Whaddaya Think?

This little guy is the result of my first needle felting class. I signed up for this on a whim when my tapestry class was over. I thought that I'd enjoy the design appliqué part of the class much better than the doll making, but man was it fun to take a bit of roving, a piece of styrofoam, and a few needles and watch a face take shape.

The basic gist of it is that when you either agitate wool with hot water (wet felting) or with a needle (needle felting) the fibers bond together. Anyone who's ever lost a wool sweater to the washing machine has done the wet felting process (albeit unintentionally), and I used it to make a knitting bag and a few sets of slippers years ago. This was my first real introduction to needle felting, and it was amazingly easy.

I don't think my little guy would have come out near as well without instruction or the examples the teacher brought to class. She had dolls in all stages, including examples of each step it takes to make the head.

The really fun part is watching the face take the shape it wants to be. I've never carved or sculpted, but this was really a matter of going with the flow. But now I'm in a bit of a quandary. I'll work on the features a bit and I have to try and put a better set of lips on the face. That'll mostly be just winging it again. But I need to decide if it's male or female. And what kind of hair? If it's a guy, then does he have a beard? No hair? Hat? Does (s)he look like a dwarf or a faerie or a garden gnome? (Yeah, I noticed that I keep referring to it as a little guy, but they all look masculine when you're first working on them! One of my classmates added red (red!) lips to hers, and just like that, a she was born...)

The next class is where we work on the body, so I'll need to have some idea of where to go by then. Anybody have any ideas? What does it look like to you?