A Suffragette-inspired Worry Monster...

There has been a lot of publicity about the Suffragettes recently. Thanks to them, February 2018 is the centenary of some women being allowed to vote in the UK. They were given the right to vote if they were over 30 and they, or their husbands, met a property qualification. That was a partial  victory for eight million women. It was another 10 years before The Equal Franchise Act was passed in 1928 giving women equal voting rights with men. Fifteen million women over the age of 21 gained the right to vote in elections. The rest is history.

I decided to knit a Worry Monster in the Suffragette colours of purple and green, or as close as I had in my wool bag. The variegated colours are actually purple and green knitted together. The result is lovely in real life, though it looks a bit brown on my computer. I enjoyed doing a little bit of Swiss darning to make her lips slightly more feminine. I also added some perplexed eyebrows but stopped short of adding a monobrow. That would have been too cruel! 

I worked out how to add legs to a basic pattern already on the Knit-for-Nowt website. It was actually very easy to do and I have offered to add my amended pattern to those already in their collection. There is an appeal there for more patterns, so if anyone is a good pattern designer, we need your services! These Worry Monsters and Therapy Puppets are used with traumatised children and there is a waiting list of therapists who have asked for some.

I have just sent this little collection off to Knit-for-Nowt. It was lovely to receive an appreciative email back from Clare who runs the project. Some charities are definitely better than others at making their helpers feel useful. Most will acknowledge a parcel. But the odd one leaves people guessing or asking whether their parcels have arrived. Sadly, I tend to put them to the back of my list of places to donate to. Mini rant over!

What began as a small project to cheer myself up at the end of a gruelling 2017 has turned into something much bigger. Clare jumped at my offer to write some new patterns. I have 2 or 3 patterns in mind and, being a natural worrier myself, I am testing each pattern before I let it loose into the world. I was even dreaming last night about how to add certain features. I think I need to get out more!