Healing Handcrafting

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Interview With An Artist~ Susanne Ryan of The Felted Gnome Knows

When I got into crochet and opened my Etsy shop, I was not part of a fiber community. I was inspired, energized and over-the-moon in love with making little funny creatures that made kids smile (and grown-ups). I would look at Etsy and marvel at the creativity and artistry of people all over the world, and often times, barely knew what I was looking at~ I had no idea what needle felting, wet felting or even fulling knitted items were! I was super green.

Until: Susi.

One day, I got an email through Etsy from someone who had an Etsy shop too, called The Felted Gnome Knows. The artist behind this great shop is Susanne Ryan, aka Susi; she introduced herself and I immediately realized that I had already been admiring her work. Her pieces are whimsical, gentle, and inspire creativity. And she lived just a couple of towns away from me! I had no idea what needle felting was at that time, but would see pictures of needle felted creations and ache to understand how they were made. I cannot remember the first time Susi and I met face-to face! Isn’t that funny? In no time at all, though, we became friends. And then we took our first trek up to Mountain Fiber Folk together, which changed my life in so many ways.

I recently sat down with Susi and asked her questions about her art, her craft, her opinions on fiber, her history, and I wanted to share our conversation with you.

The Interview:

HH: I feel like the process of working with wool inherently is soothing and centering. Obviously I’ll want to get to that, but first, can you tell the story of how you came into fiber art?

SR: Several years ago, my husband was transitioning into a new phase of his work life and consequently money was tight. We have a very large family, and that, for some reason, was the year that folks decided that we were going to get a little something for everybody. At that time, I was taking wool sweaters and fulling them down and making them into things. I was knitting and I had gotten a needle felting kit with my daughter at Kaleidoscope Yarn. It was to make little Santas. We made them, and there was something about needle felting where I thought, I could do so much with that.

Interestingly, I wasn’t interested in spinning wool at all. I started with needle felting and then went into wet felting. Initially, I found that there were not a lot of stores in the area that carried felting supplies. The area store that did had classes that were at times I couldn’t go. Also, there are some who are very ready and willing to help people learn things and some who are not, so I ended up learning a lot on my own.

Around that time, I ran into Leslie Lewis (Ewe Who Farm), an old friend from my school days, and we reconnected. Over time, she made a quilt for Maggie and told me about her sheep. So, after seeing that options were limited in terms of local stores helping with my fiber questions, or simply not having the supplies, I contacted Leslie again and asked her if she sold her fiber, and she said “Yes!” I had already been going to farmer’s markets and buying wool from farmers, but getting in touch with Leslie is really what started my seeking out of local farmers to buy fiber from.

When I was at Kaleidoscope yarn, I remember them handing me a brochure for Mountain Fiber Folk, so when I met you I said, you know, I’m going to go up there. I had gotten to the point where I wanted to buy local. I’ve always been interested in and shopped at farmer’s markets, and was involved in getting a farmer’s market in my town. I’ve always felt strongly about that. If you support a local business, they support local and your money goes back into the community.

Going up to Mountain Fiber Folk and seeing what they were doing and how they were doing it was very encouraging in terms of what I wanted to do.

I’m all self taught. I’ve only recently started taking classes this year for things that interest me like the masks and the clothes.

HH: And those classes are very specialized, right? This is a commitment to taking your craft to a whole new level.

SR: Yes, they are advanced classes. It’s interesting to meet all of these women who are so big in the fiber world. I thought Gladys Paulus and Anita Larkin, being in the upper echelons of the felting world, might not be approachable, but they were very down to earth and accessible. This is a passion for them.

HH: Oh yeah, it’s totally a passion! It grabs you and doesn’t let go! It is so inspiring to see what artists do with fiber. It seems infinite, the possibilities.

SR: It’s not going to support you… part of that is that people have no idea how much work goes into making needle felted sculpture, or hats and slippers. They take hours and hours, and sometimes many days. Especially when you take into consideration that often times, I’m getting these fleeces processed by Michael (of Hampton Fiber Mill), or processing them myself. I tend to be a very particular when it comes to skirting and cleaning a fleece, so that takes a lot of time! But you know, it’s frustrating when you pay for roving or batts and you’re picking out veggie matter!

