On the last afternoon of September, the Marcy Library will hand out barbed needles and loose wool and ask people to stab something into existence. The something is a ghost. The event, called Needlefelt Ghosts, runs from 2 to 3 p.m. on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 6927 Magnolia Avenue, and it is free. Attendees will learn the basics of needle felting and leave with a small felted spirit — sweet, spooky, or silly — suitable for a bookshelf, a desk, or a Halloween display.
It is a strange-sounding craft, and it has a surprisingly recent origin. Needle felting is a dry process: instead of water and soap, you use a specialized needle with tiny notches along its shaft. When you push the needle through loose wool, those notches catch fibers and drag them down through the layers, tangling them together until the wool matts and holds a shape. The motion is repetitive and forceful — you stab the wool, over and over, thousands of times for a finished piece — and the needle is sharp enough that beginners are routinely warned to stab into a foam pad and not into their own fingers.
Felting itself is ancient. Felted textiles have been found in archaeological sites dating back thousands of years, and nomadic peoples across Central Asia used felted wool for yurts, rugs, and weather-resistant clothing long before weaving or knitting became common. But that was wet felting, which relies on moisture, heat, and agitation. The needle version is a modern invention. It emerged in the 1980s, when David and Eleanor Stanwood adapted industrial felting needles for hand use, pulling the tool out of the factory and into the studio. From there the technique spread through the craft world, and it found an especially enthusiastic following in Japan, where artists began producing intricate felted animals and characters that helped push the method into the mainstream hobby it is today.
That is the tradition the Marcy Library is borrowing for an afternoon. The appeal for a library program is obvious: needle felting requires almost no infrastructure. A foam pad, a needle, a handful of wool, and an hour are enough. It is quiet, portable, and forgiving of people who have never made anything with their hands. It also produces an object small enough to carry home on a bicycle.
The setting has its own history. The Marcy Library began in 1951, when a committee representing the parent-teacher associations of Palm, Magnolia, and Jefferson schools asked the Riverside City and County Public Library to open a local branch with materials for children. A temporary Magnolia Center Branch Library opened on December 10 of that year and was immediately popular, but there was no money to build anything permanent. Charles Frances Marcy stepped in with a generous bequest to start construction and, just as importantly, lobbied the city council to appropriate the additional funds needed to finish the job.
The building that resulted was unusual. The city retained architect Herman O. Ruhnau, whose Riverside work also includes the current city hall, the police department, La Sierra High School, and the County Administrative Center. For the library he chose a circular design that drew national attention — a round room that let in abundant natural light and cut down on electricity use, with exposed beams in a style popular at the time. The branch moved to a new location on Central Avenue in 1958 and was renamed for Marcy. In 2011, the city relocated it again, to its current home on Magnolia Avenue, a building that had previously housed an Automobile Association of America office. The library now occupies the 9,000-square-foot first floor, with Parks, Recreation and Community Services on the second.
So the ghost-making will happen in a converted office building, in a branch that exists because a local philanthropist went to bat for children's reading. The craft being taught is younger than most of the people likely to attend. That gap is part of the charm: needle felting looks like an old folk tradition and is actually a late-twentieth-century industrial spinoff, a factory tool repurposed for making small, soft, slightly absurd objects.
A felted ghost is a good first project. It is essentially a rounded blob with a face, which means a beginner can achieve something recognizable in under an hour, and the form tolerates imperfection — a lumpy ghost reads as a ghost. The library's description leans into the range: sweet, spooky, or delightfully silly. There is no wrong answer, which is probably the point.
The workshop is free and open to the public, and no experience is required. The Marcy Library is closed Mondays but open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. More information is available through the Riverside Public Library at riversideca.gov/library.