about bonny

I love to make things, and I need to make things. My hands and head have to be busy. I have been felting since 2015, and discovered it only by accident. In late 2014, my sisters-in-law and I made a trip to the New England Fiber Festival, and I discovered needle felting. A few months later, I lucked into a workshop with Andrea Graham, a marvelous felter who has worked out an innovative method of creating three-dimensional pieces with both needle- and wet-felting. The workshop was not on making birds, but I went in there knowing I wanted to make one, and several hundred birds later, they are still coming.

I began life in North Carolina, and have lived all over New England, in San Francisco and Nova Scotia. Until my seduction by wool, I’ve spent my entire adult life creating and performing puppet shows. My partner Jamie Keithline and I performed as Crabgrass Puppet Theatre, touring theaters, museums and schools across the United States. It was a blast! We created 27 full-length puppet performances, using everything from life-sized puppets to marionettes to hand puppets.  We were so fortunate to be able to do this, and the sound of 500 children laughing at exactly the same time will never leave our ears, I hope!

I love felting, and would rather work than almost anything. We have lived in Halifax, Vermont for twenty years, and now live both there and in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. We have a big studio in the Cotton Mill Complex in Brattleboro, and a tiny house about 15 miles outside of town in Halifax. Our former home and our present one border the Green River and it is one of the quietest places around. Our studio in the Cotton Mill complex is one of many work- and artist-spaces, including a chocolate maker and a granola maker. Most days the hallways smell really, really good.