Last January, I concocted a plan. My great friend John was starting up his theatre company, Hella Fresh Theatre. I was in the process of designing his website for him, which features a penguin very prominently. I decided that John absolutely needed an actual penguin mascot to be present for the first performance.
I had a few cubic feet of roving wool I had picked up while working as a Super Sponge Saleswoman and a needle felting tool. Now, for those of you who have never needle felted (and really, why would you?), it is a slow and laborious process. You use a needle felting tool (which consists of a few barbed needles) and you poke a puff of wool many, many, many hundreds and hundreds of times to sculpt that which you’ve decided to sculpt.
I had decided to sculpt a penguin. For months I took it everywhere. Board meetings, birthday parties, bars…
Here I am hard at work at Galina's birthday party in the park.
When he was finally finished, I was so proud. I named him Penguino. I loved every bit of him from the little bits of color on the bottom of his penguin feet to his beady black eyes with a speckle of light. I was also, however, disappointed. He must have taken hundreds of my hours, but it wasn’t the emptiness that comes with completing such a huge project. No, I was disappointed because I felt like he would never stand out at the opening night for Hella Fresh Theatre.
My felted penguin turned out to be hardly bigger than a picture frame!
I needed a bigger penguin. I had two days to go before opening night. I asked Jordan–my intern at the time–whether he thought we could build a bigger penguin in two days. He did. I asked my friend Irene who also likes to make things and she suggested that we start with a chicken wire base and coat it in duct tape and then paper mache. We planned to then spray paint him black and white. And so we began…
 We began with a roll of chicken wire. |
 Gave it a base by cutting darts and folding it over and wrapping the wires around each other. |
 We discovered early on that our work gloves did little to keep the stray wires from our fingers. |
 And we have created a giant pear! Just what we wanted… |
 Every good pear needs a beak. |
 And a head, of course. |
 For the feet we stuffed chicken wire with newspaper and added our best attempt at ridges with more chicken wire and duct tape. |
 penguins don't fly...)" width="216" height="288" id="shashin_thumb_image_34" title="Adding some wings and duct taping him together-- he almost looks like he will fly away!(of course penguins don't fly...)" />Adding some wings and duct taping him together– he almost looks like he will fly away! (of course penguins don’t fly…) |
 The sun was setting. It’s hard to convey in photos the stress we were under. It was like Project Runway, and I could hear Tim Gunn in the background saying, "Make it work!" |
 We had another twenty four hours before the show and a penguin skeleton. |
 We managed to coat him entirely in duct tape. |
 We renamed my felt penguin Penguincito and bestowed the name of Penguino to our new, large enough penguin. |
 Good morning Penguino! |
 With under ten hours to go we did the remainder of our shopping. |
 We bought him a bow tie! |
 During the course of the previous evening we decided it would be easier to coat Penguino in fabric rather than spray paint him. |
 We quickly discovered that it wasn’t, even with the help of spray adhesive. No, it was much harder. |
 But we persevered. |
 And made quite a mess of my living room. |
 The clock was ticking…we switched to my hot glue gun. |
 Jordan handles his stress quite well. |
 Penguino and I had bonded a lot over the course of the past twenty four hours. |
 With minutes to go, Penguino is looking like a penguin! |
 A happy family! |
 If you ever see Penguino on Bart, say hi! |
 Oh Penguino, we made it. As we sit on BART, I’m icing my many hot glue gun burns. I think it took me a week to recover. |
The happiness on John's face made it all worthwhile.
Penguino stayed for awhile with John and Hella Fresh Theatre–attending every performance and loving it. I held on to Penguincito on this side of the bay. But when John and Hella Fresh Theatre picked up and moved from San Francisco to Philadelphia, John and I had a heart to heart and decided to exchange custody of Penguino and Penguincito.
Penguincito and I went over to John’s house for one of our final get-togethers before he and his girlfriend and my great friend Yael moved away. It was a somber occasion, and I miss Penguincito dearly, but Jordan and I were happy to be reunited with our great friend, Penguino.
Penguino seems pretty happy too.
