title: agouti
craft: felt beads

Agouti is a type of fur coloration in which each hair displays two or more bands of pigmentation. It's the wild type pigmentation for many domesticated mammals, including many wild mice, wild rabbits, and the namesake agouti. (Cribbed from Wikipedia)




(beads in process)



(finished beads)


(The colors are truer in the first pic than the second.)

Many years ago, I saw a bunch of felt beads for sale on Etsy and thought 'that'd be cool to make!' Unfortunately, all the tutorials I could find these days are for circular wool beads that don't have a strong center hole. So I winged it.

I formed the beads around plastic knitting needles (1st image). I wasn't sure how much they'd shrink down in the process -- the finished beads are about three inches long, which is longer than I thought they'd be. I'm not sure what to do with beads this big!

But I like the swirly colors and how solid they ended up. They're definitely very mouse-colored!