Here's to the new year 🥂🍾🎉

As the year comes to a close, I wanted to share a piece I made recently: a wet felted goldfish. I felted it based on the fish masterclass by one of my favorite felt artists, Maria Friese (@maria.friese.art). In this masterclass, Maria leaves room for each student to choose any type of fish. I chose a goldfish and here’s why. 

In Asian symbolism, the goldfish represents abundance, good fortune, and perseverance.

• It’s not about excess, but about safety and stability, a smooth life with fewer obstacles and struggles.
• It’s about growth and fertility (and I’d like to take the liberty of adding creative fertility here).
• It’s also about joy and delight, as well as blessings that circulate from one person to the next.
• It’s associated with continuity, moving forward through changing conditions, carrying promise from one cycle into the next; quiet and steady perseverance, despite changing currents.

This wasn't an easy piece to make. A labor of love, this wet felted goldfish took me about one month to create, from the moment I designed it to the moment I lay it on my worktable to dry. 

It required patience, precision, and trust in the process. I had to slow down, work layer by layer, and accept that the final form would only reveal itself in the end. 

In many ways, it felt like a metaphor for the phase of life I’m going through. It also felt like the right kind of work for this moment, at the end of one year and the beginning of another. 

As the year turns, I’m sending you the wishes carried by this goldfish: a year with fewer obstacles, steady growth, creative abundance, and moments of simple joy. May what you’re making, whether with your hands or in your life, continue to unfold patiently, one careful layer at a time. 

Much love, 

Vanda

P.S.: Animation made with AI