Knitting the Cute

Fiona Goble is an unstoppable monster designer of theme doll knitting patterns. She's published books of patterns for a number of sets of dolls. They're amazingly detailed and very, very cute. And as a bonus, all these books also contain a child's version of the illustrated story they are based on.

You can knit your very own Knit Your Own Royal Wedding. I love that Charles looks slightly dour and that a couple of the corgis are included.

You can knit your own nativity scene with Knitivity: Create Your Own Christmas Scene. Those sheep are just too adorable.

Or if you prefer to stick with secular holiday ornaments, as I do...

Goble has offered us a way to knit the twelve days of Christmas with The Twelve Knits of Christmas.

There's also 'Twas the Knits Before Christmas.

And then there's Fiona Gobel's Noah's Knits: Create the Story of Noah's Ark with 16 Knitted Projects, in which Noah wears a sou'wester. The book probably doesn't include every species of animal on the planet, but I predict that you'll feel as though it did by the time you're done knitting two of all the patterns included. Animals do seem to be Gobel's strong suit.

Will I be making any of these dolls or toys myself? Probably not. They don't quite meet something I call the Utility Quotient. By which I mean that everything I decide to make has to be useful enough to justify the hours put into it. And anyway my decorating tastes don't run towards the cute. I bet they'd be great for little kids to play with, but I don't have any children. Though conversely, if I had children, I would probably not have the time to make the toys.

I do have a friend who collects British Royal memorabilia and who might just swoon for joy if I made her a set of the Royal Wedding dolls (one of her favourite gifts that she ever got from me was a book of Charles and Diana paper dolls that I found at a Value Village for $1, and she told me she forces everyone who comes into her house to look at it), but much as I like to see her that happy, it still seems not worth all that effort.

I do look forward to seeing whatever book Fiona Goble publishes next, though. I may not be into cute toys myself, but I'm not made of iron either.