FO: Mioux mioux

I love toys. They are just so bloody cute.

My daughter picked out the pattern and the basic colours for the toy as this is going to be a birthday gift for one of her new friends. I hope she likes it even half as much as I do.

The eyes are knit and sewn on. The pattern didn’t give specific instructions for the eyes, and by the looks of the photo she used felt which was cut and glued (a method suggested as an option in the pattern). I wanted something a bit more durable so I knit eye pieces as follows:

CO 2 stitches
Row 1: k1, m1, k1
Row 2: p1, m1 (in purl), p1, m1 (in purl), p1
Row 3 – 7: knit in stocking stitch
Row 8: p2tog, p1, p2tog
Bind off.

I then sewed the eyes to the face and embellished them with highlights. The end result are eyes that look very similar to those shown in the pattern (which I loved), but will hold up better to play.

The crochet flower is from the Mollie Flower pattern, and was made from various sock yarn oddments.

The dress is made from aran weight yarn. It is basically a 32 stitch tube that started with a turned picot hem. I decreased 4 stitches (2 at each underarm) before doing 2 ridges of garter and binding off under the arms. The straps are 3 stitches of garter knit from the back and grafted to the front. The straps are crossed over on the back with 2 cast off stitches between.

After finishing the dress, I decided it wasn’t playful enough and added some simple embroidery using sock yarn. For reference, I did a lazy dazy with a French knot at the centre, used back stitching for the vines, and satin stitch for the leaves.

There is also a two stitch button hole for the tail on the back of the dress. The dress is not removable.

For the head, the pattern has you use a provisional cast on or simply seam up your cast on stitches, and the shaping happens between needles 1 and 2, and 3 and 4 (or what would be in the centre if you were doing this magic loop). I used Judy’s magic cast on for the top of the head and rearranged the increases/decreases to compensate for the change in orientation, making the head much like you’d do the toe of a toe-up sock. The instructions of the ears had the decreases in a similar orientation. Being an avid sock knitter, I found this fought with my natural instincts. Instead, I simply cast on the same number of stitches and decreased like I would when doing a wedge toe on a top-down sock. (See? It always comes back to the socks.)

Details:

Cast on: February 5th, 2012
Cast off: February 9th, 2012
Pattern: Grisig the Cat
Yarn: the body is done in acrylic DK yarns. The eyes are Patons Diploma Gold DK. The dress is Wildcraft aran weight superwash BFL. The nose, whiskers, and dress embroidery are all sock yarn oddments.
Needles: I used the 3mm needles for the cat, the 3.25mm needles for the hem of the dress, and the 3.5mm needles for the rest of the dress. Also used a 2.5mm hook for the flower.
My Raverly project page.

The pattern is straight forward and written in row by row detail. Other than changing the placement of the increases and decreases for the head and ears to compensation for my sock brain, I followed the pattern. I only used the contrast colour for the paws of the cat (the 2 colour version in the pattern has the head/ears in the contrast colour as well), and I used a basic jogless stripe technique to prevent a jog at the colour change. I would advise, however, to stuff the body as you go. The neck is quite small and it would be difficult to stuff the body evenly if you wait until you’ve cast off.