Saturday, March 28, 2009

Our Little Lamb

This is what happens when I have trouble sleeping. 
My sleep-deprived mind came up with this project in the middle of the night, at the beginning of last week. Other people count sheep, I wonder if I can use them as a way of growing alfalfa sprouts.

I started by making a rather crude sheep shape out of floral wire.

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Then I wrapped the head and legs with gray wool roving. Plain white wool for the whole sheep would work just as well, I just happened to have some gray in my bag of wool. I used a single felting needle to poke at the wool until it would stay in place.

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Next, I filled in the sheep's body with a wad of wool stuffing and wrapped it with white wool roving. Using the needle holder full of felting needles, made felting the body much faster, although it could have been done with a single needle. I also added a little tail.

This entire construction took less than a half, after gathering up the supplies. If I was making a needle felted toy that was going to be played with, I would have spent more time on the felting, making it firmer, but since I wanted seeds to stick to the wool, I figured leaving a little fluff would help.

(Caution: Felting needles are very sharp! That's why I didn't let Blaze help me make the sheep.)

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Our sheep was then ready to start growing its coat. I soaked the white wool thoroughly with water and then covered it with alfalfa seeds. Then I left it standing in a bowl on a sunny windowsill in Blaze's room. Every day for a week, we sprayed it with a plant mister.
I told Blaze he was probably the only city kid who was asked every day if he had watered his sheep.

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After exactly one week it looked like this:

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Eight days after planting, we sheared our sheep and it became part of the tuna salad sandwiches we had for dinner.

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Blaze wants to cover the sheep with more alfalfa seeds and start over again, so that will probably be one of the things we do today.


Tonight is Earth Hour. To show that they care about the future of our planet, people all over the world will be turning out their lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

If you want to learn more, go to the following website:

http://www.earthhourus.org/

We will be turning off our lights, t.v., and computer for that hour.

4 comments:

dawn klinge said...

This is a great idea! My kids would love this.

Linda said...

Hi,

I did an article on craft gossip felting about your Little Lamb! I just want to say that this is a clever, clever idea and I hope my readers come over for the instructions and create some of their own sprout growers )
please stop by and see the article and leave a comment. Here's the link to the article: http://felting.craftgossip.com/2009/03/28/our-needle-felted-little-lamb-alfalfa-sprout-grower/
I really enjoyed looking over your blog and I will be back to see what you're up to on your sleepless nights:)

Regards,
Linda Lanese
Craft Gossip Felting Editor

Linda said...

I ordered my alfalfa seed and I will let you see what I come up with :)

the little travelers said...

this is such a cute idea- love it!

Crafty Crow