the long-awaited combined birthday party. She thought she knew exactly what she was opening, so I was sure to have the camera poised to capture her surprised face when she spied the extra pear tucked inside. (The first time around it was a pair of tights packed inside).

Here is the in-progress shot. The smaller one has been stuffed with wadding and waiting to be felted. The larger has been partly felted and then remodelled. I was always intending it to be a container with a lid, which I was going to knit separately. But I overestimated the amount of vertical shrinkage, having made the body too tall. And the opening at the top was too small to be useful, anyway. So I gathered the opening around a piece of icord for the stalk, and cut a new opening in about the middle. Then I felted the two pieces separately.



Cutting it open and re-felting caused it to bloat out into quite a fatty of a pear. (You can see it's still a bit taller and slimmer in this photo). After it was dry, I had to run some thread around the top edge of the lower piece to draw it in enough that the lid could sit on it and not fall in. The perfect pear colours came from a single ball of good old Sean Sheep Armytage, held double with similar colours of plain 8ply.

This project heralds a few firsts for me. It was the first time I have felted something stuffed, and next time need I need to stuff it a bit more - once again I overestimated shrinkage. I also tried out using a sink plunger to supplement my hand felting technique. Turns out to be excellent for getting a bucket full of items started a bit quicker. They still need attention by hand for the final stages.

Finally, I tried needle felting for the first time, to put a subtle red blush and some brown spots on the stuffed pear (after K encouraged me to do a little test piece first). Still, I found it hard to get a really thin subtle layer of reds. I'm still not totally happy with it, but luckily I am not a perfectionist. Room to improve next time.

Just look away now if you've seen enough pears

This makes me happy: two friends who are both artists bought a cool dozen pears from me, to give as Christmas presents.

Mostly, they chose from a bundle I had already made. But they did also ask me if I could make a couple more, including a container pear.
Quite a few people have been drawn to the container version when they see my Minicard with that photo. That big one was my very first pear attempt, and my first lidded container attempt too. Until now I've just thought of it as an imperfect prototype (which my sister loves), and I'd put off trying to make another one.

But I realised that I have made a couple of lidded containers now, and although the first one (pink, above) had a lid that didn't fit perfectly, the next one (pale, below) worked better.


So I was ready to try again.

It's made from Sean Sheep Armytage in Key Lime. I'm almost out of my beloved Armytage, so if you see anyone destashing that lovely stuff, in any colours, please let me know, ok?

I'm pretty pleased with it, although I think it's a bit tall. I think it looks like a small pear sitting on top of a bowl.

And yes the upper part is hollow too.

paper truth in strings, hearts and broken things

I am happy tonight because I managed to affix stalks to all my pears. Sometimes it's the little things. Ha! By the way that is my mobile phone in the background of that photo, just for an idea of scale. The pears are around 9-10mm high.

The method I was using for the stalks was such a nuisance - felting a strand of brown wool for the stalks, cutting a small piece once it was dry, and trying a combination of sewing and needlefelting (which I am seriously not good at - I may need to do a course) to stuff it into place at the top of the pear and make it stay there. And then sometimes the stalk itself would fall apart - I think because they are really too small to for the fibres to hold together.

I had already found that I could stabilise the little stalks with watered-down glue. Tonight, I realised that there was little point felting the stalk first, and I might as well apply it to the pear as unfelted wool, and then felt/glue it to a proper level of stiffness. This meant I could thread the wool right though the pear and sew it in securely much more easily. And I finished in one session what I thought would take much longer. And with less swearing.

You call me sweet like I'm some kind of cheese

I used to buy a lot of beads and make jewellery pretty regularly. Other creative pursuits have now taken over more of my time, but a few factors have conspired recently to get me back into it.

