A Sheep A Day
Last April, I decided to felt a tiny sheep a day. I wanted a project that gave me a sense of forward motion and something to make every day. Sheep are iconic for me as they are for anyone who works in wool, whether they’re a knitter, weaver, or felter. I’m surrounded by images of sheep on project bags, mugs, and fridge magnets. For a beginning needle felter, making sheep is almost a rite of passage.
As a child, I made wobbly sheep with white glue, pipe-cleaners, googly eyes, and cotton balls. Making sheep allowed me to lean into crafting something entirely familiar and whimsical. I believe creative practice is sustained one day at a time.
Canadian textile artist and teacher, Sandra Brownlee encourages artists to begin simply, ritually, and deliberately in our creativity and sense of well-being, whether or not it is towards a project:
“You have to begin. You have to begin. You have to make one row.”
That motion forward, stitch by stitch, is a bit like counting sheep. I craved a sense of productivity and wanted to move away from the boundaryless work on my computer screen.
Wool is the medium that grounds me. I love the feel of wool fibres through my fingers — Merino and Leicester roving and wool locks of Corriedale. The pandemic meant that workshops and fibre shows, like Toronto’s Knitters’ Frolic, were closed. But I was well-stocked with a huge stash of wool from Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick.
It was gratifying to pull out undyed and natural colours and to just think about sheep. I love felting because it is tactile crafting where small gestures can animate wool into shapes and images. Creature-making with felting needles is relatively simple but needles are barbed and sharp. Felting while multi-tasking can become a bloody business.
I felted most of my sheep at night before I went to bed, adding them to my dreams. Their simple and minimalist bodies were felted over two looped wires for legs, and I rolled long ears to a head: enough definition to add some character.
By the second week in lockdown, I looked forward to making them and started posting pictures to share with friends. I named the sheep for friends, Celtic and Aztec gods, historic or famous sheep, literary and local heroes, artists: Avis, Bronagh, Cadewyn, Dolly, Elton, Freddy, Gloria S., Hermione, Iscoatl, Josephine B., k.d. lang, Molly, Nemo, Orlando and Oscar, Petra, Quixote, Ringo, Scout, Tanya, Ursula K. (Le Guin), Violet, Wendy, Xochitl, Yayoi Kusami, Ziggy.
Eventually, I made a few sheep dogs—Zac and Quiz—and a trio of guard llamas to help manage the growing herd.
Making 122 sheep was never a conscious goal. My herd watches over me from my bookshelves. Many have been given to friends who helped name them or who needed them more than I did.
