Sometimes, you're just too tired to concentrate on intricate knitting or fluffy yarn, and want something fairly straightforward and quick to knit up.

These mushroom keyrings have been perfect. The shaping, including the ribs on the underside of the cap, follows a logical pattern. The spots are French knots. And there is the added pleasure of making up colour combinations.

Far, far better than a scarf.

And here we have a litter of kittens.

The Siamese was not particularly successful, but the Grey was.

Interestingly, with the Grey in mind, using red wool and lengthening the muzzle would produce a rather good fox.

Now to decide what to do next .....

The trouble with a cold snap, especially when you are tired, is cold hands.

The trouble with these fingerless gloves (adapted, modified and corrected from a pattern) is that I never seem to have them for long. They always end up on other people's hands.

So I needed to knit up a new pair and this time I chose brown in the hope that they might remain in my possession just a little longer than usual.

Of course, this has meant that the weather has turned warmer ....

So here we have a mini-kitty, a tabby, ermmm ... a tab-let.

I'd forgotten just how many pieces were in the kitten, so it was a little fiddly at times in mini size.

The pattern was a fairly simple reduction as no conversion to chunky snowflake was involved and the shaping was not too involved.

A reminder of the original patterns is here.

Having successfully checked and re-checked the mini-pig pattern, it's time to move on to something else.

The Not-So-Small Child has requested a kitty, so now for a mini-kitty pattern.

Now to halve the measurements for a smaller, cheaper, more saleable piggy.


Update:

Mini-pig:

I've written before about knitting where tension is not an issue. That post is here.

But there are times when tension is very important, usually garments.

My latest project is to be a fluffy pink pig based on Alan Dart's Sirdar pattern which uses predominantly snowflake DK yarn.

Now, the colour (or anything like it) has been discontinued, so an alternative is required.

I went for Sirdar's snowflake chunky instead, which is usually knitted up on 5mm needles.

An adaption of the pattern was required, especially as a plain DK yarn is also used in conjunction.

The tension for snowflake DK on 3mm needles is 26st over 36rows on a standard square, and chunky is 18st over 24rows on 4mm, a simple ratio between the two of 1.4.

Adapting the pattern meant a little maths as both width and length have to be adjusted and also allowing for shaping - sketching things out was very helpful here, especially for the turn rows shaping the top of the head.

So I now had the pattern adapted for the new yarn.

Of course, things were never going to be that easy, not knowing me!

There are TWO errors I made. It would have been a lot easier to sort out one. It would have been even easier had I knitted tension squares to begin with!

First mistake, I inadvertently knitted the snowflake on 3mm needles - I'd been using 3mm needles for just about everything for so long, it seemed natural and I didn't even realise.

Second mistake, I didn't check that the plain DK yarn I was using would knit up without distortion on 3 mm needles. It doesn't.

It would have been so much easier had I simply done this to begin with:

A very important lesson hard learned!

And here he is, an enchanting wizard:

Well, that's enough of that. I feel quite exhausted and more than a little tired of these dolls. So, before I start the princess, it's time for a fluffy pink pig.

All cast on and ready to go.

Coulomb's feet are based on Rosie Rabbit's from Alan Dart's Animal Magic (sadly now, hard to come by because, yes, you've guessed it, Sirdar discontinued most of the colours.):

Coulomb's nose is actually Rosie's tail!

And Coulomb's hands are based on Gordon Gorilla's (same source):

(I've scanned in the pictures of the animals from Animal Magic. They're here.)

So the secret of Coulomb is that, instead of reinventing the wheel, I took bits of other patterns and adapted them to my needs (rather like Object Oriented Programming - oh yes, I have now linked knitting to computer programming!!).

Finally, after sewing up what seemed to be a thousand seams, but were in fact only six, the sleeves were fitted in and stars embroidered on.

Looking at the cloak now, I think some more stars are in order, but as I am sick of the cloak at present, they can wait until the hat is done.

And that's the next task....

All cast on and ready to go.