Needle felting.

 Needle felting has quickly become our favorite craft to do lately.  

It all started the day I let go of, what I believed to be, a reasonable fear of my children gouging their tiny body parts with nasty-sharp serrated needles.   I decided to get over it.  It happened.  They cried.  I cried.  Then they cried more because they thought I wasn't going to let them do it again and then I realized, "hey, what's the fuss all about then?  Let's get back to felting here."  So, we did.  

 It is such a peaceful and personal craft.  Each person has their own felting pad and needle and there is plenty of "community" wool to share.  We can each just hang out, chat and work on our own creations separately, but still very much together.

The best method we have found so far for sparing little fingers from those vicious needles is using wool cutouts from felted sweaters or 100% wool felt used a bit like a canvas so they can "paint" pictures with the wool.  At first I insisted on cutting out nice little rectangles so they would have these perfect backgrounds to use for their work.  Then, after much pleading from my people, they convinced me to relinquish control of the scissors.  They started cutting out their own backgrounds which were, and usually are, much more organic then the somewhat sterile rectangles I had insisted on.  
Once they have their backgrounds ready we pin them down to the felting pad with straight pins to hold them in place.  This way they can add wool over the background, create whatever image they have unfolding behind their wide and focused eyes without really having to hold their hands near the sharp end of the needle.

So far this has yielded many enjoyable afternoons of needle felting 

and oh my, ever so many works of felted art.