This is my RP character, Miniver Cheevy. I got his name from a poem, but other than that, he's pretty much my creation, with some help from the folks I've RPed him with over the years.
This is a needle-felted doll. He is overall about 7 inches high, maybe a little less.
For those unfamiliar with this craft: Needle-felting, or hand-felting, is when you use a triangular, serrated needle to sculpt unspun, dyed wool into flat or 3-dimensional sculptures or pictures.
Being an arbitrary craft purist, I only use wool from sheep I have actually met in person. The materials for this doll came from two different farms, and were hand-dyed by the farmers using all-natural dyes.
My favourite part of this doll is his hair -- the curls are the sheep's natural curls.
It really is not very tricky at all. There are just a few things you have to remember to do to get it to come out right, but the same is true with any art. This one is really very easy. You just get some wool and start stabbing. The TRICK is that you have to start with a little ball and felt it from the inside out, otherwise you end up with a floppy, difficult-to-shape object that has an outer shell of felted fibre and inside is all air and fluff and it's pretty much impossible to reduce it from that. I've tried. Learning how the fibre behaves and how much you can tangle and stress it is really all there is to it. The rest is just... STABBY!!!
It really is not very tricky at all. There are just a few things you have to remember to do to get it to come out right, but the same is true with any art. This one is really very easy. You just get some wool and start stabbing. The TRICK is that you have to start with a little ball and felt it from the inside out, otherwise you end up with a floppy, difficult-to-shape object that has an outer shell of felted fibre and inside is all air and fluff and it's pretty much impossible to reduce it from that. I've tried. Learning how the fibre behaves and how much you can tangle and stress it is really all there is to it. The rest is just... STABBY!!!