What is the Easiest Thing in the World?

If the scale is set from 0 to 10,

And falling off a log is 0,

Then I think dry felting must be a 1.

I can't believe how simple it is to make this puppet! I am going to write it all out, so that I have it somewhere. But I can see that this must be the easiest way ever to make finger puppets for teacher use. I wouldn't give them to a child, however, since they are a little bit fragile.

Take a kitchen sponge and cut along the short end a little ways in, making a form which is 1 x 3 1/4 inches. You only have to do this once.

Take your piece of roving and spread it out a little bit with your fingers so that it is the same width as your form. Wrap the piece of roving around the form 1 1/4 times, then secure by lightly needling it to itself.

Take a pipe cleaner and fold it with both ends towards the middle (they will overlap). Twist around itself to form a piece about 4 inches long and with curved folded ends. These will be hands and you don't want them to have sharp edges. This is why you fold the bare metal points towards the center. Take another wide piece of roving and this time tear off thin sections down the length of your roving. Wrap the arm piece firmly, being certain to cover the hands well. Needle to secure. Making the arms out of pipe cleaners means that they can bend and hold things. Suzanne has her own method of dealing with these tricky "hands" -- which are difficult to cover well -- otherwise you have pipe cleaner showing through. She suggests rubbing a tiny flat section of wool between your hands firmly to felt it, then placing it over the pipe cleaner end as a kind of "cap." Bend the ends of the cap down over the wrist area and wrap it with a thin strand of wool to hold it in place, then needle to secure. Some of the other books I have seen suggest wrapping the pipe cleaner with thin wool strands before bending it into the form of hands.

After you have your arms all sorted out, place them around the back of the body so that the hands extend forward. Hold this in place with one hand. Use a long piece of roving to secure -- lay the roving over the entire back of the mouse (at a 90 degree angle to the first piece of roving you placed around the sponge -- this one runs from the mouse's "butt" upwards) covering the pipe cleaner piece and extending way over the top of the head. Let it flop for a minute and needle up the back so your pipe cleaner is firmly in place and cannot move. Go around under and over the shoulders as well. Then roll the loose end of the roving into a head shape, lay it over the top of your form, and attach. Don't worry about the shape of the head for now. Just make sure the roving covers the formerly open top of the body and is secure all around the shoulders and neck.

After your head is roughly in place, do the work to form it according to the animal you wish to create. A mouse has a round head with a triangular snout protruding. There's a good picture of this forward view in the book. A little pink roving at the end of the nose, if you have it, creates a good effect. The shape of the head is the number one thing that makes your animal look realistic so refer to photographs in animal books if need be. The ears attached to the sides help the head look less boxy. Eyes can be beads or wool roving. In this case, the mouse has a tail also attached at the back.

Have fun!