Knitted Little Witches

Double, double toil and trouble...

Okay, I'm probably exaggerating but these cutesy little witches were a little more fiddly that they might appear. I got the pattern as a PDF from This Cosy Life's Etsy shop, which specialises in Waldorf-inspired knitted toys.

The first challenge was that the witches in the pattern were made using wooden dolls from US store Hobby Lobby, which is kind of a long way from Lancashire. As a substitute, I ordered no less than three different types of wooden doll from Panduro Hobby. The 7cm high dolls with a 3cm diameter head turned out to be the best match.

The dress and hat are knitted on double-pointed needles, which regular readers will know, I still haven't mastered. Hence, I used the magic loop techniques with circular needles and a long cable. It worked pretty well, although you do end up with odd numbers of stitches on each needle.

The dresses and hats were made from scraps of aran weight yarn in my stash and were knitted on 4.5mm needles. I had to adapt the dress pattern a little as the shape of my doll was more tapered than the one the designer had used.

The trickiest part is the hat. It starts from one stitch, becomes i-cord and then moves into circular knitting. I'd almost got the hang of it by the third one.

The great thing about the pattern (and why I continue to persevere with knitting in the round) is that the making up was a breeze. For each dress, there was one end to weave in and then you use the cast off end to secure the dress around the doll's neck. The ends of the hat were equally easy to conceal and then I glued the hat to the doll's head using Bostik all purpose glue.

To finish, I added some small embellishments, starting with a star button on each hat - a different colour for each witch. For the dresses, one witch got three tiny Papermania spotty buttons, one got a pumpkin button and one got a bunny embellishment.

This is exactly the sort of project I like - quick, cute and a little bit spooky. Now, if I only I can think of something to do with those leftover wooden dolls....

Melx