My husband and I had made our nieces a puppet theater and wanted some hand puppets to go along with it. A search of the internet wasn't promising. The people puppets were too expensive for how many I wanted--at least one for each of the three girls. And then I saw a pattern. Yes! I could make some.
So it was that three days before Christmas I still had puppets to make. I cleared my schedule for the day and began.
Of the six puppets on the pattern, I'd decided to do three--a king, a queen, and a knight. I'd bought some cool-looking shiny fabric for the crowns and the knight's armor. And therein came the first problem. Said shiny fabric was the most awful stuff I'd ever sewn with. It was tissue-thin and unraveled at a glance. When I turned the first puppet right side out, the fabric had slipped out of the seam, which made gaping holes in the arms and crown. I had to turn the puppet back out and resew--again and again and again. After multiple attempts I still hadn't caught it all.
Three hours of work, still without success. I was ready to throw His Majesty out the window, where he would lay buried in the snow until Spring.
"I'm going to give up." I told my husband. "This is not worth it."
I fully expected Jeff to support me in my attempt to abandon ship. He's usually all for relieving stress in my life. Instead he said, "Never give up. Never surrender."
Really? I'm ready to impale myself on a seam ripper and you're quoting Galaxy Quest at me?
Well, it worked. I launched another attack and finally, the king was born. He wasn't perfect--his crown had shrunk by a third--but he was complete.
Puppet two, the queen, went a little more smoothly. I'd learned a few things. Puppet three was almost simple. I finished the knight and even created a shield for him, all with time to spare for an episode of Studio C before bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment