Little Miss Molly Dog

My niece is doggy crazy. Real, plushie, animated or doodled, it really doesn't matter - she loves them all. So when it came to her second birthday, it was only natural to crochet her a dog of some kind. There are lots of patterns out there on the internet, but I really wanted to crochet something from this book that my mum had bought me for my birthday one year. The book is "Cute Crocheted Animals" by Emma Varnum, and can be found here.



The book itself is filled with easy to read patterns for a handful of animals - cats, rabbits, etc - and a lovely selection of outfits to crochet an entire wardrobe for your creations. The animals work up at around 10 to 12 inches, depending on the hook used, so in theory could also be used with many of the Build-a-Bear costumes.

At the time my niece had to most adorable little beagle puppy called Molly, and so I decided to make her a matching Molly dog. The book, as wonderful as it is, doesn't have a pattern for a dog, however!! This greatly surprised me, as a dog is probably one of the more popular crochet animals, surely? Up there with rabbits and cats, I'm sure. While the book didn't have a dog it *did* have a fox pattern, and so I decided to use that as a base. The colours and markings were almost perfect, however to be a beagle the ears definitely needed to go. I could probably have free-handed a pair of floppy ears, but I decided to be lazy and instead to search for a free pattern, and I found a perfect one on the Hello Stitches blog (the pattern is for an entire beagle, though I only used the ears!).



Apart from the ears, I followed the pattern "by the book", and I thoroughly enjoyed crocheting this little lady. The pattern was easy to follow, and she worked up pretty quickly! I can't say I'm a fan of carrying yarn for changing colours, but that's personal preference - I find it an awful waste of yarn. That said, it's better than the whole thing unravelling, so what can you do?

When it came to the wardrobe, I couldn't only do one outfit. Every little girl I know likes to be able to dress and undress their dolls and toys, so I made two outfits with the intention of making more at later points (which I still haven't done - Ooops!!) All of the clothing patterns I used can be found in the book, along with many more accessories, such as shoes, ties, etc. So this little doggo has a casual outfit, complete with shopping bag, for when she's popping about running errands, and then a sparkly, frilly outfit for going to parties! Maybe I went a bit gender-stereotypical with that (bad Tig!) but there was so much to choose from!

As with the plushie, the clothes pattern worked up very quickly and were easy to follow, although I have to admit to getting a little bored by the time I was making the second outfit. But then, I was using up scrap yarns for that outfit that I wasn't particularly fond of. The crazy thing is, I later went on to make my daughter a matching Molly cardigan, and she's worn it quite a lot, so even though I found the small one boring and didn't like the yarn it can't have been that bad!!