Knitted Ferdinand Fox

Foxy obsession...

I have recently replaced my owl obsession with a fox obsession and I've been looking for a cute one to knit for a while. So, when I saw Val Pierce's Ferdinand fox pattern in Lets Knit magazine, I decided to give it a whirl.


The fox in the magazine was made using Stylecraft Life DK. I went for a more luxe fox using Rowan Kid Classic that I bought from Laughing Hens. They were even nice enough to go through the shade card and choose a suitably foxy colour for me.


The fox was knitted on 4mm straight needles as a traditional toy knit in separate pieces. So that was two arms, two legs, a body, a bib, a head, a tail, four ear pieces and a nose. Phew! Much of it was very similar in terms of increasing, knitting even and decreasing in stocking stitch.


I made a couple of minor alterations to the design - I missed out the black tail tip and back of ears as I thought the fox looked better in just orange and cream. I also used safety eyes rather than embroidered ones.


I exercised my usual discipline in making up by sewing and stuffing each piece as it was knitted. I back stitched most of the pieces as (1) I find stocking stitch unrewarding on shaped pieces, and (2) you can't tell on a toy anyway.



Dismembered fox parts

Having dutifully made up all the body parts, I found myself strangely procrastinating over sewing the fox together. Once I finally got down to it on a rainy Saturday morning (not that there's been any other kind in the UK of late), I worked out the problem. It was hard.


I don't have much faith in my arm and leg positioning anyway, but I looked carefully at the magazine photos and got them roughly correct. Then for the head. Wobbly head syndrome is the bane of toy construction. I toyed with inserting a dowel or pipecleaner to hold it up, but DH, who is an expert on model construction, thought it just needed more stitches. About a gazillion of them. Similar issue with the tail - to make the fox balance you need to attach a fair amount of the surface area of the tail to the body.


Finally, Ferdinand behaved himself and sat up straight like a good fox. To finish him, I knitted his black nose and sewed it on with a bit of light padding. I embroidered his eyebrows and then ran a length of cream yarn along the line between the orange and cream sections on his head to define his snout.

I'm surprised you can see me for all that wool in the background

Ferdinand is about 8 inches sitting and I find myself quite pleased that he: (a) broadly resembles the fox in the magazine, and (b) is pretty sweet.

Melx