Well isn't this a beautiful example of felting?
L. asked me to take a class with her at
Machine Projects called Felt&Circuits. So I did. On the appointed day I drove in an atavistic haze to Echo Park. It made me feel 20 years younger! In my nostalgic ennui I found a building that reminded me of my days in New York City. So I walked into the old store front, that was completely raw space and walked down stairs that weren't quite made and hadn't really any hand rails and were totally not to code into a basement where there were little card tables set up with lots of power strips in the aisle in the middle. There were vats of water boiling on hot plates. We were there to make FELT! And circuits, so we had to bring our lap tops and plug them into the power strips.

To make felt you stress raw wool by heating it up and agitating it. So the teacher was filling large plastic watering cans with boiling water and dragging them up along the aisle (where the power strips were) and we were pouring water onto our pieces of wool with vinegar and soap and agitating the hell out of them. All the while I was praying that my laptop would survive the oncoming electrocution. If one of us survived I wanted it to be my pc. That's how much of a geek I am. The week after we dyed our felt in boiling vats of water filled with plants and in little mason jars that we set to fermenting with nuts and berries and sunlight and pee. Yes, piss is a good natural dye setter. While we were boiling nuts and berries we were laying out our circuits on our laptops. Electricity, boiling water - these young artists today! My word, I just remember taking lots of drugs as part of that whole art thing, but I guess extreme sports now affects everything and so it isn't art unless possible scalding and electrocution is involved.

I liked the soldering, drilling and assembly of the circuit and chips though. But I haven't completed my project. My felt leaves me anxious and depressed. It doesn't speak to me. The high achievers in the class were making cute little animals with their felt and sticking their circuits in them. But I am not really a cute little stuffed animal teddy bear kinda gal. So one morning I woke up and said "Fuck this anthropomorphic shit! I'm making a cube!"

But I really don't like sewing and haven't gotten around to making my cube yet.