Adventures in Felting (PG-13)

My wonderful hubby/Baxter's dad is out of town to visit family. With dad gone, our schedules are all out of whack. Dishes pile up in the sink, dinner is whenever, Baxter and I sleep in, and I am adrift in a timeless sea of crafting opportunity.

Yesterday, as I bounced from one project to another, I took some time to work on making felted pincushions for an upcoming show. Fluff and wet the wool roving, soap up the hands, and roll roll roll. Rinse and repeat. Repeat and repeat, forever plus some for good measure til you get a firm ball.

The beauty of felting is you can use whatever color you want on the inside and conserve the good colors for the last one or two layers. Though sherberty colored on the outside, these cores would all be brown. I had completed one pincushion and started the cores for two others by the time my pruny hands told me they had enough. Washing the soap off my hands, I left my project on the counter to dry and looked down at Baxter, all curled in his little kitchen bed. My eyes moved back to the two brown cores sitting side by side, walnut sized balls, all fuzzy and the exact same color as his fur.

It's not exactly fair to say my mind started wandering. It knew exactly where it wanted to go.

According to his adoption papers, Baxter was fixed at an age earlier than most dogs. Though he walks with an ever so slight bow in his hind legs, I doubt this is the same effect as some say they feel when they've lost an arm and still perceive sensation of it. Thanks to an early neutering, Baxter probably never had an ounce of testosterone flow through his body, never had a reason to walk widely to accommodate the family jewels.

And yet when presented with the pair of brown wooly orbs, Baxter seemingly sniffed at them with a mix of wistfulness and faint recognition of the rewards that wearing them might garner - finally, glowing admiration from nattily groomed Poodles and Schnauzers alike, awe and respect from the Labs and Boxers at the big dog park.



With men still here to fix the leak in our roof, Baxter's interest quickly waned and he trundled off to match the noise they were making with barks of equal intensity. But it got me to thinking that there could be a market for these things, these faux family jewels. At this year's halloween party, save your dachshund the embarrassment of showing up in the same hot dog costume as everyone else. Save yourself the time of whipping up something elaborate that he'll only wear for two seconds. Get back to nature. Restore his pride. Let him be all that he can be. Dress him up as The Unneutered Dachshund.