1. I have a desk now. It is so much more inspiring to be able to sit up at a desk rather than crouching at the coffee table at the old house. I can also easily leave works in progress sitting there and come back to them when it suits me. Some years ago I bought a small mobile computer desk to work on and store all my beads. The idea was that it could be shut away in the spare room and brought out to the living room as needed. And it worked for a while but it was a hassle and we were so cluttered in the living area that I wasn't inclined to bring it out and add to the general claustrophobia.

2. Mum asked me if I could rejuvenate some of her earrings made by me over the years. We're replacing the findings with better quality gold plated stuff and the results are very pleasing.

3. I fell in love with these beads at an African drumming stall at that festival I went to recently. I dug them out of a big bowl of mixed glass beads, and isn't that the BEST way to buy beads? You feel like you could unearth a treasure. I get much the the same feeling diving to the bottom of bargain bins full of wool. Before I made them into a necklace they really looked pear-shaped to me. Now I'm not so sure. I'm also not sure this necklace actually suits me perfectly, but I love it anyway.

Rainbow pears

Quite a while ago, a friend asked me to make a rainbow of pears. I've been mulling over the possibilities for months. This first set of seven is the simplest option, each pear representing one colour of the standard 'ROYGBIV' (Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Indigo-Violet). I also have in mind a couple of other ways to do a set of seven, with each pear having transitioning colours within the rainbow. I hope to get around to making more soon.





And then I thought, what about representing a rainbow in a smaller set of pears? Seven is a lot for any customer to buy. But you could work through the seven colours in any number of pears (even a single one). In this case three not-yet-felted pears: ROY (though I generally like lighter colours at the top of the pear, so I reversed it); YGB; BIV.

Pear brooch

I mentioned before that making pears small enough for 1/12 scale was a challenge. With some practice I was able to gauge just the right amount of wool to roll into the right-sized bead; but to get to that point I first made a few pear-shaped beads that were a bit too big.

These three were all about the same size so I gave them the finishing touches and made them into a brooch to wear to the opening. I sliced part of their backs off so there would be a good flat surface there, and used my new hot glue gun to stick them to the backing (a piece of plastic cut from an ice cream container, covered in black fabric).

Big pear!

I'd been wanting to make a big pear for ages, ever since I made a felted tree in 2015 for the National Folk Festival.



I like to visit my tree every year at the Festival. This year I was thrilled to walk past while a toddler was spontaneously hugging it... so later I had to get a photo of me hugging it. (It's always been a particularly huggable tree.)

Way back in 2015 at the time I was making the tree for the festival's bollard cover competition, things were not going well with our dog. Looking back, I think I finished and delivered the tree just a few days before we reached the decision to have her put down. So I was feeling sad, scared and stressed. I had a couple of very late nights finishing the tree. The night before it was to be delivered, I remember just sitting back in my chair holding it, trying to summon the energy to get up to go to bed. The tree was just the right size to be quite comforting to hug.

I really wasn't keen to say goodbye to it forever and wasn't entirely convinced that the festival would  keep and use the bollard covers in future years, so I sewed in a label with my name and number and noted on my entry form that they could contact me if they were getting rid of it in future, or if it needed mending. As it turns out, they have continued to use them every year since - this year is the fifth so far.

And now I am ok with them keeping it! But the appeal of a big cuddly felted thing inspired me to make something on a similar scale. It just took a while to get around to it.

Of course this pear is not actually on the same scale at all - it's the opposite, a small fruit made big instead of a big tree made smaller. But the end result is a sort of similar-sized object. (Though I  do consider this a prototype and want to try again and maybe make a bigger one).

I knitted and felted it months ago and was convinced it was a failure. Normally I like my felted fabric to hardly show the stitches at all. This was knitted with very bulky yarn and it just wasn't possible to 'disappear' the stitches. I also wasn't able to knit it in the round like I normally do, so it had a big seam up the side as well. It had to sit in time out for a long time before I decided that it might actually work and deserved to come out in public. So then I some time into the finishing work, improving the appearance of the seam, stuffing it with scrap fabric (as a result it is quite weighty) and making and sewing in a giant stalk.

