Foil Arms and Hog Sock Puppets

Sue Cole Shares Her Creative Interpretation of Iconic FAH Speeches

During last year’s FAHnFEST, Heleen, the organizer of the entire event, came up with a lovely idea. She suggested that people in the fahndom community make sock puppets of various FAH characters. I loved this idea and had a go at it.

I have been making sock dolls for some time, so I already had a big bag of socks, plus a lot of random craft stuff. All I had to buy was googly eyes. I couldn’t get blue, swivelling eyes so they had to be black. I wanted to make La Bullshat, Evil Gran and Barry. Barry didn’t work out as I couldn’t make him distinctive enough, but I had a lot of fun trying.

Evil Gran / AKA Mrs. Geraghty

Included in this blog post are some of my more traditional sock creations.

Sock Animals

Not having made sock puppets before, I looked at several YouTube sites and worked out a method that I thought I could manage. For the sock puppet bodies I used medium thick socks. These are not too stretchy and are quite adaptable. I prefer ankle length socks, as well, otherwise there is too much cloth to be able to manipulate the puppet.

Using toilet roll middles, I made the head and mouth, then covered it with a sock. Then I added 'hair', eyes, and a tongue and uvula, to emphasise the open mouth. I 'dressed' the puppets with whatever I had in my cut-offs box. I didn’t always get the colour quite right, but I think I was close enough. I made Gran’s glasses by twisting gold wire.

La Bullshat

Filming was difficult. I only have my phone. I blu-tacked coloured paper to a door, then moved the puppet in front of it with my phone at arm’s length (my short arm, not Arms's length!) I played the relevant sketch on my iPad while I moved the puppet in time with the voice. It took quite a few tries but I was quite pleased with the result. I hope you enjoy these clips and my sock puppet creations.

Sock Babies