Gingerbread Man and House

You may recognize the style of this Gingerbread Man and his house if you follow this blog. It is by the same designer as the Dragon in the Castle. You can purchase the pattern here.

This is the most decorative of her patterns I've made to date. In some places I did use buttons instead of embrodiery. I've commented several times that while I can embrodier on cloth I find embrodiering on yarn to be a much bigger challenge and where possible I find alternatives. I will say I loved her directions for making the candy canes. It was an easy and really amazing effect that I can see using again. Her directions for surface crohcet were the best I've encountered to date as well. All and all I learned quite a few useful techniques that I'll be able to apply to other projects.

This was almost the last gift to go out in the Christmas box. There is always the temptation to put one more item in the box.

Gingerbread Baby Hand Puppet

I was looking for a crochet project to go along with one of my Christmas present books Jan Brett's Gingerbread Babyand I came across an out of print book of fairy tale and nursery rhyme puppets. The booklet is Crochet Storybook Puppets by Sheila Leslie. It was printed by House of White Birches in 1991.

There is another out of print leaflet from Leisure Arts, Story Book Puppets to Crochet Leaflet 242 by Judy Bolin that generally pops up when you start searching for story book puppets which is why I decided I'd provide as many details as I could about this one for those of you who are interested. I own both, but this one is the more interesting of the two to me. I wish I had a copy before I made my Goldilocks puppets as the bear patterns are adorable.

This booklet includes patterns for The Gingerbread Man and the Fox, Bo Peep and her Sheep, the Frog Prince, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Grandma and the Wolf. I mention this because I know from my experience the more information you have when looking for an out of print pattern the more likely you are to find it.

On to the Gingerbread Man or Baby in the case. I love Jan Brett's books and when I found this pattern the match seemed a good one. This is one of the most unique crochet puppet patterns I've made to date. It is almost a cross between a hand puppet and a finger puppet in that the legs are formed so you can make the puppet "run" by using your fingers.

Most of the hand puppets I've made have left the bottom of the puppet open for than hand to manipulate the puppet. This one was unique because it left the back open so you would have access the the feet to make them run. It was an interesting design and one I've not seen before.

I've been finding it challenging to buy middle shades of brown yarn lately. I can find light brown and dark brown but those middle shades where many of my ami and puppet projects live are becoming a more challenging find. I wish I'd have kept a record of the brands and shades I used before but now I'm left scrambling trying to find new options. For this project I tried Hobby Lobby's Yarn Bee Soft Secret Yarn in Cognac. I hadn't used this yarn before, but it does remind me a bit of Caron Simply Soft. It wouldn't be my first choice for a project like this but as I said color choices for brown have been hard to find.

If I do make the Gingerbread Man again I'm hopeful that more shades of brown in more tradition acrylics become available again as I think it would work better for this project.

I'm making the Fox with Hobby Lobby's Yarn Bee Breathe Deep Yarn in Clay and so far this has been a better match for puppets. This was the closest yarn I could find to a fox color when looking through traditional acrylic brands. Sadly this Yarn Bee yarn has extremely limited colors. I was lucky the clay was at least close to the fox color I needed as I hadn't found anyting in the traditional Caron Pounders, Red Heart SS, or Joan brand yarsn that would work for either the Gingerbread Man or the Fox.