Today the blog has been invaded by a herd of cows! Cows and Highland Cows have been some of my most requested animal ornament designs. My grandparents had a dairy farm in upstate NY and I have a lot of fond memories of cows and visiting the farm when I was a kid. I decided that the shapes would be so similar that it would be easy to put both a holstein cow and a highland cow in the same pattern so you can make whichever version you love.
I started this design with a sketch. You can see I decided to draw both versions kind of on top of the other so I could see how the pattern could share pieces. I scanned this and took it into Adobe Illustrator to draw the pieces.
I wanted to coordinate it with my other patterns so it’s in the same style and size as the sheep, dog and cat designs.
One of the variations I did was a purple cow. Growing up, we had a family favorite ornament on the Christmas tree that is a purple cow. My grandma sent it to us when I was a little kid and it was a handmade felt ornament probably from a local church craft fair. The thing I remember is that it had rhinestone eyes that were bright red, which made it look a little devilish. There’s a poem by Gelett Burgess (later quoted by Ogden Nash) that my dad recites all the time:
The Purple Cow
(Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who’s Quite Remarkable, at Least.)I NEVER saw a Purple Cow;
I never hope to See One;
But I can Tell you, Anyhow,
I’d rather See than Be One.
It always makes me chuckle and someone in my family would always recite the poem when we hung the ornament on the tree. Maybe your tree needs a purple version too.
