Note: Our buffalos are no longer made using this technique, however for history’s sake, and for those of you who are crocheters we are keeping this page available. This page completes the story of building a White Buffalo, that was begun on the Base Sculpture, Horns and Antlers, and Eyes pages. Merikay starts by crocheting the nose and muzzle, as shown in the image at right.

Most of the crocheted Buffalo skin won’t be seen. Instead, Merikay will tie hanks of wool into it, that will form the visible surface. Therefore she crochets these areas using a loose “double crochet” stitch, that has lots of open space for tieing wool in.

Using the sculpture as a guide, she adds new sections onto the skin that’s been crocheted before. First she adds the front of the face, then the top of the head and the areas surrounding the eyes. The process of crocheting each skin is fully custom, and as a result no two animals are exactly the same.

The crocheted skin is completed after Merikay adds the sides of the face, the neck piece, the ears, and the wattle, which is the appendage below the neck.

Unspun sheep’s wool comes in thick ropes called roving. Merikay carefully splits each “rope” into about a dozen thinner strands like those hanging over the upper left part of the chair at right. This takes several hours for each buffalo.

Now it’s time to tie the wool into the crocheted skin. Merikay tears the strands of wool into six to eight inch lengths. In these images, she has stuffed a colored towel into the skin so that she can more easily find the holes and stitches in the crochet. She uses a crochet hook to hook each length of wool into a crochet stitch, and then ties it on using a rya knot.

At this point, Merikay has tied wool onto the ears as an early step, and is working from the nose back toward the neck. It takes about six hours to tie all of the wool onto one buffalo.

After she finishes hooking the yarn into the skin, Merikay uses a large paint brush to apply a thick coat of white glue to the surface of the sculpture. Then, as shown at left, she turns the skin inside out and brushes more glue onto the inside of the skin. After the glue dries, this skin is definitely not going anywhere!

Then she slips the skin over the sculpture, being careful not to get any glue onto the outside wool. Because white glue sets slowly, she has time to align the skin and sculpture before the glue starts to set. As shown in the image at right, she uses quilt pins to hold the skin in place until the glue is almost dry, but must be careful not to leave them in too long, lest they become glued into the wool and quite hard to remove.

After the glue has dried overnight, Merikay finishes the sculpture by wrapping the edge of the crocheted skin around the back and glueing it to the back with hot glue. Finally she brushes the entire buffalo head to shape the wool. Click here to see the final result.

If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, please send an E-mail to merikay@animalhead.com, use the contact page, sign the Guestbook, or call at 1-408-353-5037. Is this a good time?