I'm so honored to announce that I was selected as one of the winners of Craft Magazine 's 2009 Valentine's Day Project Contest ! My winning creation was a soft sculpture, made entirely of hot pink merino wool, called "Love is a BattleField."

The "Love is a Battlefield" Hand Grenade is 1:1 scale replica of a real pineapple grenade. It is a needlefelted sculpture made of solid hot pink merino wool throughout and of course, the heart-shaped pull pin is indeed removable. 

 

It is part of my continuing fine art series of needle-felted weapons made from merino wool. The first of the series, was introduced last winter during my 2008 holiday craft season. In fact, it was at the Bazaar Bizarre Holiday Show, that I sold my first piece to San Francisco's own Mythbusters co-host, Adam Savage.

What a perfect item for an eclectic and interesting gentleman scientist! Adam was so kind to post pictures of the hand grenade when he got home to his Twitpic and Flickr accounts, as well as posted a picture of the half dozen sweet and adorable NifNaks Eggy Eggs that his charming sweetie, Julia, fell in love with. What a heart-bursting moment. :)

I'm totally loving this new series of weapons and am so pleased that others seem to be enjoying it as well. Stay tuned to see pictures of the next in the series that I am working on, a needle-felted Glock hand gun.