Nativity cow

There's a cool story behind this one - one of my City Knitty friends has a church-friend who has been knitting a nativity scene for years and years. Apparently when she became Christian, she resolved to knit a nativity scene, and she's been working away at it ever since, making a figure each year. The one figure she needs to complete the set is the cow, but she's never been able to find a pattern for one, and she's getting older now, and knitting is getter harder for her. So having found I like to design stuffed animals, said friend asked me if I could write a pattern for her to knit.

So here we go, my first attempt at a cow. The yarn is a bit lighter than would be ideal, but this was just the only brown yarn I had to hand, and since it's just a test piece I wasn't too concerned with the colour. I am assured however that there are cows that come in this colour.
The body and head are all worked in one piece, which folds up to make the complete shape. The legs are added seperately and have little pieces of wire to hold them up. It's a fun way to make shapes, and could be taken to more extreme versions, you could potentially make the entire thing, including legs, ears, tail and horns in one piece if you were that way inclined.
The big thing is that apparently nativity cows tend to be lying down. So for the second attempt, I'll try to find some way of rearranging the legs into a sitting position. I'm not quite sure how to do this, particularly the folded knee joints will be a bit tricky. Then since the second cow is really only being made to test the legs, I'll add some modifications to make it into a female cow, and the two test versions will go together as a nice cow-couple.

And yes, I realise that strictly speaking "cow" means female and this is a bull. I prefer to use "cow" as a general term, kinda like "man" and "mankind" isn't always gender-specific.