This little statuette, excavated in 1910 from the tomb of nomarch Senbi II at Meir, in Egypt, has become the beloved unofficial mascot of the Met. It was made during the 12th dynasty, between 1961 BCE and 1878 BCE. Just 11.2 cm tall, and 20 cm long, little William is painted blue faience and decorated with images of lotus flowers, buds, and leaves to symbolize regeneration.
He wasn’t just a cute figurine though. To the ancient Egyptians, hippos were powerful and dangerous man-killers. Perhaps that is why he was found with just one leg, to mitigate the damage he could do in the afterlife; the rest of the legs you see are modern add-ons.
1 yard of patterned fabric (I suggest a polka dot-type pattern so it looks like suction cups)
1 medium piece of black felt, 1 medium piece of white felt (for the eyes)
white thread, black thread and thread of the same color as the felt you’re using
pins
about 5 lbs. of stuffing
a couple big sheets of paper to draw your pattern
First, you need to draw out your patterns. Here’s a basic template to get you started, although most of the measurements are reasonably fudgeable. If in the likely event you don’t have any four-foot-long pieces of paper lying around, just tape a few pieces together.
Once you’ve drawn out your eight patterns, it’s time to cut the fabric. Pin the pattern to the fabric, laid flat, and cut out the following, leaving a half an inch or so of extra fabric around the edge of the pattern:
FOR THE ARMS: 8 felt and 8 fabric cutouts of piece 1
FOR THE, UH, LONGER ARMS: 2 felt and 2 fabric cutouts of piece 2
FOR THE BODY: 2 felt cutouts of piece 3
FOR THE FIN: 4 felt cutouts of piece 4
FOR THE HEAD: 1 felt cutouts of piece 6
FOR THE EYES: 2 white felt cutouts of piece 7 and 2 black felt cutouts of piece 8
So now you’ve got all your pieces ready, it’s time to start sewing them together. I did mine by hand because my sewing machine is busted and I get a kind of Zen buzz from sewing by hand, but if you have a non-busted one I recommend that you use it as it will be MUCH EASIER. You’re going to be sewing everything with the nice side of the fabric facing in, then turning it inside out to stuff it.
THE ARMS: (To make a quilted pattern that looks like suckers, see this other post). Pin together one patterned fabric piece 1 and one felt piece 1 (with the nice sides facing the inside). Sew down around the U-shape and back up, leaving the top open. Then turn the arm inside out, stuff it (it’s easiest to do both of these things if you sort of scrunch it up like you’re trying to put on a pair of tights, excuse the non-dude-friendly reference) and sew the top closed. Do the same for the other seven arms and rejoice in the fact that this is the most tedious part. Same deal with the two long arms, they’re just harder to stuff.
THE FINS: Pin together two of your piece 4s and sew together the curvy outer edge. Turn the piece inside out, so the seam you just sewed is on the inside, and start sewing up the other side, stuffing gradually as you go along. You should end up with a triangle-ish puffy thing. Repeat for the other two piece 4s.
THE BODY: Put down one piece 3, then place the two fins you have down with the point up and the curvy side pointing in, then make a sandwich by putting the other piece 3 down on top. Pin it all together and sew around the edges with the two fins still inside, as shown. Turn it inside out and move on to…
THE HEAD: So take piece 6 and the ten arms you’ve already done. Lay the arms, fabric side facing you, out with the arms’ top seams in a line half an inch from the top of piece 6. The order should be arm arm arm arm BIG ARM arm arm arm arm BIG ARM. The legs should be almost entirely covering piece 6. Pin them in place and sew a straight line through the individual legs seams to attach the legs to piece 6.
When you pick up the other side of piece 6, you now have something resembling a really weird untied hula skirt. Sew together the two 9-inch ends of piece 6 with the fabric side of the arms on the outside, and keep it inside out for the moment.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: Fit the open end of the body through the arms (still fabric side facing out) and pull the edge all the way through the felt cylinder so it’s even with the edge that DOESN’T have arms attached to it. Sew around the diameters of the head cylinder and the body cylinder to attach them, then pull the legs down over the head and you’re almost done!
Stuff the body, then seal it off by sewing piece 5 over the open end (even if you do have a functional sewing machine, you’ll probably have to do this part by hand).
