What is needle felting?

The two questions I've been asked most are " how are those made? " and " why do they cost so much?". Needle felting is the process of taking raw wool and jabbing it repeatedly with a barbed needle until the fibers blend and start solidifying into some kind of shape. As the barbed needle penetrates the wool each time, it pulls fibers up as it leaves the wool, causing them to sort of weave themselves. This can be a lengthy process. The rest of it involves shaping the wool with your needle, it gets treated like a sculpture. Wool can be blended to make a desired color, it can be felted around wire to make limbs and eventually all body parts are felted together to bring your creation to life. Wool batting is the easiest to felt and usually serves as my base shape. Wool roving comes in long strands and can be used for multiple effects. As far as colored wool, I love the softness in color of vegetable dye and prefer these for the soft yellow of my chicks.
So why do they cost so much?
It takes about 4-6 hours for me to complete a doll. Each little indentation or attached hair is painstakingly applied. I can only make one Fleecy Feetsy per day for these reasons ( and the fact that dinner needs to be cooked, errands need to get done). So while you can get a fluffy chick at Walmart for $4, it will not have the organic matter in its fleece, it won't smell like sheep and it surely isn't one of a kind. Custom pets take longer as they are matched to photos and getting facial expressions can be difficult. The biggest difference is that little machine made chicks are not made with love.