Zoom Loom Shelby Sheep Kit from The Woolery - Day 4

Beware the sheeping mantis...!

I am a very good knitter, but I rot at crafts.  

The trouble with sheep assembly, in this case, is that it feels very much like arts and crafts.  Actually, it feels like an invitation to an appearance on Pinterest Fail.  I just know this is not going to turn out as sweet and charming as the picture on the kit package.

The body and legs were pure geometry.  Make a tube.  Sew ends on the tube.  Stuff said tube.  Make two rectangles.  Wrap pipe cleaners with the rectangles and sew them shut.  Bend wrapped pipe cleaners into legs and sew them onto the body.  These things went relatively as planned.

The head however, gave me fits.  I worked it twice, and even then it looked, well, not exactly sheepish.  The real kicker came when I showed it to my husband, who got that not-quite-hidden “what is that?” expression on his face parents know all too well.  We use it when our toddler children show us a blue blob from finger painting.  We apply that face until they tell us “it’s an elephant,” after which we gush about “Well of course it is!  What a pretty blue elephant!” 

My better half looked at the black body for a moment until he pronounced the head looked like…a praying mantis.  And, don’t you know, he was right.  I had a sheep body with a praying mantis head—something out of a horrid 1950’s sci-fi flick or the Don Dixon song.   For the whole next day, every time I looked at the thing, I saw “sheeping mantis.”

Finally, after looking up half a dozen photos of sheep, I realized it was the ears.  I'm going tack the ears to flop down. Then I'll have a sheep.  Or something close to a sheep.  At least something closer to a sheep than to a praying mantis.

The fleece will save me.  No one thinks of a fluffy, fleecy praying mantis.   

Do they?

Woolly Wreath from The Village Yarn Shop - Day 4

Getting crafty…

As I said, crafts other than knitting are not my thing.  I don’t scrapbook, garden, or any of that stuff.  I used to sew in my younger days, but that was more a function of my theater major costume shop training and the cost of clothes long enough to fit my near 6’ frame rather than any artistic desire.  I was into beads for a while, but nothing has ever stuck with me the way knitting has continued to do.

Turn my knitting into home decor?  The prospect makes me nervous.  I’ve done a pillow, but those are just knitting with stuffing in them.  I keep staring at the swath of loops sitting in my living room and wondering if they’ll look mangy when I get it on the frame.  I picture my husband coming home and saying, “what’s that growing out of the wall?”

The good news is that this part is relatively easy.  I take the white muslin supplied in my kit, cut in into 4” strips, and wrap it diagonally around the circular frame.  Hey, I should be able to handle that.

And I do.  The muslin has just enough stretch—especially when wrapped on the diagonal—to hug the frame.  Even that doesn’t matter because this is just “primer” for the knitting overcoat to come.  So it’s easy for me to feel a modicum of success when I get this right.

I remain cautiously optimistic.  Stay tuned.