Mother Earth: Wolf Moon Celebration
Mother Earth is looking and feeling wild, so she hosts a wild party. Deep in the woods, her children are celebrating around a fire, with the dividing branches of trees all around them. The wolf moon is rising behind the figures, the first full moon of January, and the three celebrate joyfully and unafraid.
The face is handwoven in Merrill's Zati method with natural brown handspun island wool yarn, with angles below the eyes dyed with walnut hulls. The nose, mouth and cheeks are handspun island wool dyed with wild indigo to a deep blue. Mother Earth has painted herself with a madder-dyed red stripe from forehead to chin. Wide zones of interlocked black and white stepped triangles bracket the face, bordered with lines of two-ply handspun white island wool yarn dyed with madder roots to a vivid orange.
The headdress is white merino wool, wet-felted and dyed with wild indigo. It is streaked with radiating pairs of white and black lines, needle-felted onto the blue felt. The moon is wet-felted merino wool, dyed with leaves of the weld plant, which gives a bright, vivid yellow. The moonlit night shines through willow branches, along with lacy roots which give the feel of ghostly trees. The figures are felted of recycled hanks of commercially dyed merino and madder-dyed island wool, and the whole headdress is framed in a ruff of natural white and natural brown island wool locks.