Then I brought it along to the Suitcase Rummage with me last Sunday - not for sale, just to hang out with the other pears, and for hugging in the cold foggy weather.

Nowt could I find

My parents were visiting family in Tasmania last weekend, and Dad picked this wooden pear for me at Salamanca Place Markets. It's made from Tasmanian Huon Pine, by David Jackson.

It is perfect. I've seen wooden pears before but not one in this mini size, on the same scale as my mini felted pears. I'm sure it will be sneaking into more of my photos in future.

No she cannot really see me cause she sees her own reflection

I've been having a great time these past few weeks searching for good 'pear colours'. It has made for some slightly weird conversations with purveyors of fine hand-painted wool and also people I bump into in places where wool is sold. I think I just start muttering something about 'good pear colours...sort of organic?' and this doesn't necessarily get across the criteria that make sense in my head.

From left to right: Lincraft Prism, Sean Sheep Armytage (marmalade) - oh Big W, why don't you sell this any more?, Paton's Jet, and Cleckheaton Vintage Twist.

I also recently made a little pod carrying on the theme of Mum's pitcher. I liked that name, Donna Lee!

Upside down it makes me think of a tomato.

Wintergreen, juniper, cornflower, chicory

Here is the three-pear rainbow, felted. Red-Orange-Yellow (actually Yellow-Orange-Red), Yellow-Green-Blue, Blue-Indigo-Violet.

Fresh fruit

I'm making more pears and I've altered my technique. I always used to stuff them before felting. I knew that they would felt better and faster if I did them hollow (the fabric can move around and agitate better) and yet I resisted trying it this way. I was attached to the idea that it was best to attach the stalk while sewing up the hole at the top, before felting. I would do this with the same wool the pear was knit from, and it would all fuse together nicely. I was worried that the gathered part at the top would look too chunky if it was sewn together after felting.

Ha. All that thinking! And yet when I tried it the other way I was very happy with the results. The felted fabric is firmer and I like it better. They are less like little fat cushions (I've worked on a slightly slimmer pear shape too) and a little more sculptural.

As a bonus, because the stuffing doesn't have to stand up to the felting process and also dry easily, I can use a wider range of things in the stuffing, including fabric and wool scraps.

Pear 'seconds' for sale

Does anyone want a pear or two? These are going for $15 each, two smaller ones for $10 each. They're 'seconds' only in the sense that they are a bit different size or shape from the ones I regularly sell though CraftACT. Some are a bit smaller that usual, yet a bit too big for Christmas decorations. And three of them were older models I made years ago, when the shape used to be much fatter. I actually took the stuffing out of these and re-felted them, as I have changed my method since then and could get a better result. (I used to felt them already stuffed).

Leave a comment, email me or message me on Instagram if you're interested. I'm also always happy to talk about special orders, and there is still a little time before Christmas.

Community Service Announcement

Moda Vera Sorbet doesn't felt.

The grotesque fleshy looking thing on the left was supposed to become a lovely pinkish pear. Instead it looks like .. well I can't think of an analogy right now, at least, not one that won't attract the wrong sort of search engine hits.



Here's the before-felting photo. It's a thick and thin yarn and I was a bit worried that the extreme difference between the thick and the thin would be too great. But it didn't even occur to me that the stuff might completely resist felting.



I feel really sheepish about it, as I seem to be always telling people how easy it is to test yarns before you waste time knitting them for a felting project.


Ack. Let's focus on these pretty brown pears instead. I am glad I was asked to make a brown one a little while ago, as I really like the way they turned out and have kept making more. (The wool is Sean Sheep Armytage in 'Sticky Date')

Please to admire their cute bottoms. Unlike perhaps many other kinds of bottoms, I think it's okay to admire pear bottoms quite openly.

Along with pods and pendants, I'll have a few pears for sale at the markets at Kingston tomorrow. I'll also have some of mum's fantastic button bracelets.

Updated to add: pic of the button bracelets!