Mrs. Woolton is ready to pAr-tAy!

She's done!!

I found some cute dark purple eyes for Woolma Woolton of Woolingham Manor... they are elegant and perfect for a little lady!  

 

I almost expect her to ask, "Tea, anyone?"  And then have the butler fetch us some tea and crumpets. 

Mostly, I love her whimsical look!

And I think the twill worked out real well for the effect of the exposed skin on the legs and muzzle. 

She stretched out nicely... the proportions seems much better this time around!  Good thing I did a practice sheep!

The tail could use some improvement, but I did my best.  I couldn't sew one and then turn it around because the fabric is so incredibly thick, so I just sewed two wrong sides together and cut off the edges.

She's perfect just the way she is!

  This little project sure has stretched me to my fullest, which I have enjoyed!  And I feel like I've  completed my goals nicely, too, which is also a very satisfying feeling.  Not only is it a pattern that I made up, but  the weave structure for the sheep skin is a new weaving technique for me.  Two double whammies!

And now, introducing the one and only Mrs. Woolma Woolton of Woolingham Manor

As she came together, her name just came together... meet Mrs. Woolma Woolton of Woolingham Manor.... don't you like the Woolingham Manor part?  It makes her sound really elegant, sophisticated, royal, and aristocratic! I can just imagine her in some beautiful castle in England in the late 1800s.

She's a bit deflated right now, but once I get all the batting into her body, she'll come even more to life!!  I can't wait to see!  I also need to add a tail and some eyes!

I picked out a name!

Seven years ago when we found our orange kitty Zip, we had to make the hard decision of whether or not to keep him.  We were living in a very tiny apartment and my husband is allergic to cats!  Brian got worried when I named him because he realized that we couldn't get rid of him once we named him.  And I knew that, so I picked out a name while standing in line at the pet store buying supplies!!  I love looking back at Zip's baby pictures.  These are from April 2006.  I'm glad we decided to keep him!

His eyes were so orange when he was younger.  They've faded now that he's older.

Now I've picked out a name for my sheep.  But this is a good sign, it means I like it, and I want to keep it!  I want to stick to names with "wool" in it, but sounds like a real name of some sort.  So, I came up with Woolton, almost like the The Waltons or Wilton's food dye.  And then I like the name Wilma, because it doesn't remind me of any of the 1,350 students I've had throughout the years.  But if I change it to Woolma, it sounds cute, sounds like Wilma, it has wool in the name, and it has "ma" in the name so it can also be a mama sheep!  If she has a baby, I want to name it Woolite because it implies that it's small and light!  And then there's the whole wool washing soap called Woolite... just plain cute!

We're making progress!

Pin the tail on the Nekkid Sheep

I decided to do a test run of the sheep pattern of the sheep. I think it needs some tweaking!  The main thing is to lengthen the body some (from head to tail).  I'm iffy about the leg length... they may look shorter once I get some fluff on it, but they appear almost just too long.  The nose is just a little on the long and skinny side, but all in all, this isn't too bad though for a first trial run.  The tail is missing right now, but we'll get it on later.  It's kind of a horse-dog mix right now, with a cattle rear end.... 

 This one has a longer body and is also lower to the ground.  I think the fur will make all the difference with mine.

The body cloth is weaving up nicely.  I'm going to be prepared for both ideas.  One idea is to have the body made from the fur I wove up before, and the other idea is to make it out of this twill and sew on the fluff, kind of like I did for the lion.

I'm really glad I made a test sheep because I don't quite like the body yet... but it's close!  And I think it will look much better when it gets its sheep skins, eyes, and facial embellishments!  I was thinking of trying to do something special with the hooves.  I think I'm going to do them in black felt.  As for the shape, if I make them just a little a bit bigger, I could try to sew the tips of them together and try to shape them like hooves.  I might try dying some of this twill black so I can have a sheep that looks just like the picture above!

Back to the drawing board!

PS.  Here is a strange picture of a half shorn sheep!  It's taken by a National Geographic photographer to show the ratio of sheep to wool.  Look at how thick some of those sections are!  I feel a need to keep this in mind as I design my sheep.  (Just as a side note, apparently at one point during this photo-shoot, the sheep toppled over because one side was much heavier than the other!  Poor guy!)

Fuzzy Wool Carpet

These are the beginnings of my fuzzy sheep skins.  I used the pattern posted before, and this is what I got for the first 5 rows.

It's very hardy, and can handle the flicker brush without any problems whatsoever!

I noticed it looks pretty striped.  I also cut the wool caterpillars to 1" total across, rather than 2" across. 

Notice the blotching and striping from above. 

So then I changed my pattern to a 1/3 twill where the caterpillars go, and 4 shots of plain weave.  I also flick the caterpillars out to pull up the wool pieces before I pushed them into place.  So far, the fabric is super thick, fuzzy, and just incredible!

It filled in a lot better with these other techniques.  

Now I just worry about sewing it on my machine!  And the finishing touches!  

I worry too often.

But... 

 this would totally make THE BEST cat carpet!

So if all fails, Zip and Scout will LOVE it!

Cat-Sheep

Warping the loom for the sheep skin!

 

But Scout needed some loves today... so time out!
He reminds me of  a sheep because he's so hairy.
He is in desperate need of a shave!

 

Scout is so funny!

Sometimes he is so needy for attention!!

And it's usually when I'm right in the middle of something.

Sheep skins

This is the pattern for the sheep skins I want to weave. These are not the colors I will be choosing, I just wanted to show the texture of the fabric.  And in the bottom pattern, the double shots are the chenille caterpillars I wove from wool.  It actually went through just once, but I couldn't show that on the chart and still make it look bigger.

The top pattern is just a 2/2 twill fabric I want to make so I can use it for the non-fuzzy parts like the head, ears, and legs.


