For those few who follow me on Twitter, I got the new puppets on Saturday.

After spending a few minutes unpacking them, I got slightly disappointed when I started trying them on… I could barely get my hand in there! That is, I could barely fit my hand inside one of them, I had to give up trying on the other. And the one I was able to fit my hand inside, it was a tight fit. I had to spend almost a full minute on getting it on, and a full minute getting it off, both requiring some effort of tugging and wiggling. Judging by that, and the fact that one of the attached labels said it was intended for children 5+, I’m thinking these are more suited for – exactly – children.

This also means that the initial plans regarding which characters to use will have to be scrapped. I do have some puppet patterns to work from, but that means I’ll have to wait until I unpack my sewing kits before I continue, and create a new character from scratch. It’s not too hard, but it’s a time-consuming process. My sewing kits (mainly, the outside fabric of the puppets) are packed pending my room redecoration, which in turn means that the original time table has to be extended a fair bit.

Also, the puppets I received were not true Muppet Whatnots per se (although they did have the Muppet look), as they both had their features sewn or glued on (non-removable).

Though I won’t be able to use these puppets too much myself, that doesn’t mean I won’t feature them on the show once in a while. I just have to figure out how to perform them without too much strain on me. One of my ideas for this is to use some sort of rod control to perform the mouth from a few inches below the puppet neck. Another idea involves the training of a youngster in the art of puppeteering (which will be a lot harder to find in this area), so this boy or girl can perform the Whatnot characters alongside my own designs. Judging by my own hand size and how hard I had to work just to get my hand inside, I’d say the best puppeteer age would be around 13-16 for these (or even up to 19-20), or simply just someone with smaller hands, considering my mom was able to fit them on her own hand without seemingly too much trouble. I’m not too comfortable with the idea of training someone else in the art, as I don’t think of myself much as a teacher.

In any case, there will be no training of new puppeteers by me until the new puppet is created. I currently have fleece (skin) fabric in dark blue (like marine blue) and light blue (blue like sunny skies), so far I’ve worked with the light blue while creating the half-made ones; one puppet head with ugly glue spots (my first attempt), and one puppet head not yet attached to a body (second attempt, where I also discovered why the puppet pattern was specific enough in the step-by-step process that the cardboard and foam rubber inside mouth was glued on after attaching the body) – both are of ProjectPuppet.com‘s “Glorified Sock Puppet” pattern.

I haven’t given up on the planned show just yet, though. I just have to recast it, that’s all. I’m now thinking that the next puppet I create, which will now be headlining the show, should either have a roly shape or a melonhead shape. I already have both of these patterns, I just have to decide which one. I’ll get to that later, though (but I’m certainly open for suggestions).

So to sum things up, I was a little disappointed about the puppets I finally received, but I haven’t given up on neither the puppet show or the Muppet Whatnot puppets I bought. I just need to rethink some of my original plans.