She's really the reason I started this project, this little knitting pattern design business. Of course I love to come up with knitting patterns in general. I'm a maky-maky kind of girl after all. I like to make things, because it makes me happy. So I'm loving thing project (how could I not love to sit around thinking up and knitting things from my head?). But it all started with the doll.
When the original Eliza doll was published, I was thrilled. It was exciting having something I made appear in a magazine. Even thought I've done quite a bit of freelance work for all sorts of publications, both in print and online, I still get a little thrill when I see my name at the top of some article I've written or photograph I've published. And Eliza was a double-whammy, both an article that I wrote and a pattern I created, all in one.
But I've been frustrated, almost from the start, at how hard it was for knitters to get access to Eliza. After all, I made her up so that people could knit her. Which brings us to Eleanor.
Eleanor looks very similar to Eliza, they wear the same size clothes, the same kind of hair and felted body, but the pattern is different. Better, I think. She's knit in the round the way you would knit a raglan bottom up sweater (something I didn't know about when I knit Eliza). She's also stuffed densely with wool batting instead of the more complicated way I did it the first time around. And she has feet (yay for short rows!). But at heart she's still what Eliza was. Something for my girl to cuddle and love that I could make for her. And, as I said, making things makes me happy.
She's up on Ravelry and can also be found at my new, very beautiful - thanks to my oh so talented husband - website, Birch Hollow Cottage. We've got a blog over there and a facebook page and a pinterest account and it's all feeling pretty exciting and new around here. Please hop over and check us out, troll around, and let me know what you think. There are even a few little secret links on there too, if you can find them :)