Bunny Odile

My friend knitted an adorable little stuffed animal bear. She got the pattern from the book Mouche & Friends by Cinthia Vallet, which includes instructions for knitting multiple different animals, all starting at the nose and completed without any seaming at the end.

I knit a much simpler version of a stuffed bear, many years ago. I dug it out after our first granddaughter was born, and found that moths had attacked it on the back. I patched it up and put it with the toys to have on hand when she visits.

I wanted to try making one of the cute seamless animals in the Mouche & Friends book, but I was not sure about buying the entire book. It turns out Cinthia has a pattern for a bunny that can be purchased as a single PDF. The Bunny Odile pattern includes instructions for a little dress or sweater, sleep suit, and tiny socks.

This small and portable project seemed like a good activity for the multiple day car ride from Minnesota to Arizona at the end of December, and for working on while we were there. The pattern uses fingering weight yarn, which is what I use for socks. I have a lot of that. I had one skein of Patons Kroy Sock yarn in a natural color that was only enough for one sock, and was a good color for a bunny. This brand of sock yarn is on the thick side. When I tried cranking a sock using this type of yarn, it came out very dense. However it is perfect for a stuffed animal.

When I tried to find the yarn end from the middle of the ball, I got a giant yarn barf. Ugg.

The pattern uses size zero needles, the smaller than I have used before. Casting on at the nose with double pointed needles was fiddly, but once there were some increases it went smoothly. The yarn does not slip on the bamboo needles.

The ears were knitted on to the head by picking up four stitches and then increasing, while the stitches at the neck were on hold. I switched to a magic loop needle in the middle of the first ear, since all those double pointed needles every which way were annoying. After knitting most of the head and part of an ear, the face looked more like a dolphin than a rabbit. I thought (hoped?) that once it was blocked and stuffed, the face would smooth out and not have such a big bump above the nose.

The second ear came out longer than the first ear. Oops. I think I know what happened, but I was not going to fix it.

There are suggestions for stuffing as you go, or waiting until the end so you can block the project first. I decided to soak just the head in water and let it dry, so I could smooth out the bump and stuff the head. I stretched out the shorter ear some while the yarn was wet. Everything looked better after it was dry.

The head looked more like a bunny after it was blocked and stuffed.

The arms were knitted on next, followed by the main part of the body and then the tail.

After completing the body, I soaked it from the neck down so I could put the stuffing in the arms and upper body. The legs were knitted on after that. The last steps were blocking the legs, adding the stuffing, and then closing up the final opening between the legs.

This project (and all of Cindy’s animals) are designed to have minimal yarn ends, which are woven in as you go. Once the final opening was closed up the project was completely done. I finished the bunny on our last day in Arizona. I took photos of the bunny sitting on the RV sofa and kitchen counter as we prepared for the journey home.

Riding in the car for three days (plus an extra day in Omaha waiting for a storm in Minnesota to be over) was a good time to start knitting a dress for the bunny.

I had some leftover sock yarn for bunny clothes. I neglected to notice that the pattern says how many grams are needed for the dress, and that according to a note on the yarn label documenting how many grams were left, I did not have enough for the dress. It turned out that the bunny clothes are supposed to be knit with size two needles. I did not have any size two needles with me, so I went ahead with size one, and not realizing I was not going to have enough yarn.

I got the yoke and a shorter version of the sleeves done before I determined there was no way I would be able to finish either the dress or the shorter shirt version of the pattern. I considered finishing the skirt part of the dress with some other yarn, possibly the rest of the gray yarn I used for the bunny.

Later after we got home, I decided to order another skein of the Supersocke 4-fach Highway Color yarn. I would only use a bit of it to finish the dress, and there would be plenty left after that to crank a pair of socks. I took a photo of the bunny with the bear from years ago.

While waiting for the yarn to finish the dress, I started another dress using some other leftover sock yarn that had enough left.

The dress has a fancy pattern that is supposed to be near the hem, as shown in the photo below. I was not sure I liked it or that it was worth the bother, and also I realized that if I followed the instructions exactly the dress would be pretty short. That may have been because I was using size one needles instead of size two.

I ripped out the rows of fancy pattern and continued knitting plain rows, many more than the pattern indicated, until I thought it was long enough. It is snug (due to using smaller needles than recommended) but it fits.

Following is a photo of the bunny with the dress that matches the pair of socks I cranked on my circular sock machine with the same yarn. The socks have faded some.

When the other yarn came I continued knitting the first dress. This yarn is thinner than the blue yarn. I skipped the fancy pattern near the hem on this dress too, as the self striping yarn provides enough interest, and I was too lazy.

This dress is even more snug due to the smaller needles and thinner yarn, but it just barely fits.

This bunny might be a good gift for granddaughter Blair’s third birthday in June. Or maybe given her habit of removing all doll clothes, I will just keep it for myself until she is older.