Woolhenge: At First We Weren’t Sure How We Felt About It

photo by Thea on Etsy

Ooh, ha ha ha! First we have to catch our breath from laughing at our clever title. I’m sure that’s why we’re alone all of the time–people are afraid they would die laughing because of how funny we are.

Anyway, apparently there is this. When you think Stonehenge replica, it’s true that you don’t think of wool right away as a suitable material, but there is a certain logic to it. So many people who go to Stonehenge end up taking at least one picture of sheep, or making a joke about the sheep henge that is set up right near the stone henge. Sheep are very much a part of the Stonehenge experience.

The Etsy page says, “…what you see here is a model of Stonehenge depicted in wool, I used photographs from a book and my own pictures to try and depict many of the rocks’ crevices. The real Stonehenge is 24 feet (7.3 m) tall and made of stone but the tallest of these stones is 2.5 inches (3.5 cm) tall and made of wool, so it’s lightweight and portable.

 These “stones” are hand-sculpted and made out of eco-friendly North Ronaldsay wool (from British sheep that eat mainly seaweed). They are made using a technique called needle felting where I sculpt wool into a solid form using a little barbed needle and comes in a box, ready for gifting.”

We have to enter the modern world, we know, and get used to things like seeing the word gift used as a verb. But once we’re past that there are the sheep who eat mainly seaweed to distract us. Visions of aquatic sheep arise, with webbed hooves and gills, herds of them bobbing on the waves like rubber duckies… Does this have to do with the Japanese radiation? No? Too soon?

But the part we need to focus on here is “I used photographs from a book and my own pictures to try and depict many of the rocks’ crevices.” Not only has she taken care to place the stones roughly as they stand today (inner trilithon horseshoe facing the three consecutive extant lintels. We look for that in a replica), but she noticed their shapes and made a stab at that as well. We believe we recognise the individual stones in the second picture above. That is rather advanced for a very small replica. We also note that she nowhere mentions druids! Well done.

All in all, a superior small replica. Score: 7 druids. Although as Faithful Reader Simon Burrow pointed out, we should almost have a separate category of druid for the small henges, which tend to be scored lower just because they’re small. Okay, Simon, this would get 8½ druid dwarves! And a spell of transmutation. No, no. This is not an RPG. Yet.

Wool–another material added to the list, taking us ever closer to Rule 34S. If you think of some odd new way or place to make a Stonehenge replica, let us know. And until then, friends, happy henging!