This Week's Project: Wet Felted Soap (wrap wool roving around a bar of soap and rub it with soapy hot water until it felts a tight little jacket around the bar.)
I think I'm going to quit forming any preconceptions about any of these projects..they turn out to be the opposite every time.
Walked in the classroom and was immediately bombarded with aggressive demands to smell 12 different kinds of soap (they were instructed to bring their own bar.) Several minutes of sniffing and dramatic "oooohs" and "ahhhs" for the face numbing gourmet scents later, and me and my now useless nose began setting up a demo station at what is usually the "boys table." I attempted a wolf whistle to round everybody up for my new and exciting "demo" approach, but naturally (and, as always, I should add) ended up just blowing air and spit about a foot infront of me. nice. (Who was I trying to kid?) Settled then for a nice, loud and ever effective "Everybody listen up!"
With everyone gathered around me, I gave a short and simple wet felting demo and was absolutely stunned (and semi-alarmed) to find it greeted with nothing but curious faces and quiet mouths. Yes! completely quiet mouths! Just captivated eyes followed by greedy fingers once I dumped out the bag of roving.
Everyone dove in right away picking out their colors (Which I've learned to strategically pack based on their individual preferences - I wanted to give myself a high five this week when the 3 boys all went right for the Carolina Hurricane's black and red) then got right to work lathering them in soap and water and felting away!
No soap wars, no popping the bubble wrap felting mats, no major water spills, things went surprisingly smooth! We had one noise complaint from the teacher downstairs but all in all the kids were doing a nice job of working diligently and sharing with each other. Or that's at least what it seemed like from my position. I spent most of my time over at the sink attempting to tighten up the "finished" products that everyone was handing me, so that they wouldn't fall apart after one use. In doing this, I failed to notice two things: 1. the mass amount of roving that was being used outside the project to create giant soapy, soggy wet felted balls (which everyone was quite proud of, of course) and 2. the secret "surprise miss lauren" operation that was taking place more covertly on the other side of the classroom.
The secret operation, was headed up by two little girls who had found a little felted teddy bear in the bag of roving. They took one of the extra bars of soap that I packed, felted it, then attached the little bear to it with a blankety/string configuration resulting in the following adorable "bear in a sleeping bag" look. They followed it up 10 minutes later with another finished bar containing "a piece of felt from everyone in the class" and I about melted there on the spot. (They like me!) Add in the squeaky and excited "We made this for you Miss Lauren!" delivery, and I was speechless.
From there out I helped everyone finish up their giant felt balls, bagged up the freshly felted wet soap bars for backpack travel, and smiled as some of the kids even attempted to help me clean up our very wet mess. (I'm thinking at this point someone might have drugged their chocolate milks at lunch, but I'm not asking any questions.) I also accepted several felted "accessories" for my new bear soap from several kids (these consisted mostly of useless felt scraps that could be loosely interpreted as a hat, blanket, shoe etc, but the thought was still nice.)
Left with a smile on my face and 2 soggy bars of gifted soap in my pockets, and called it a good day :)
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