And also, people are really getting a full-on, Vermont-made piece. Needle felting has become popular, so overseas companies are mass producing felted figures and selling them cheaply which makes it difficult for the consumer to understand why local pieces like mine are higher than other felted products. 

HH: I was thinking about the social and political aspects of fiber art yesterday when I was dyeing wool with kids at school. There is so much to think about and make choices about when it comes to where we buy our supplies, how we process our fiber, and where we spend our own money. It’s a whole mind-set.

SR: I also think too, in Vermont, we are so focused on the maple producers, and the organic food movement, people forget that there are a lot of sheep and goat people out there that are struggling. They have a wonderful renewable resource that is not being tapped into or marketed appropriately. Not only can we make clothing with it, but it can be used for insulation, you can compost it…. There’s so much you can do with this product. These people are living from hand to mouth, all for the love of their sheep!

HH: What do you think it is about working with fiber that makes people so passionate? Or, what grabbed you about working with wool?

SR: There’s something very earth-bound about it. It’s very grounding. There’s something about wool that’s very… I think it’s the same as gardening… it puts you back in touch with the natural side of the world. You are woking with a natural product that is renewable. It’s warm and it evokes a sense of homeyness and tradition. There’s something magical about it. You know, you can twist it and it becomes yarn! It magically transforms! There’s a whole magic to it… like alchemy.

I also really dig the fiber community. They’re really very down to earth people. Most of them, I have to say, especially those who raise their own animals, are very warm and open and generous about their knowledge.

HH: Isn’t that what was so wonderful about Mountain Fiber Folk? I walked in there that first time knowing nothing about handspun yarn, and walked out completely moved. Next time we went, I left with a drop-spindle that Ruth so generously helped me to figure out.

SR: It sucks you in! If you talk to Michael (Hampton Fiber Mill), he’ll talk about how he learned to knit from his grandmother, and then from there, he learned to spin, and then the next thing you know, he wanted to process fiber!

For me, I can tell you all about breeds and good wools for different projects! For some reason, I can retain this information. Who knew? I make the comparison to my father; he’s really into physics and he starts talking about it and everyone glazes over, but he’s so passionate about it. My sister says I’m like our dad….”you and the sheep, man!” I get so excited about it and want to talk about it, but nobody cares! That’s why it’s so great to get together with other fiber people who get it!

HH: I have to ask this… I know for me, I get around handspun yarn, and I must smell it. I can’t help myself. It’s an automatic thing I do. Do you do that?

SR: No, I don’t smell the wool, but I love to touch it and see the luster and sheen. I want to feel the coarseness of it. I don’t mind the smell of lanolin or raw wool at all. I do have to say, I don’t like skirting at all. There’s a big thing about not using chemicals to get the veggie matter out of fleeces. Well, you don’t have to use chemicals. You just have to be really detail oriented and pick the stuff out! The fiber you and I put out, it’s clean! But you’ve seen the fiber that has a ton of vegetable matter in it!

HH: You have to front load time and effort into preparing the wool. That’s the invisible work. There’s so much dirty work. And you can’t use “chemical free” as an excuse for not being careful with your product.

SR: It was the experience of paying for roving that was filled with veggie matter that really pushed me into preparing my own wool. Now I’m selling kits and supplies and it’s kind of exploded!

HH: What’s your favorite thing to do now? If you’re looking to spend the day however you want, what would you do?

SR: Making a hat. Making whatever kind of hat I want and not worrying about it if it turns out.

HH: What’s your favorite hat you’ve made?

SR: I have two: the felted Gnome Noggin hats, and the Ratagast hats. I love those two. Those are original designs. I make my hats with wool that some would not use for that purpose, but I line them with fleece. You know, I think I’m different than a lot of felters because I think merino is overrated.

HH: What fibers do you like to work with right now?

SR: Border Leicester, Gotland, Romney and Icelandic. With Icelandic- if you take the time to separate out the outer and inner fibers, the under coat is just as soft.