THE EYES: Sew the black circles on the white circles and whipstitch the eyes onto the head. You do this last because you can’t tell where they’re going to end up on the end product if you put them on before stuffing the body.
cheery accidentally called him ‘dad’ once and he replied without thinking about it and then both of them silently came to the understanding that this incident would never be mentioned again
he has at least one stupid tattoo he got as a stupid teenager. you know that one bit in Thud! about his hatred of Clues where he gives the example of a drunk 17-year-old getting a tattoo that makes people think he’s a sailor even though he can get seasick on pavement? there’s nothing hypothetical about that example
sergeant colon is the only member of the watch who knows about it because the guy practically raised him starting in his late teens
sybil thinks it’s cute
he is short. childhood malnutrition will do that to a guy. but like, REALLY short.
omnian vimes
this isn’t even a headcanon but my favorite canon detail about him is that he lines his razor up with the Hub because he believes in folk superstition that doing that keeps it sharp? I love that so much. I love him so much
he’s one of those people who pretty much never knows what the date is so he’s garbage at holidays and anniversaries. Sybil had to ask Sgt. Colon when his birthday was.
total tangent but do you ever just wonder how the FUCK Nobby ended up as the quartermaster for the army of Pseudopolis????? I can’t stop thinking about this
sometimes he goes to parties with Sybil and she manages to coax him out of whatever shadow he’s found to lurk in and dance with her. they’re both terrible at it and they have a great time, especially when people give them rude looks.
he takes advantage of the ability to see/Know Things in the dark to creep up on people and deliver one-liners at them. what’s the point of being a boogeyman to half the world if you don’t get to be Dramatique about it
also to sneak downstairs at night without a light and make himself the kind of sandwich that Sybil disapproves of
but also, Young Sam is NEVER going to be able to get away with sneaking around at night? or actually anything? can you imagine having an incredibly suspicious dad who can literally always know what you’ve done in a dark room
theres a 100% chance that Sam Vimes Arresting Anything is a meme on the Disc
so is his list of titles
Okay, but Nobby… the thing is he never *meant* to be the quartermaster. In fact, he never meant to joining the Duke’s army. It just happened.
He was out with Leggy and Leggy’s cousin Denephew (his sister is Denise), and they got drunk. Nobby went home with his friends but instead of Leggy ande Denephew he wound up with Marco and Phillip from
Pseudopolis
. Next thing he knows there’s a weird song playing, someone’s handing him clothes and they’re telling him to line up for chow. Mid-breakfast Nobby gets enough coffee to sober up and he realizes three things very fast 1) he’s in uniform, 2) there’s a battle about to start (someone has already chalked off the battle field and people with plumes are looking snooty), and 3) there is no good way out of this situation.
But Nobby wouldn’t be Maisie Nobbs son if he could out think someone with plumes. So, he’s standing there, with his little toast rack body and an extra biscuit from breakfast stuffed in his pocket waiting to be handed armor, and he knows this is never going to work. But the red-faced man in plumes doing all the yelling looks flustered. And Nobby thinks, “If I’m handing out the armor I can make sure there’s none for me. Which is important.” Also, those swords looks like they could make a pretty penny on the black market back in Anhk-Morpork and he knows a guy who knows a guy…
It’s against Nobby’s nature, but just this once he sees the advantage of volunteering.
He does the Nobb’s sidle, sneaks up, and says, “’ere, I’ll handle this. You go find some tea, sir.”
And the red-faced man with plumes doesn’t even think about it. He hands over the paperwork (which Nobby might use for a roll-up later) and Nobby takes over.
By lunchtime he’s got most the armor on a cart to Anhk-Morpork for “polishing” and after the first battle he’s got a sale on boots, lightly used, you can hardly see the blood on ‘em.
Three weeks later the Duke is out of troops, boots, supplies, and armor and Nobby goes back to Anhk-Morpork where he promptly loses everything playing One Up with the Librarian in the Mended Drum. No worries though, the Duke gets into another fight with his brother-in-law and Nobby is back at his job again.
It takes several years, and a case of gout for the Duke, before Nobby’s lucrative job as Quartermaster dries up. He falls on hard times but manages to wrangle his military experience into a job with the Watch during the era of Lord Snapcase. It’s not the best job ever, but if you don’t run to fast you might not die.
Okay, I frickin’ adore the Earth Is Space Australia business, so here’s my two cents. Someone did a great post about laughter as a fear response and how freaky that would be to aliens.
There’s another thing we do when we’re about to go into battle and we’re scared out of our minds.
So Alien Steve is minding his own business as the new guy on the Starship Incandescent. It’s a mixed ship, about half human, a quarter Silesian, and the rest a grab bag of species, but he hasn’t had any major problems so far. Then the pirates show up and shoot out their FTL drives so they can’t escape, and they’re outnumbered ten to one, and he calculates their odds of survival at very low. The comm link is still active, so they can hear the pirates laughing as they get ready to tear the Incandescent open and vent them all into vacuum. At least the end will be quick.
And Human Steve starts chanting. It makes no sense. Human incantations are for birth anniversaries, or aquatic grooming rituals, or for the ancient rite of passage known as “ka-ra-oke”. This is not a time of celebration. It is a time of preparing for imminent and ugly death by gravity cannon. But every human on the bridge starts chanting, too.
The pirates aren’t laughing anymore. Human Steve wraps his fingers around the main gunnery controls, and the crew descends as one into battle.
Teradecads later, his students will beg him for the story of how the Incandescent destroyed the Tyn’x Syndicate. To this day he credits their victory to the invocation of the great Human battle god Queen.
setepenre-set 