Here is my 4 yard warp of the chenille strips.  I need to cut these apart.  The weaving is each 1 inch apart, but I think 2 inches will be better.  I will just have to experiment and see which one is better.  If the 2" is better, I will just cut every other one, it will still work.

Here are the skin yarn and the chenille yarn together.  One is a little creamier than the other, but aren't sheep various colors throughout, too?  It's better than a plum-skinned sheep!  Although I did consider, what would a rainbow fuzzed sheep look like?  I think maybe like a clown?  Would it be funny or just plain dumb?  I might have to at least consider some variant of it...

In fact, an idea I had was to make a flock of a couple of sheet, all but one are white.  The one that is not white is white skinned with rainbow hair... hmm... kind of like the black sheep, but a colorful one.

Anyway, I'm going to warp 4 yards of this yarn and my sett will be 30 epi, 2 threads per dent in a 30 reed.  It's going to be threaded as a basic 1-2-3-4 run, and a small part of it will be a 2/2 twill.  The majority of it will be this chenille fabric, that has mostly a plain weave structure.  I think 30 epi will cover both weave structures ok.  It will favor twill, but it will work for the tabby, too.




There is a reason why I chose 2/2 twill for the skin.  Amy Preckshot always makes her animal skins as realistic as possible.  I chose a simple 2/2 twill for the sheep because they have a definite lined "grain" to their skin in the short hair areas.  This picture gave me the idea.  Their hair has such straight lines to it.  So it seems as if 2/2 twill is a cop-out, but it's not!  I put thought into it.

Lil' Bo-Peep and her lost sheep

Originally, back when I was doing the lions, I had planned to make a sheep and sew the coat on like I did the lion manes.  But... it wasn't weaving and it actually covers up almost ALL the woven material!  Something just didn't seem right about it, so I decided to try my hand at making the whole thing woven, even though I knew I would just have to go off of gut feelings here.  But I wanted the sheep fluff to be woven into the skin.  I had two options I could think of, one would be to make it like loops through the whole cloth, almost like terry cloth.  The second would be  to make a chenille-like cloth, with woven "caterpillars" sticking out of it that I can go back and fluff up later.  I went with the second option.


The chenille cloth was hard to imagine at first, but here is basically the image from my head.  You warp about 6 threads per inch, and then put all 6 in one dent.  In the heddles, you thread it 1,2,1,2,1,2.  When you weave the cloth, you are going to cut up the little caterpillars and then weave them again with some plain weave between each row.  So basically, this is what the first part looks like.

This is the chenille warped placed 6 threads into each dent every inch:

Threaded 1,2,1,2,1,2

Skip some space

1,2,1,2,1,2

skip some space

etc.

Tie-up is just shaft 1 on the left treadle and shaft 2 on the right treadle.

These treadles are so light compared to other designs I've done.  I can just scrunch my toes up and it goes down!  I hardly need to lift my feet.  Some of those 8-shaft patterns cause me to really stomp, which uses a whole lot of energy!

And this is what you should get...

I like to think of this sheep skin as a twice-baked potato, mainly because we have to weave this cloth twice!  I'm soooo super excited to see what it will be like after the 2nd weaving, as I have never done this before!  It will be fun to watch the mystery unfurl! 

I've been studying all the sheep pictures online very closely, and this is what I came up with for my pattern, which I drew myself!  I admit to a lack of drawing skills, but this looks pretty darn good for not being able to draw!  Each square is one inch, so it will need fabric that is about 14 inches across, and maybe a half yard, but that is just a guess...

I drew this based on all those Google images of sheep.  Its nose is a little longer than a dog's, the tummy droops down a little and its NOT trim, the legs are a little longer, and they don't have fuzz on them.  The fuzz goes around his eyes, but his eyes, ears, and all the fuzz seem to come together in one place.  The ears will be long and skinny and stick straight out of the sides of the head.  The tail will be wide, but short.  I want the skin to be dark and the fuzz to be white, but I think I might have to go with white skin and fuzz because I want to use cotton

 

Here is another sheep picture that has caught my attention.  I have it hanging above my loom.  This is a picture of the Australian $2 bill, which is out of circulation now.  A friend on Ravelry sent it to me from Australia!  I sent her son a few US quarters that I found.  It is fun to make so many friends around the world!!  And not only do I love the color, but I also love the details in this picture:

All those tiny lines and swirls in the fur, the horns are really cool, too.  I have thought about trying to make a whole sheep family!  Or even a flock!  What fun that would be!

Amy is my inspiration.

 



Remember all the stuffed animals I made last year?  The ones designed by Amy D. Preckshot?  Well, I decided to design my own.  And I really wanted to make a sheep!









I started with pictures of sheep through a Google image search and found some main qualities that made them sheep.




Take the ears, for example, they are very pointed, stick straight out of the sides of their heads, and are quite large.  Also, their noses are quite long and skinny.

 

 

 They are coated with fur, except for their heads and feet.  And they have small pointed tails.

They have bellies that stick out, they don't go up like a lean dog's belly.

Some have fur on the very tops of their heads.  Their eyes are outside the fur and by their ears.  Their ears are by the outskirts of their fur.  Some have darker skin than others.

I also studied pictures of cartoon sheep, because these are cut down to the basics:

In this cartoon below, the main characteristics that stand out to me are (in order): the fluffiness, the dark skin,  the skinny legs, and the big ears.

 

Another cartoon that emphasizes the placement of the fur by the legs and the small heads with the narrow muzzles.

The little tail... and the white AND dark skin in this one... 

And of course, there is Shaun the sheep, the little British clay-mation sheep we are all familiar with from the Wallace and Grommet series.

 Shaun's hooves remind me that maybe I should make sure I emphasize this feature.

Stay tuned...