My Sheepies

We've all got strange collections, right? Okay, I know I have a few more strange collections than most, but I'm cool with that. Some of my collections include decks of Tarot cards, polished stones in pretty colors that live in a Ball jar, yarn (we all knew about that one already) and my latest one, which I actually inherited from my Grandpa Darling, Sheep.

The Darling family animal collection obsession was believed to have started between two of my great-aunts, Neany and Lisa. For years they had a "flamingo fight"of epic proportions, giving each other anything flamingo-related until both of their houses were filled with flamingos. They called a truce and the flamingos eventually flew the coop (I ended up with a really awesomely tacky flamingo jewelry box).

Then a little while later (or perhaps towards the tail-end of the flamingo fight) my Grandma and Grandpa Darling came to England to visit us, and we had no idea what was coming. We took a trip to London while they were there and went to the London Dungeons, which is a sort of walk-through scary museum of the Middle Ages with lots of red corn syrup and plastic innards. They start you off in a medieval courtroom, where the "judge" randomly pointed at people and accused them of ridiculous crimes like crossdressing and attempting to molest religious leaders. Then the "judge" randomly pointed at my Grandpa Darling and accused him of "sheep squeezing", or having intimate relations with a sheep. She had no idea that he might have been the only person in the room more twisted and perverted than herself, and he went with it instead of acting all appalled and wrongly accused. Shortly afterwards, a sheep obsession was born.

Word spread throughout the Darling family like wildfire, and somehow Grandpa Darling ended up with a blow-up sheep wearing black lingerie for Christmas, and the jokes got raunchier. While he never accumulated all that many sheep because of this inside joke, the jokes live on. When we were touring the Ring of Kerry in Ireland (which is loaded with sheep) he came up to me and asked if I had a wet wipe or something- he had gotten red paint on his shirt (I'm not explaining why sheep may have wet paint on them, but it has something to do with keeping track of who "tags" who) but whatever. Somehow the sheep obsession passed down to me, but for a very different (and fiber-related) reason.

Now every time someone sees a sheep, it somehow ends up as mine. Here are pictures of my new one that came home from the Lowes clearance rack today (top) and a few of the other ones hanging out in my room. Missing in action (or hiding in mess) are sheepy stationary, sheep tape measures, sheep magnets, sheep coffee mugs, and sheep cross-stitching kit.

from the top: Lowes Clearance Sheep, baby finger puppet sheep, Elton the Ram from Lucy, sheepy bank from Hallmark's clearance rack, and Baaarbara McFleece from John Lewis in Edinburgh, Scotland.

***for the record, I have been knitting, but it's rather secret knitting until the recipient receives it in the mail. Then I'll post pictures. But it's going well (with exception of a minor flub that occurred at knitting-night and was immediately fixed by Mandie and Peg) and it should be done and blocked in the next couple days.