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 Aspirations
A Season for Everything — even UFO’s
by Jeanette Shanigan
Beads are my passion. Beads and beadwork will always be my passion. Beads never bore me. But every now and again, I find myself in a situation where I have to graciously abandon my beloved beads and try something else. This happened to me in August 2006 when I was teaching a Beadventure in Ireland. Cheryl Cobern-Browne, the owner of Beadventures http://beadventure.com/ , bowed to the group’s interest and arranged for Suzie Sullivan to do a class for us on wet felting.
Suzie Sullivan is an Irish fiber artist who does incredible work in a number of areas: felting, weaving, spinning, and beading to name a few. Check out her work here: http://www.derryauncrafts.com/index.html Under Suzie’s tutelage we spent the afternoon layering, and watering and squishing and rolling. It was glorious fun and rather reminded me of making mud pies as a child. At the close of class, I had a couple of felted pictures and a felted roll that I thought might eventually make a cuff bracelet. Of course, I also purchased a kit and extra wool to do more felting at home.
Several days later, Cheryl and I tried some wet-felting on our own. Both of us wanted to make a hollow piece. Cheryl wanted to make a tea-cozy and I wanted to make a couple of amulet bags for all the “Irish treasures” I had collected. Cheryl finished her fabulous piece that day, but remember this was only the second time that I had done felting; I was less than thrilled with my oval-shaped felted blob. But all the felting stuff was dutifully packed in my suitcase, hauled home, and stored in its own drawer. There it languished for over a year until this week.
 One of the members of my local bead society is dabbling in felting. When I saw her work, I remembered my own felting efforts. I promised that I’d haul all my felting stuff to the next bead society meeting for show ‘n share. As I looked through my felting drawer, I discovered my “felted amulet bag.” Then I remembered that I had pillaged a square of the felt from one bag for last year’s butterfly breast cancer quilt project. http://shanigansbeadshenanigans.com/BCQuilt.html I looked at the other half and wondered if some beads and embellishment would salvage it. I mean, everything goes better with beads, right? It couldn’t hurt to try. After much embellishment with boucle yarn and a good amount of beads, I decided that it was wearable. To give the amulet bag its beady due, I made a spiral rope for the neck chain and it was finished.
Will I do more felting? Who knows? But I do have those felted pictures to finish off with beads and embellishment. Just goes to show, that sometimes waiting for the right time is a  necessary step in the UFO process. Remember to be open to the fact that WiP or UFO can be just one of the steps to completion.
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