The End!

The life of a zebra

Just need eyes, a mane, a tail, and some fluff!

Oh, and a name!

Flat zebra

Zebra

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.