The Story of Abby Scroni

This past Christmas I received a gift of original artwork from my cousin Rhonda.

This figure is about 6" tall and stands on a base of floral foam covered by ribbon.  the head is a hand painted plastic lemon from the dollar store.  The eyes were purchase while the nose and lips are molded from clay.  The pigtails are fake hair extensions from the dollar store.

The main feature, Rhonda's inspiration for the piece sits on top of the lemon.  It's the "hair" on top of the head.

Before I tell you what it is, here's a little yarn, the back story.

Rhonda lives on a ranch in Northern California, in the area where the Happy Cows of California live.  She enjoys it and, at times, seems to have been born in the wrong century.  She has the pioneering spirit of our great grandmother who chopped wood well into her 80's and was well known for chopping the heads off of snakes with a hoe.

Anyway, Rhonda enjoys helping out on the ranch.  She willing holds the heads of calves when they need tended to.  This includes castration.

The ranchers in that area have been known to take the scrotal sack, dry and cure it for use as a cover on a gear shift knob of their tractor and trucks.

Rhonda took some home and stretched them over some handy pine cones to dry.  She thought they looked cute and could envision facial features on the pine cones.

She named them "Scroni's" and laughingly says they will be the next pet rock craze.

Her first batch became play toys for the ranch dogs one day while she was away at work.

The latest batch, she hauled home to Pennsylvania and created gifts for her family.  Unfortunately, Pennsylvanian pine cones are not the same shape as Californian ones.  The closest she could come in shape was plastic lemons from the dollar store.

Oh my!  Look at this collection of yarn.
 Stay tuned to find out what I made from it.

While showing my original Scroni figure to one of my uncles, he made the commented that it looked like a certain forensic scientist on a tv show.

Thus the name Abby Scroni.

Be sure to look for Abby Scroni in my photographs of my knitting.  She will be posing frequently this year.