The final touches have now been done and thank goodness no more black for a while!

To the wand I added a skull bead at one end (I've probably played too much Diablo). I needed to trim the fluff from the pipecleaner to insert the wire. To keep it firmly attached, I used a drop of Pinflair glue gel and left it to set for a few hours. I didn't use the 6 rows of stocking stitch as is the book, it looked too much like a maggot that thick. I went for 3. I also bound the wand near the skull end

I've also included a jar of green slime. The green slime is washing-up liquid. It took me a while to realise that washing-up liquid would make rather good slime, possibly as it is the opposite.

Elizabeth needs a satchel to keep her ingredients in and this was fairly straightforward.

Her broomstick is as simple as you could make it; pipecleaner wrapped in knitting, wool bound to the end. There are a number of sticthes through the binding and the knitting underneath to keep the bristles firmly in place.

If there is one thing you can say about Elizabeth, it's she'll never be cold.

The shawl is a very simple yarn over/ K2tog pattern which gives a nice crocheted effect.

The fingerless mittens were too small when knitted with 2.25mm needles, so I used 3mm. This might have something to do with my hand modifications

The only things left to do now are her satchel, wand and broomstick.

All cast on and ready to go.

The instructions for the shoes stated 2.25mm needles. Once I had knitted a sole it was apparent that these were too small. So I knitted them with 3mm needles. A modification I made was the buckle. I was unhappy with the one suggested in the pattern - this was a strand of yarn wrapped around a finger twice and button-hole stitched around - the resulting buckle does not hold its shape. I opted for using button-hole stitched pipecleaners.

There is a mistake (I am sure) in the slipper pattern. I was a little unsure about the stated method of turning the heel - sl1, turn, ytb, sl1, yfwd. This results in large holes (2nd photo). The more usual method - yfwd s1 turn yfwd sl1 - does not (3rd photo). If you sketch it out, the first method means that the yarn crosses over itself, in the second method it does not.

I opted for the second method of turning as I didn't believe the one in the book could possibly be correct.

When the slippers were finished, I added a small jingle bell to the ends. I found the jingle bells on Amazon, but I'm sure they're available elsewhere.

Elizabeth's hat is done.
It was straightforward and the only modification I've made is to replace the knitted ribbons at the back (for tying the hat on) with chain cords as they looked better.

The brim, however, is rather wavy and might need to meet a damp cloth and the iron.

Extra long coloured pipecleaners arrived in the post, so I unpicked Sam's hat and replaced the pipecleaners with dark blue ones. Being longer there were fewer joins and being thinner these were less noticeable. It was easier to stitch and the result is much neater.

I thought it best that I start with Elizabeth's underwear, so I skipped a couple of pages.

In the photographs to the left, the examples in the light yarn are from the book. (The lighter yarn was used to show the stitching.)

The book uses K2togtbl (knit two together through back loops) exclusively for a left-leaning decrease. As a single stitch this is not an issue. But when it is part of a line, it can look really messy. I chose to use SSK as it is far tidier.

There is also a mistake in the pattern. For row 33 of the left-hand side of the neckline it states K1, P1, K2, this is wrong. It should be row 33: K2, P1, K1.

I have a tub of 'skins' all pre-prepared (ie I'd had a binge knit and knitted a few).


So the first step in starting Elizabeth Witch was selecting a body, arms and pair of feet.


The hands needed to be knitted up, as it was in making up the pirate that I discovered the "fingers problem" as detailed in an earlier post.

The body was then stuffed.

I made the feet using the new size of sole template and attached them.


Then the hands were attached to the arms and the arms sewn up, carefully packing the stuffing around the pipecleaners, and attached.

In this photograph, the hand as knitted from the book pattern is on the left. The modified pattern is on the right. As you can see, the original pattern consists of only a couple of rows for each digit. In mine, the number of rows is greatly increased.

Here shows each pattern with the fingers sewn up. In the original pattern (left) the fingers are incredibly fiddly to sew and very very thin and twig-like when done. The modified pattern allows for neater sewing up and more realistic finger shape. I do not know if the pattern in the book is inaccurate.

The modified version:

Where the original pattern says something along the lines of:
Row a  cast on 8 sts, K9, yfwd, s1, turn
Row b  yfwd, sl1, purl to end
Row c  cast off 6 sts, knit to end

The modified version adds 4 rows between b and c:
Row a  cast on 8 sts, K9, yfwd, s1, turn
Row b  yfwd, sl1, purl to end
Row c  knit
Row d  purl
Row e  K9, yfwd, s1, turn
Row f   yfwd, sl1, purl to end
Row g  cast off 6 sts, knit to end

Next came the belt. This was straightforward. The buckle is made from a covered pipecleaner.

The sword belt was a little trickier. After a number of rows, it became obvious that the wrong size needles had been stated (3.00 mm rather than 2.25) as the belt was turning out a lot wider that would fit the buckle. The buckle was covered card. As some card appears through the cover, I dug out some silver mirror card and used that. There was a row missing from the beginning of the pattern for the buckle cover without which, the template cannot be covered. The sword sleeve was simply a tube sewn to the belt.

I used a grey yarn as I did not have a mid-brown different from that I had used for the trousers. So he has silver buckles.

The sword was an interesting pattern. It is an I-tube. It was interesting firstly as it showed up a deficiency in my vast needle collection - I actually don't have any 2.25 mm double-pointed needles. I used 2.5 mm; the result was fine.

Secondly the pattern was interesting as it omitted the length to knit the I-tube for the blade of the sword. That was easily remedied by referring to the length of the pipecleaner needed to finish it.

Finally, a couple of gold rings as a finishing touch and they were a right pain to get on the fingers.