HH: Did you do handwork when you were young?

SR: No. My entire family is like, who knew?! I think what it was is I was never interested in the packaged craft kits available for children when I was young. I was always into the arts, but not in a very public way. I did win a poetry slam when I lived in the Carolinas and I was always around artists and musicians. I did do a lot of theater, too. But it wasn’t until I found felting that I found my medium. I did teach myself how to sew and knit, and I had the ability to put things together, but this really was the first medium where I knew what to do with it without having any prior introduction.

HH: What’s on the horizon for you? Anything you are looking forward to tackling?

SR: I want to fool around with very freeform clothing. I took with Linda Veilleux that was incredible; she’s an amazing artist. I am not as meticulous as she is, and I am learning why it is important to take careful measurements, but I want to play around with shapes and turn them into wearable, freeform clothes. I’m not really interested in making vases. It needs to be wearable or functional. If I’m going to do a sculpture, I’m going to needle felt it. I do like the idea of marrying wet felting and needle felting. Anita Larkin is a wonderful artist~ she stitches pieces together and wet felts them. Those types of ideas are interesting, but I’m also figuring out how to support my habit.

HH: So, you’re done with the holiday fairs…

SR: Yes, but I’ll be at the Stowe Renaissance Fair in the spring. I’m going to make hats for that.

HH: I know where I’ll be seeing you in the spring! I love a good Renaissance Fair and seeing your hats, and you!

Check out Susi’s links to her Etsy shop, her Facebook page, and her website. She keeps them up to date on where she’ll be and what classes she’ll be teaching.

Thank you, Susi, for taking the time to talk with me!

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Felted Rocks, Kids and The Beginning of Something New

I’m excited. In a nervous in my belly, hopeful, anticipatory and grateful kind of way. Tomorrow, I’m going into my daughter’s kindergarten class to do a felting project with the children. Felted Rocks, to be exact. And later in the week I’ll do the same project with two 2nd grade classes (my son is in one of them). I have come to seriously appreciate the benefits of working with, touching, experimenting and playing with fiber, and I feel utterly compelled to teach things to do with fiber-craft to kids.

The felting rocks project begins what will be a five- to six- week journey that picks up after the holiday break, and I will keep track of how it all goes here. I am calling my unit From Farm to Frame. In January, we will start with a dirty, smelly, lanolin rich fleece (or part of one), wash it, dye it, card it and in the end make a felted “painting”.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been gathering materials for this project, thinking about why this is so important to me. One memory came to mind; the first time I skirted a fleece on my own. It was the big, smelly, creamy fleece of a Border-Leicester sheep that my friend Susi secured from a local farmer. I remember thinking, “dang, that smells”. But it didn’t offend me, and really, I got used to it very fast. I remember, after picking debris out of it and removing a lot of the gunky stuff, noticing how soft my hands had become. I was delighted to realize that it was lanolin! Lanolin had made my hands soft and shiny and smooth. I stood there in the warm May sun and it occurred to me that in the process of doing hard work and getting my hands dirty, that I had been softened, conditioned and made-over. I’d say that was a turning point for me, about two and half years ago. Since then, I’ve wanted to know more about why and how working with fiber can be so grounding and therapeutic in all of it’s stinky and at times tedious moments.

I want kids to have this. I want them to see a whole process through that involves fiber from a local farm. I want them to experience the rawness of the material and experiment with what they can turn it into. I want them to have an antidote to stress, pressure and worry. I want them to have a chance to touch nature and maybe appreciate the animals they pass on many a Vermont road.

I’m so grateful that teachers are letting me into their classrooms with these projects. Let’s just hope that the kids enjoy it. Tomorrow’s project will be a good introduction for all of us, I think.

pictured above: rocks gathered from Lake Champlain, felted rock experiments, many bags of wool and a whole lot of roving to be organized for the classes, more roving because I thought it was pretty, and some of the colors that the kids will have to choose from.


