Felted Bacon and Eggs, Rounded Hips

Written by Jenny Wonderling for Circle Creative Collective. Photos by Jenny Wonderling and Melissa Hewitt ©2020

Last spring, the founders of Circle Creative Collective gathered to do a craft project to prepare us for our first public event. In Poliana’s kitchen, we learned to wet-felt some surprisingly realistic bacon and fried eggs, a skill that we would soon share at the prestigious Stone Barns Center for their annual Sheep Shearing Festival in April 2019. 1500 visitors were predicted to gather at that festival, and our excited little team was confident we could meet the challenge of the day-long crafting marathon, especially with Mary Jane as head wet-felting “chef.” MJ had offered this popular project there in years past, and had also been teaching natural creative processes in public schools, at Wild Earth, and other venues for several years. Meanwhile, Poliana and Melissa had also been confidently working with their hands, weaving and creating traditional arts for ages. I had not had such exposure to craft though, and hoped that my experience with children and crowds at events would at least allow me to prove useful, even if my confidence in my own skills with these simple processes waned. 

Try. This very important three letter word, this invitation, is also one that allows for ambivalence unwittingly. I should DO, without hesitation or reservation, not just try.

So there we sat on the pickled white wooden floorboards of our friend’s kitchen, in a familiar place, piles of “carded” wool of different colors floating in fluffy benevolent piles, the divine smells of homemade soup on the stove, my loving and supportive friends chirping instructions gently between laughter. There was nothing intimidating about any aspect of the scene, or any of the steps of the process that we would soon teach to children and others who also lacked experience. Still, I sensed a contradiction in myself to all that sweetness: heat was unmistakably rising uncomfortably into my neck and ears, I was tense- not at all like the fun sensations I hoped for when embarking upon such an “inviting” and creative experience. And yet I had long considered myself open minded (and handed!) enough to embrace any new experience!

“We just picked this wool up at White Barn Farm in Gardiner, sheared from their locally raised sheep that was washed and plant-dyed, then brushed with a brush like this,” Mary Jane explained, pointing to what looked similar to the brush I don’t use often enough on my gluttonous cat, Pebbles. Mary Jane plucked an airy tuft of white between her fingers and placed it in her left palm. She pulled another handful with her right, then started rolling gently, and I couldn’t help but note the ease in her movements, the confidence in her small gestures, yes even forming a small cloud of forgiving wool. “This is what we’ll need to form our “egg whites,” she said.

Finally I pulled at a handful of marigold colored wool, and shaped a ballish-form that would become our first (obviously organic and free range!) yolk. And there it was, a carefully rounded amber yolk perched in my palm, expectant, forgiving.

Conversations and more laughter were flitting through the room, moms relishing their time to be grown ups together, focus on a single task at hand and just play. All our own kids were at school, and a friend’s teenage daughter who was visiting, was quietly reading a book on a couch nearby. It doesn’t take much for women, especially good friends to catch each other up on the news of their lives, so everyone soon got right down to it. Add in the whirling alchemy of simultaneously making things, and the intimacy factor seems to deepen exponentially, as well as ease, especially for women who feel either confident in their abilities, or have been long gifted the freedom to create without trepidation. I listened, observed, and shared, but why wasn’t I also feeling playful? In fact, I was the last to even begin… to hold the soft fluff in my palms.

“Want to try too, Jenny?” Mary Jane asked me softly.

Try. This very important three letter word, this invitation, is also one that allows for ambivalence unwittingly.

I should DO without hesitation or reservation, not just try. Yet, trying is the best I could initially muster, and how I proceeded. We are wired to be social and creative creatures in an increasingly isolating and divisive world of convenience and too-ever-present-judgment. A fear of failure and exploring a medium that is unfamiliar, is surely not just mine, but carried by endless others who have also grown up distanced from such pure acts of discovery and sharing, from their hands’ own dexterity, and a fearlessness to create. And yet, creating and getting better at anything also entails overcoming failures and imperfections, and allowing for new discoveries. 

Finally I pulled at a handful of marigold colored wool, and shaped a ballish-form that would become our first (obviously organic and free range!) yolk. And there it was, a carefully rounded amber yolk perched in my palm, expectant, forgiving.

Before long I realized I had been over-thinking all of it, intimidated by steps that a mere child can follow (and would soon) at the upcoming festival. But first, I would have to get out of my own way, and make beauty- or bacon and eggs- and that is much easier, more wonderful, and even urgent than it had seemed. Yet nestled in the soft, motherly swirl I had found myself in, I thought, this healing process of overcoming could be the biggest challenge for people to sign up for our classes. They may think like me: “I’m not crafty” or “artistic” or “capable,” when really all we are is unfamiliar with such experiences. And unfamiliar is great, perhaps just where we should be perched on the edge of often in life, because if we want to grow, we need to be able to step into the unknown. 

I let quiet tears emerge, relief with the rising of this understanding, and reached for some wool. 

No, it’s not about seeking perfection as I’d been so erroneously taught. Rather, it’s about figuring out how to overcome obstacles, to create unabashedly, to experience all we can while often getting the details wrong, getting it right sometimes, but trying new things with people who wouldn’t judge if my felted eggs were “runny” (hah!) or ½ scrambled, or precise islands of contrasting colors. 

Eventually I felt called to admit why I was feeling emotional, an invitation to my friends to understand and know me better, while we poured a little soapy hot water into Ziplock bags that would hold our egg and bacon strips. I soon patted and smacked mine on the boulders outside as instructed, shoulder to rounded hips with these radiant women standing bare-footed on the cool earth, laughing and chatting, sunlight filtering down through tall trees. 

Finally, I opened the seal of the plastic bag and slid my hand into the wet warmth. When my eggs and bacon emerged, I worked it against the rocks a bit more as the others did, before our creations dried more quickly than I expected in the sun.

This was indeed an important beginning, I thought, and it was much more than just preparing for our first event. We were healing old stories about what I “am” or each of us “are,” what we can or shouldn’t do. Uncomfortable or not, we were connecting with our friends and even our ancestors, and I sensed that gatherings like these may fall under the guise of “simple” work while simultaneously an incredible vehicle for change and healing, one fuzzy egg and strip of bacon at a time.

…I sensed that gatherings like these may fall under the guise of “simple” work while simultaneously an incredible vehicle for change and healing, one fuzzy egg and strip of bacon at a time.