Finger Puppets

by Mandy
(South Africa)

This week has been our Ff week.

One particularly cold, wet day I was wracking my brain to keep Jenna (who's 4 in July) happy and busy inside. Finger Puppets came to mind.

We got out various wool colours and I knitted two finger puppets. The first was plain coloured, and Jenna chose buttons for the eyes. Then I looped some cotton on it's head for hair. Wool would work better for hair as the thin cotton was too insignificant. Older children could knit and sew it themselves.

The next puppet was more adventurous and "technical" as the face colours were knitted in, but for the novice knitter, lips, eyes and hair could be sewn on later.

Basic pattern for the grey puppet:

Cast on 13 stitches and knit until long enough to reach the second joint of index finger. Cast off. Sew up the side and top seams and sew on button eyes.

This was just wide enough for Jenna's finger. The fancy face puppet had 16 stitches cast on which was too big for my finger and fitted my husband's little finger. If, like ours, yours is too big for the finger sew one or two stitches along the bottom to narrow the opening.

Tip:

Make sure your casting on/off rows are loose otherwise the finger opening can be too tight and narrower than the puppet's body.



Hope you have as much fun as we did.