Tied-Wool Buffalo Making
from
animalhead.com How to Get a Head Without Hunting ![]()
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. ![]()
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.![]()
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.
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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? |
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