Felting

A rant of sorts- the last paragraph is about the felting if you don't want to read the rant.My creating came to a screaming halt on Tuesday night when we experienced another issue with my middle daughter who does not live at home anymore. This time it was the foster parents who experienced the full brunt off some of the problems we had been experiencing prior to her leaving home. There are many many issues surrounding my daughter, and the last eighteen months have been filled with despair, grief and hope, as she was starting to come home again once in awhile. My belief is that my daughter suffers from dissociative identity disorder. All of us dissociate in normal life- for example day dreaming, driving but not remembering a section of the road, getting lost in a book- for some people these experiences are much more poignant and actually dissociate into different states.It is also known in situations where mothers of a troubled child lost a pregnancy or child immediately prior to the birth of the troubled child that mother often sends very mixed messages to the next born baby- particularly if they suffer from post-natal depression as well and that these children are more prone to dissociation. Convincing the "experts" has been a totally demoralising experience- from how can I know, I am not experienced, I am not an "expert " ( a lot of my legal experience in my lawyer days was actually researching post traumatic stress disorder- which also has dissociation as part of its cluster of symptons) to the bald statement "that she is too young". However the overwhelming preponderance of literature seems to point to the fact that it emerges in teen/adolescent years. I have had people roll their eyes in meetings at me and even asserting that my insistence that there is something "wrong" other than recalcitrant teenage behaviour is tantamount to abuse. The Authority we are dealing with has seen the coming and going of 5 case workers since my daughter has been in their care- each time we are dealing with someone totally new, often inexperienced and often not even a person who has experienced parenthood let alone teenagers. To say it has been a nightmare is an understatement. To say it has been a nightmare for my other two children is also an understatement- but somehow the authority we are dealing with seems to be unable to answer my questions as to what are the rights of my other two children when all they insist on is the rights of the one child? My daughter actually disappeared on Tuesday night- I went to the authority to meet yet another "new" case worker on Wednesday morning, was told that the liaison arrangements I had with the foster parents were inapporpriate from a case worker who had not even read the file ( excuse me we have not had a case worker for the last 6 weeks- so we have had to make it up as we go) and that they would ring me and tell me what had happened. No phone calls before Friday and of course now it is easter. Due to the fact that I do have a relationship with the foster parents I know she was found and she is safe- however the authority has not thought to tell me, the mother of this child, this information. Had I not had a relationship with the foster parents I would have been stressed out all easter with the consequential effect on my other children, worrying and sleeplessness.

I did do some washing machine felting to simply do at least something- for all of you who felt this is probably not very exciting- but it was a bit of a revelation to me- of course it is a learn from your mistakes technique without doubt. The first image is of felt I felted too much- thought the texture is rather nice, the knobbles of the underlying wool coming through nicely. The second attempt was what about trying muslin??? It's good for creating sausages- I should have realised the weave was too loose. The third is more as it should be but I think it's a bit too "holy". Anyway my measly attemtps were inspired by Irene van der Wolf's book "Vilten in de Wasmachine" which I purchased last trip to Holland. The ISBN is 978-90-90224-28-2. Just as well I had felting wool on hand!