The Windy Woods Girls

This is a little image I have scanned in from an old Noddy book which was published in the 1950s. The pictures in it are beautiful – all full colour and totally endearing, by a Dutch illustrator named Beek. These littlies are nine dolls who are entrusted to Noddy by their mother to be taken on a picnic to Windy Woods where they eat “egg sandwiches, tomato sandwiches, banana sandwiches. Chocolate biscuits, ginger biscuits. Fruit cake and ginger cake. Lemonade and orangeade.” Sounds like my kind of picnic.

I haven’t made any little dolls or soft toys in ages. I am still slowly working on a commissioned doll but apart from that my crafting has all but stopped for now. I am busy enough not to miss it exactly, but occasionally I get a little pang of longing to start making little characters again, especially when I stumble across an illustration such as this. I think I might try to find the time to make nine dolls inspired by these girls some time next year. Each one is so cuddly looking.

Today I visited a friend from my old mother’s group who has just had a new baby – her third girl. A couple of other friends from mother’s group were there too with their kids of various ages from 3 and a half down. All girls. All lovely enough to totally melt your heart. And if you include the two girls who are in utero (mine and another who is due in two weeks) it adds up to nine girls. I think I may know where I will get the dolls’ names from.

I haven’t developed a new pattern for the longest time. The last time I sat down to try I found that I was completely at a loss — I have been making creatures using almost exactly the same pattern for a year and a half, not that I’ve made hundreds of them, but surely it’s time to try something new. Actually, now that I look at them, it wouldn’t be too difficult to adapt the existing pattern to make a similar cuddly doll. Phew! I may just escape from scary pattern design once again!