This week’s shipment of worry eaters and other therapy-doll bits to Knit-for-Nowt! The knitted underpants tie in with the NSPCC’s Pants Rule. Therapists use them with dolls to illustrate and talk about privacy and good/bad touching, about telling an appropriate adult when something feels wrong, and in their work with children who have suffered sexual abuse. The underpants can be knitted in various sizes to fit the Knit-for-Nowt worry monsters (patterns here and here) and go particularly well on long-legged worry eaters which are easy for children to dress and undress by stuffing the flexible limbs down the knicker-legs!
Helen’s working on a design for a set of easy-to-make finger puppets with different facial expressions to help therapists and children talk about feelings. It’d be great to eventually get the set printed on fabric so they’re easy to cut out and sew, along with ones for “family” and “people who help us” (professionals children may encounter like police officers, solicitors, doctors, etc). There’s a lot of work to do in Adobe Illustrator before that happens, though! There are tons of paper resources out there for this sort of work with children, and a few sets can be bought on Etsy, but I didn’t really find any free templates or downloads for sewing these types of finger puppet. This one is a basic one with a happy face on one side and sad on the other, hand-embroidered on stiff felt using DMC Perle.
Phyllis added a caterpillar worry eater to her range this week. Knit-for-Nowt has a new range of patterns available for knitting/crocheting Animal Worry Eaters. She improvised this one based on the Knit-for-Nowt “Candy the Caterpillar” (crochet) pattern, which uses a double strand where Phyllis used a single strand.
If you’re a knitter feeling creative and lucky, the charity is running an animal worry eater lucky dip until November 2021. All you have to do is make a worry eater using one of the new animal patterns. Enter as many times as you like!
