Essential Sheep

Sheep have been grazing in the fields around here for the past few months.  I go out of  my way to see them, piled up on top of one another, trotting all together from one part of the field to another, munching with heads down in a far corner of the field.  I yearn for them to be put in the pasture behind our house so that I can go out there and see them close up.

Meanwhile Maya and I, having designed a teething pillow for babies, specifically for our own baby cousin/grand daughter Abby who lives in Maplewood, have been asked to make three more for a friend who has new babies coming into her life.  Our design is a sheep, of course.  What better to chew on than terrycloth sheep feet and ears and tail and nose?  We made our first sheep last summer in preparation for bringing the sheep to Abby in July when we went to visit her and her family.  So last night Maya slept over here, and we dug out our sheep pattern plus our list of tips to remember about making the sheep.  We had enough terrycloth to make one sheep with a white body and blue legs/ears/tail/face, and one sheep with a blue body and white legs/tail/ears/face.  We need to go to the fabric store for the third sheep, which is fun because we get to find maybe some different colors.

We completed the first sheep and cut out the second one.  Here is the sheep we made in various poses.  And here is drawing from memory of the real sheep far back in a field beyond the cornfield this afternoon, looking like a whitecap in the ocean.