first signs of spring

February 8, 2013April 30, 2026 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)30 Comments

Thanks so much for all the kind comments, emails and suggestions for helping Toby get through the rest of the winter. I am hopeful that things will improve once the warmer weather and longer days of spring arrive and seeing as the first blossoms have opened on our old plum tree in the last few days this now feels a little closer!

It’s been a busy week here and I had a lovely day on Tuesday at my first ever workshop ‘teaching’ session. I woke up really early in the morning and was feeling really nervous before we started, but I was lucky to have the nicest group of ladies turn up and we all chatted and knitted and made mini bunnies. Thanks so much to Susan, Jackie, Emma, Esther, Iolanda and Rose for coming along and making my nervousness evaporate!

To help take my mind off feeling nervous I had a play around with some yarn at the crack of dawn on tuesday and came up with a little teeny tiny dress pattern for the mini bunnies. If you’d like to make one the pattern is over here with the rest of my free patterns.

Thanks again for all of the kind messages about Toby. He’ll move on from this rocky patch when he is ready to and in the meantime I’ll just do my best to keep life calm and reduce stress for him. If there is one thing I’ve learned in the last 11 years it is to take
each day one at a time and not assume the bad bits will last forever, so far that kind of thinking has worked anyway 🙂

Have a good weekend x

itty bitty dress free pattern

February 8, 2013October 17, 2025 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)8 Comments

This is a pattern to make a dress for a very tiny toy (see here).

It can be made from scraps of yarn, sock yarn or 4ply is best. In order to make it fit, please use the same needle size that you used to make your mini bunny. For instance, the mini bunnies above were knitted from Debbie Bliss cashmerino aran yarn on 3.25mm needles and so I’ve used 3.25mm needles for the dresses.

Abbreviations:

K: Knit

P: Purl

K2tog: Knit 2 stitches together.

YFON: Yarn forward over needle – makes a stitch. Start with the working yarn at the back of the work, bring it over the top of the right hand needle to the front and back under the right hand needle again to the back so making a loop them work the next stitch as indicated in the pattern.

SSK: Slip, Slip, Knit. Slip a stitch (as if to knit it) to the right-hand needle, slip a second stitch in the same way, slip both stitches back to the left-hand needle and knit them together through the back loops.

Pattern:

Cable cast on 28 stitches, leaving a long tail for seaming the back of the dress with later.

row 1: Knit

row 2: Knit

row 3: Knit

rows 4-8: Beginning and ending with Purl rows, work 5 rows of stocking stitch (alternate purl and knit rows)

row 9: K2, (k2tog) 12 times, K2 (16 stitches)

row 10: Purl

row 11: K4, yfon, ssk, K4, K2tog, yfon, K4

row 12: P4, purl into back of next stitch (leaving an eyelet for the arm hole), P6, purl into back of next stitch (leaving another eyelet for the arm hole), P4

row 13: Cast off knit wise

Cut the work from the ball leaving a long tail. Using a fine crochet hook (around 2mm) make a chain of 5 stitches with this tail and join it back to the start point with a slip stitch to make a small loop. Sew a tiny button on the opposite side as a fastening for the dress.

I use micro buttons like these:

Weave the remainder of the cast off end along the edge to the point of the row 9 decreases and leave the end hanging for now. Re-thread the needle with the cast on edge and use it to close the seam at the back of the dress with mattress stitch. When you reach the shaping on row 9 tie both ends together and weave along the inside of the seam before trimming off excess.

And there you have a teeny tiny dress for a bunny or a bear.

autism

The hooded boy

February 3, 2013April 30, 2026 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)80 Comments

Toby has been finding life hard just lately and as a result he’s been having a lot more outbursts and meltowns. He has now bitten his hand so much that he’s developing permanent callouses on his thumb and forefinger and I once again have bruises up the back of my arms from where he digs his fingers in and pinches me if I get too close to him during a meltdown. He has been stressed a good deal of the time, retreating into extreme stimming and seeking comfort and security by covering his head most of the time.

This morning we went walking in his most favourite of woods but even there he was ‘hiding’ under a hat and two hoods and covering his face completely when he found something too hard to deal with – it could be a sudden noise or the appearance of a dog but most often it’s something that only Toby knows and the rest of us can only guess at.

It made walking in the woods a very slow activity, it doesn’t pay to cover your face when wood walking as you too easily bump into trees!

At home he has taken to wearing his pyjama top twisted up over his head most of the time. And he’s not been taking much interest in anything apart from his lego which he’s been biting too much for my liking. There are no significant changes to everyday life that I can pinpoint so it could be that he’s just weary of the winter weather – it is so much harder to keep him occupied when it’s cold and wet and he may be missing the trampoline and the carefree feeling of flying that he gets when he’s bouncing. Hopefully the arrival of spring will lighten his mood a little.

It’s not all been bad though – there have been some positives recently too. Over the winter we’ve worked hard on ‘project socks’ and finally he is getting used to wearing socks in the house. To Toby socks have always been something that you put on with your shoes before going out and are most definitely to be taken off and stuffed firmly into the very tip of your shoes when you come back indoors. Seeing Toby wandering around barefoot has always made me feel cold because we have wooden floors which are chilly underfoot in winter, so I’m really glad that he now considers sock wearing a suitable indoor activity!

Next will be ‘project pants’ which will involve weaning him off of the only two pairs of pants he’ll wear at night (as they are now getting too small for him and I can’t find the same stripe pattern anywhere) and on to random pants wearing at bedtime. Though I will wait for him to be in a calmer phase before attempting this, tackling it in his current mood would be foolish. Hopefully it won’t be too long before a calm patch arrives!