I didn’t have daughters, I had sons, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t make long legged dolls and toys for them.  Forty years ago I made the first long legged dolls for their cousins in England. My sons were not yet born and I was in a hurry.  Now I’m back making long legged toys again, and it’s fun, and they keep reappearing. Any excuse will do.

Long lost in the cupboard.

When I was making the long legged dolls in the seventies, I worked by hand or machine in fabrics, felts and yarns.  Recently we found one of the fabric dolls in a cupboard. She had somehow hidden herself away for thirty or more years.  Photographed for posterity’s sake, she was bidden to the bin. Her dress is torn and shredded, ready to be reused as part of a patchwork quilt, and yet she has refused to be destroyed.  She’s hiding once more, in her underwear, in a box in the spare room.

At the moment I am experimenting with pointy-nosed creatures that look more like meercats than bears, dogs or rabbits. Each comes with their own sense of being.  I started off knitting them in body pieces and am working towards knitting them in the round as I want to avoid the stitching up process… like I said, I’m in a hurry.  I like to shape the body as I am knitting, a decrease here and an increase there.  As I feel moved to make changes, the critter shapes itself.

MBW