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Marshfield School of Weaving- Plant Dyes for Wool

I had the great fortune to take a class at the Marshfield School of Weaving yesterday. This class was about dyeing wool with plants and other natural dyestuffs. Our teacher was Joann Darling, who is a weaver, dyer, soap-maker and plant expert (what is the word for that?). When asked what certain plants were, or what plant give which colors, Joann knew the scientific name; let’s just put it that way. Better put, our small group of five students was in very good hands. I think the best way to tell the story of yesterday would be to comment on each picture.

I left my home kind of early on Sunday morning to head down to the school, about an hour drive from my home. The front seat was full of food to bring for our potluck lunch, my sunhat, bags with snacks, drinks, notebooks and other essentials. It was a beautiful morning- dewey, quiet and kind of fuzzy around the edges. I felt a little nervous as I left, but more excited and curious about what was going to happen in the day. As I got closer to the school, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by, and grateful for, the beautiful views and the quiet. These are definitely a perks to living in Vermont. Oftentimes, where one must go to learn a traditional craft or skill is a beautiful place, set out of the way. Craggy land, full cows and swaying trees were balm to my eyes as I wove up these country roads I’d never been on before.

And here is the entrance to the school. I did laugh out loud with joy as I saw where I’d be spending my day.

When I approached the building, our teacher Joann was busy outside getting things ready. She showed me into the studio and I felt immediately welcomed into the beautiful school. As I looked around, I was so happy to see yarn everywhere! And one whole wall was yarn dyed with natural dyestuffs. It was so beautiful. The light was soft and round, and every which way I looked, I saw things I wanted to touch, understand and look at.

I wasn’t sure where we were meeting at first. I am so used to classroomy types of learning environments, so I made the assumption that there must be a place where we’d sit for a long time and take notes and get really official. I went upstairs assuming I’d find this. Instead, I found the studio. There were many looms of all different sizes. One gentleman was weaving at a very large loom (I don’t weave, so I don’t know what the different looms are called). And there were two women walking about, looking at things. We started talking and they were there to take the class, too. They are both weavers and were so generous with advice and knowledge about looms. I’m hoping to get a small one soon, and here already were two beautiful guides into that world. 

We learned soon that no, we’d not be sitting at tables taking notes. We’d be outside getting right into it with guidance from Joann. The other participants in our group were a sheep farmer and an herbalist. Within a short time, we found our rhythm and got to the work of collecting goldenrod, sorting mini-yarn skeins to be used in all the dye pots, chopping other plants, picking flowers, washing, tending to pots and listening.

I just love this barn board. The colors and patterns are so strong. 

Below is a picture of goldenrod going into the pot.

Here is a picture of Joann stirring the BIG pot~ I’m not sure what’s in there in this picture. There was a lot of boiling and a lot of rotating dye stuffs in and out. I love this picture. 

This is a student chopping up some flowers.

Once we got several dye pots going, we took a walk up quiet roads to the gardens of someone willing to share madder root and dyer’s greenwood. I haven’t gardened much this summer because of contracting the dreaded Lyme disease, so to get my hands in soil with a sweet purpose was just what the doctor ordered. The views and the quiet were also incredible treats.

Once back to the pots, we broke for lunch in the shade, and then got to making more dyestuffs and hanging our wool to dry. We also did lots of overdyeing experiments with indigo. 

I wish I had taken better pictures of the yarn on the line, but you can see many of the colors we achieved in our efforts, and especially our teacher’s efforts, over the course of the day. Every dye pot had samples of yarn, half mordanted in alum and half in iron, so we got two color results from the same plant, plus a third if it was overdyed with indigo. As we got our books ready, Joann was available for questions and stories, and as each color was added to my book, I felt more and more proud and impressed by the outcome of our work. 

It was hard to leave this beautiful place. You know, the people going there to weave, to dye, to spin… I can only assume are not in a rush. Maybe I am projecting, but I think it must be true. Towards the end of the day, when I knew it was time to hit the road to get home to my family, I felt the first twinges of urgency, but that was only to do with my own inner need to reunite with my littles. There, in this extremely beautiful and entirely functional setting, I felt as if the sun and my stomach had become my clock. When the big beautiful tree covered us in lovely shade as we ate, it marked the natural passing of time, the pots simmering away with their unique and seasonally affected color potions.

