This past October, I worked on an independent study in school. What was a tangent of my senior capstone became a project on its own. So inspired by my experience in Norway, I wanted to find a way to felt in Philadelphia and I wanted it to make sense. Just how Eva adapted the Mongolian method of felting to the rough Norwegian terrain, I wanted to adapt it to the city. This not only meant I needed to pull the felt with my bike (instead of horses), but I needed to find an alternative wool source. Sheep don’t live in the city; there are few even within driving distance. So I needed to look at a material that was both local and able to felt: dog & cat hair.

Grooming salons for dogs are everywhere in Philadelphia. Working as a dog bather over the summer, I watched giant trash bags of dog hair being thrown away and driven off to the landfills every week….. and all I could see was a waste of a material. I wanted to figure out what could become of it. I experimented with different types of dog hair and cat hair; different lengths, breeds, etc. I built a felt fuller that could be attached to my bike with cardboard tubes and salvaged lumber from a tobacco factory.