Medium Draft Day 2024

The Tale of Baa Baa Blue Sheep

And how AI makes you laugh

Baa Baa Blue Sheep — author’s AI-art generated by Bing Image Creator with the prompt: a cartoon caricature of a sheep with a thick blue fleece

Baa baa blue sheep
have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir,
three bags full
One to knit a jumper
One to knit a scarf
And one to knit a pair of socks
that will make people laugh!

I’ve been wanting to publish this little rhyme on Medium for weeks — not for any literary or intellectual merit, but because it’s a nod to a much-loved nursery rhyme, and I hoped it would live up to its claim and make people laugh.

We could all do with a good laugh these days, right? 😉

But there lay the problem.

In order to have people laugh, I needed to come up with an idea for a pair of socks that would have the desired effect.

I discovered that being creative with words and rhymes is one thing; designing socks is quite another!

I was completely stumped for ideas. Like a sheep tethered to a post.

I found myself returning to my Word doc (I draft my Medium stories in Word before uploading them to the platform) hoping inspiration would miraculously arrive with a…