Felting gone bad

Many of you know that I have an admittedly ambiguous relationship with Interweave Knits. I love their detailed illustrations of new knitting techniques, and their designs usually go out of fashion much more slowly than those of other publications. (Vogue Knitting, anyone?) Their patterns are beautiful, but knitting their creations to the author's specifications would require me to choose between spending money on groceries or yarn. (And you all know which one I would choose, but Brian likes to eat from time to time.)

And those projects which are small and require comparatively inexpensive yarn (or smaller amounts of their favored pricey fiber) generally make me sit back and go "What were they thinking?"

For example, behold the holiday 2006 special edition of Interweave Knits. Specifically, the "Wooly Pears" project on page 14. They look cute, and judging from the pattern, reasonably easy to make. However, the question remains: "Who wakes up in the morning, wanting something to knit, and says "I'd like to knit fruit, and then I want to felt it"?"

Apparently, Nicky Epstein does.