Oin was a really fun doll to make and one of the characters that I've been looking forward to felting for quite a while. In the end, it turned out that he is made of all natural-colored, undyed fibers --- save for his skin tone and a Merino underskirt that does not show unless the doll is tipped upside down. (I just can't stand tipping a doll upside down and seeing all the way up the legs!) The coat is made of American Buffalo fiber with just enough wool carded in to keep it firm for felting. The coat trim is made from Camel Cashmere, and the boots are Coopworth wool with Brown Tasmanian Polwarth soles. His hair is also wool.
Perhaps the neatest part of him, though, is the Stansborough wool! Stansborough is a special breed, found on just one farm in New Zealand, and is the special wool used in all the wool fabric and yarn in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films! This makes Oin very authentic. :) I've never felt wool as soft as the curls on his boots! His pants are made of a piece of woven fabric from the Stansborough looms, his boot tops are made of some scraps of Stansborough pelt, and his hoodie is knitted from single-ply Stansborough yarn. The hoodie is really the prize piece on this doll, since it was such an undertaking. To keep it from being to large in scale and too bulky on a doll of this size, I used the single-ply yarn (thinner than crochet thread) on 0000-gauge dollhouse scale knitting needles. That means really tiny work . . . and twenty hours of knitting! But it seems well worth it when viewing the final result.
Here are some pictures of him, all you have to do is click any to enlarge. More later . . .