It was a tad wet when we arrived at National Trust Woodchester Park’s Tinkley Gate Cafe for the Felties Belties Needle Felting Workshop.

All the equipment was ready for us including some examples of cows already made.

I was very keen to get started. I had two hours to make a cow. A human explained to everyone what to do, and we had a choice of using templates or making up our own freehand cow. I decided to make my own cow with my paws.

Felting involves jabbing the unspun wool to make it tangle up. It is impossible once all tangled up into felt to undo it again. I set to work on my cow’s body.

With felting it is possible to join the legs and head on after making them, with more needle stabbing. It is important not to stab one’s own paws. The white ‘belt’ of the cow was added after, by stabbing white wool into the brown wool.

I decided to put wool eyes on my cow instead of plastic googly eyes that were available as I wanted the whole thing to be made of wool. Getting the eyes the same size was a little bit difficult, hence my cow ended up with one eye bigger than the other. I think it makes her looks very individual.

We were provided with some backdrop to sit our finished cows on for photographs.

My cow is called Milly, and she soon made friends with another newly made cow called Maisie and they posed on the astroturf!

Here are Milly and Maisie with scenery.

A wonderful thing about Tinkley Gate Cafe is that they have a woodfired pizza oven. After all the hardwork jabbing needles into wool it was a delight to feast on this yummy pizza.

I do enjoy craft workshops and would like to do more. We were going to go on a walk and find the Belted Galloway cows that live at Woodchester Park, but the rain just kept coming down so we will go another time, and hopefully get to eat pizza again.

I visited Woodchester 4 years ago but didn’t see any cows then. See https://horacethealresfordbear.com/2020/09/28/woodchester-park/

For more information about Woodchester see: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/gloucestershire-cotswolds/woodchester-park

Horace the Alresford Bear 5/9/2024