Friday 2 January 2015

Some things aren't perfect - a bit of French knitting whimsy



Little Imp was given a french knitter for Christmas. Not the sort I remember having as a kid, this one was big and plasticy, with twirling spools and other attachments.
Little Imp struggled with it all until we worked out that if she just used her hands instead of all the attachments she could knit all by herself. Just like kids did in the 'old days' (ha!).

I helped a bit, but after a bit of perseverance she had a tube we could turn into a cat - just like the one pictured on the cover of the box the knitter came in (well kind of!).


No instructions in the box for how to make said cat, but we muddled our way through, collecting all our ingredients from the craft box - pipe cleaners, felt triangles for ears, goggly eyes, stuffing and glue.

We stuffed the tube..

We tied off the top third to create the neck between the head and body...

We poked a (pink) pipe cleaner through the stuffing to create the upper legs/arms, and threaded a (blue) pipe cleaner through the base for the lower legs. I folded over a small section on all of the pipe cleaner ends to get rid of the sharp pointy bit. The blue legs we made quite a bit longer to help the cat sit up and balance (see pic further below).

Short sparkly pipe cleaners were threaded through on the face & twisted over and around each other for whiskers and the felt triangles were pinched in a bit to create an ear shaped curve and positioned with a liberal amount of glue.

The green pipe cleaner was twirled around a pencil for curly whirly-ness and looped in near the bottom to create a tail.

A stray green pom pom was located by Little Imp during my tail attaching and proclaimed to be required as a belly button (because all cats have to have belly buttons apparently).
Two googly eyes were glued in place where they belong...,

And the third eye you may have noticed in the 'ingredients' pile at the beginning? Well, apparently some cats also have an eye on the end of their tails!

Hello Whimsy Cat;)