I came across Louise Crowther’s My Knitted Doll book quite a while ago, whilst searching endlessly for knitted toy patterns, that would potentially scream at me from my laptop screen: ‘BUY ME!. See how well designed, cute and cuddly I am“ Louise’s doll book passed me by. In fact, I’d taken one look and thought, ‘what monstrous, Frankenstein creations are these? With their square heads – why I can easily imagine bolts through their non existent necks, and their spindly legs and their oversized arms and hands, sticking out at a most unnatural angle’ – it was like Louise had patched together her creations using bits of other dolls a la Frankenstein’s monster (like I just said.) And, furthermore, their hairdos were knitted as part of the head, giving an unappealing ‘flat’ quality.

Some time later I was in our local carpet shop, who also sell all things knitting, and spotted, dangling from a hook on the ceiling, one below the next, a collection of Louise Crowther dolls, knitted by one of the staff members and up for sale for £7.50 – not bad when you lay your peepers on the eye watering price tags of the home made knitted dolls on Etsy. And suddenly I changed my mind. There’s nothing like seeing something ‘in the flesh’ to appreciate what can’t be translated in photos.

I ordered My Knitted Doll from Amazon and got started on two dolls for the granddaughters. An unexpected plus of these patterns is that they introduced me to two knitting techniques I’d never come across before – Intarsia (which I now know I mistakenly called Fair Isle – and vice versa – in a previous ancient post) and the kitchener stitch – and what a fiddly, twiddly, diddly process that one is. The intarsia was also a mini nightmare, so much so that, after knitting a dress with an intarsia heart on it, I gave up and knitted a second plain dress instead. The intarsia one wasn’t that bad but I could see that the result was less than stellar (Oh the bane of perfectionism) and that the stitching, on the back of work, definitely looked in danger of falling apart, even with just a bit of playing around with.

I began one doll in one colour scheme then changed my mind. Rather than knit the whole body again, I knitted two more arms, and two more legs, casting on slightly more stitches, and sewed them over the top of the existing arms and legs. This had the pleasing result of sturdier legs so the dolls could actually stand up without much help. Here is a delightful photo of one doll which started off in blue, undergoing the process of turning yellow. Her companion is sporting a mini ‘shrug’ which I later ditched, and her legs became green.

The dolls began life like this, with their intarsia hair and their kitchener stitched heads at the top.

I particularly liked the knitted boots option, along with the buns in the hair. Louise gives us various hairstyles. I finished my dolls in time for Christmas and filled their little bags with chocolate coins for the grandkiddies.

I used DK yarn, instead of the recommended cotton yarn, which resulted in bigger dolls at 14″ tall, instead of 10″. The faces, as always, took an age and I had to stop myself forever ‘tweaking’ them.

I followed the dolls up with an ancient Little Cotton Rabbit pattern I found, which I’d forgotten I had. I lost interest in Julie’s creations way back when and never ‘did’ the rabbit, knitting a monkey instead for son No.2. So I gave the rabbit a go, deciding it would stay with me. This was the start of the project. 

Blog, you will see a body-less head. Can you believe me when I say that the making up and stuffing of that teensy head took two days! Admittedly, it bears little resemblance to Julie’s rabbity head, most noticeably with the addition of my stitched on nose but also because I could not fashion those chubby cheeks. I tried. I used so much stuffing that I wondered if my rabbit head had the properties of Mary Poppin’s handbag. I possibly achieved a certain chubbiness in the cheek on the left but then I gave up, as the yarn simply couldn’t take any more stuffing. To achieve Julie’s nose-like quality, I cheated. I could not make a nose simply by moulding one with stuffing, as advocated by Julie. I threaded a needle with yarn, took it up through the bottom of the head, brough it out at one eye then weaved the yarn across the head to the other eye, took the yarn through the bottom of the head again, pulled on the resulting two yarns, to create an indentation, tied them together and snipped them off. You may see a sort of crease between the eyes. The shaping of the head was also probably a yarn issue. Julie uses wonderful, expensive, soft yarns which are probably malleable – I used bog standard acrylic from left over yarns I’ve had for ages.

Here are the various stages of the making of the rabbit.

A skewered head (not a nice thought) using a double pointed needle. I find this a good method of attaching heads to bodies, keeping them in place whilst you stitch.

Front and back of rabbit. The head looks oversized, probably ‘cos I shoved nearly half a bag of stuffing in it – blog, I kid you not.

I changed the rabbit’s shoes to boots, then found Julie has since brought out a pattern full of shoe variations. The rabbit had a dress using Fair Isle and I also found I had a copy of Julie’s patterns for loads of dresses, so used one of those instead of the pink, dotty one. Why do we knitters put ourselves through these faffy, exasperating procedures? For the end result of course. For the satisfaction of looking at a dress on a rabbit (well, Beatrix Potter got away with it) with a satisfied smile on your face as you ogle your beautiful Fair Isle pattern.

Not exactly like Julie’s, when compared to the pattern but such is a knitter’s life.

My bunny in a dress now accompanies me, as I knit further woolly creations, looking on with what I fancy to be a somewhat wistful but eager to please expression.