On the way home, I could only daydream about following up on things I want to learn about, and experiment with. I think a forever student I’ll be.


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Summertime Dyeing, Part 1

I cannot remember why I started the process of learning how to dye wool with plants. I did not arrive at the decision because of a strong opinion about synthetic dyes or because of an already held skill set. In fact, I hadn’t tried it until this summer because I found the whole thing to be rather intimidating. There’s a whole lot to it, especially if you’re going for a certain color. I find precision to be an anxiety-provoking requirement of any project. That is why I haven’t gone further with sewing. It really does matter if you measure correctly when you’re making pants, right? Anyway, I decided to relax into natural dyeing and just experiment and to allow myself the freedom to see what happens, which was also an exercise in patience, flexibility and managing expectations. While I’m not great at precision, the fantasy of perfection is a constant nagging companion, and reckoning with perfection’s shadow side is an important job for me.

The first round of dyeing experiments started with an early morning walk with my daughter. We collected willow tree branches and leaves, and some long stems of some false indigo. We sorted and picked and plucked. It was quiet and kind of chilly. The birds were doing their early morning show and our cat was making his rounds around our home’s perimeter. Eventually, we put the plants in their own dye pots and started the slow process of simmering in water.


(Note: early this summer, I did my dyeing in the kitchen, but guess what? It’s stinks! Not to me, but to others who are not similarly obsessed and just want to eat their breakfast in peace. Now my operation is in the garage, which is fully aerated, and I have the company of a gigantic spider.) 

Once the dye pots were cooling, I got my creamy wool simmering in the mordant bath (alum). For the willow and false indigo, I used some border leicester wool I have on hand. Finally, it was time to introduce the wool to the dye baths! If I had to choose one aspect of dyeing with natural dyes that is so important, and on its own a wise teacher, it would be the demand for patience and for overcoming the urge to rush a pot. Too rapidly boiling the plants can damage the flowers and alter the color; too rapidly boiling the fiber can damage the quality of the wool. Not simmering fibers in the mordant for long enough will lead to a weaker uptake of color and not letting the fibers sit in the cooling dyepot long enough will do the same, plus you can hurt yourself! And in this case, the wool I used for these dyepots I received in its raw form; it had to be skirted, picked through and washed before it could even be dyed.

Breathe. 

Putter and check. 

Think and wonder and hope without attachment. 

Eat some snacks, drink some coffee. 

Do a chore, write a note.

Don’t forget to check the pot.

Look out the window and wonder about that flower and if it too could bring color.

Open up to learning about plants and their names.

Don’t panic about not knowing.


Here is what we got:

Weeping Willow Tree: leaves and twigs & border leicester wool; uncarded locks and carded batt. 


And the False Indigo leaves, stems and flowers & border leicester wool: 

Remember that whole thing about precision and my aversion for it? Well, if you follow directions really well and have the time and ability to focus on what you’re doing, I understand it’s possible to get blue. That is in my future. but for now, we got:

A wonderful first go at natural dyeing for me. And a funny thing has happened on the way to the natural dye pot. My eyes have opened up a bit more, and curiosity has expanded exponentially. Walking through my yard, or through the woods or in a field, I now see bits of color everywhere, some of which I overlooked in other days. Now I look at bark on a fallen log and wonder what it would do with some attention from heat and water. And how’s about those berries? Can I share them with the animals here? The tension between wanting to dye everything with everything I see now and knowing that time and patience are necessary ingredients of any dyeing experiment is a gift in its own right. 

I’ll share more of my summer experiments in posts to come. In the meantime, I want to share my go-to books right now on the natural dyeing process:

A Garden to Dye For, by Chris McLaughlin

Harvesting Color: How to Find Plants and Make Natural Dyes, by Rebecca Burgess

The Craft of Natural Dyeing: Glowing Colours From the Plant World, by Jenny Dean

What kinds of things do you do that allow you to slow down, exercise patience and enjoy curiosity?