Water, soap, heat, and friction. And wool – sometimes the core of it all is easy to overlook. Two w’s, an s an h and an f. That’s easy to remember. Wwshf.
Wwshf is the act of moving wool fibers against each other until their open scales, which we know so well from seeing many informative shampoo commercials in the Nineties, hook together. It’s a process of rubbing, tangling, beating, and pulling, and once all is done, there’s felt.
Felt is an in-between area. A felted sheep is a neglected animal, yet a person that’s in the process of making felt looks fun and creative. In Turkey, felting is done along the male line. At least, that’s the assumption here. The wool is struck against the chest. One pushes his chest out, bumps the wool against that chest, pats himself on the chest, and holds fibers close to the heart.
W+w+s+h+f leads to felt.
And Hüseyin Umaysiz leads to felt.
He leads to yogurt, bread, and also to felt.
Honesty compels us to say that we missed a movement of Hüseyin’s. In March. In March he quietly went to Urfa, Kurdistan. For two weeks he visited felt master Kadir Karci. A master who, as tradition asks him to, still combines wool with his chest.
In April, Hüseyin is traveling again. This time to Norway. Again with felt on his mind. He will have a conversation with Berilsu Tarcan (the Bersilsu Tarcan with that lovely website), who is doing a PhD based on her felt knowledge at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.