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Long before I started Crickle Pickle Knits, or even had knit my first doll, I had a name selected for my endeavour. While I was still stuffing my relatives’ closets with knitted sweaters, ponchos and tote bags, I began to ponder a totally random question: “If I were to start up a knitting business, what would I call it?” At the time, I thought it highly unlikely, since knitting a sweater usually cost at least double what a store-bought version would be, so to make any money, I figured I would have to price it at an exorbitant (and unsellable) amount. So my entrepreneurial pondering, I thought, was strictly fantasy. And what I came up with was Crickle Pickle Knits. Those closest to me could easily guess why I would choose such an unusual name, especially once they saw the logo I created - when I finally did launch my little business/hobby. Her name was Cricket, a little Yorkie and Lhasa Apso cross, who shared our home for almost 15 years. We got her when she was too young to leave her mama, and she was needy from the start. But she was cute as a button, and she captured our hearts from the moment we set eyes on her. I had many pet names for her: Baby Girl, Sweet Pea, Pooh Bear, Cricklet, but most often I called her Crickle Pickle. She wasn't perfect. She was needy and nervous and more than a little neurotic. But she was also loving and loyal and joyful and adorable and mischievous and uncannily clever. We never did manage to train her, she trained us. She loved spaghetti and rice and potatoes best - especially spaghetti. And in her younger years, she loved shoes: expensive, leather shoes that she managed to devour entirely, just leaving behind the soles. She adored my husband Ben, as he was working at home when she was just a wee pup, and I was at work most of the day. But she always slept on the bed curled up at my feet. When I launched Crickle Pickle Knits, she was still very much with us. As I sat knitting in my craft room, she would curl up and sleep at my feet under my desk. A creature of habit, she had a very specific route to get there, always to the left of my desk chair, which, of course, was the most awkward path! It often ended up with her entangled in yarn, which in turn changed the loving moniker “Crickle Pickle”, to the rather abrupt “CRICKET!”, accompanied by a stream of expletives. Oh how I wish she could be sleeping under my desk as I type this. Unfortunately in May 2021, with her health failing, we had to say goodbye to our dear friend. But we think of her every day, and we feel blessed to have had her for almost 15 years. And I am pleased that my tiny knitting business bears her name and her face, in loving tribute.

The completion of Practically Perfect Mary, and the warm reception it received from daughter-in-law Heather, kicked off a year of joyous doll creation. The website Ravelry became my BFF, and we spent many hours together daily, happily exploring the talents of the many doll-makers who have come before me. A few designers became my favourites, particularly: Lorraine Pistorio of Rainebo Designs and MagdaLaine, two very talented designers who made my job so much easier. But it wasn’t just Ravelry that kept me glued to my computer screen. Living in a rural community at the time, with no local yarn store, I discovered the wonders of on-line yarn shopping. I could sit for HOURS at a time, just browsing through the sites, checking out the myriad of colours and comparing prices and shipping costs, trying to find the best deals. There were many successful purchases and a few dismal, and rather expensive failures, especially when it came to selecting various colours for skin tones. I wanted to offer a real variety of skin colours to reflect the fabulous diversity of our population. I collected a number of different beiges, tans and browns that worked very well. But finding fair skin tones proved to be a real challenge, as many doll makers will attest. The yarn I used for Mary Poppins, Louise Harding Cassia, worked beautifully, but alas, it was discontinued. Most peach and pink tones are too garish or cartoonish to provide any semblance of reality. A few online purchases illustrated the downfall of virtual yarn shopping. As I was working solely with acrylic yarns at the time, I settled on a few favourites. For the smaller dolls that use DK, I discovered Stylecraft Special DK in the colour Toy (1844) and Amigo DK Col. 46 from Hobbii Yarn. For the larger dolls I use Hobbii’s Tivoli XL, formerly Amigo XL, Col. 48, a heavier weight yarn in the same colour as the DK. I would love to hear from other knitters with other suggestions! My first couple of dolls were basically experiments, trying out the different patterns and yarns that I had selected. As I find knitting very therapeutic, my own form of meditation, I enjoyed crafting the torsos and limbs, and stuffing them to give them shape. But it was the heads that I was eagerly anticipating throughout each project. Crafting the head, moulding the face into shape, embroidering the facial features and weaving in the hair - that is what makes the process so magical for me. What was formerly a ball of yarn and some fluffy fibrefill takes on a personality and becomes an actual character that cries out for a name.

Despite the pride and satisfaction I felt with the creation of Violet Pickles and Ruby Buttons, it would be another year before I knitted my next doll. Caught up in some big projects, I pursued another aspect of my knitting passion: colour work. The intricate designs of fair isle and the vivid images of intarsia have always captivated my imagination, and my love of minute detail, even as a child. My mother was a knitter. Her specialty was what we referred to at the time as "bulky knit sweaters", those heavyweight, zippered knitted jackets with images on the back and front. They were knit from Mary Maxim patterns with Mary Maxim extra bulky raw wool, and the images often reflected the wildlife of Canada, or the wearers' favourite pastimes, like hockey, fishing, hunting, square dancing.... I never actually wore one because, man, were they itchy! But I was captivated watching her create pictures from two knitting needles and a few balls of yarn. Still today (literally!) I like to incorporate this technique in the clothing for my custom dolls as well as the Blythe doll clothing. But I digress! I was talking about my next doll! Like the Ivy Cottage project, this one was inspired by Christmas. I am one of those folks who isn't satisfied until I find the absolutely perfect gift for every person on my list. And since my daughter-in-law Heather had already received a couple of ponchos and several sweaters - and she lives in temperate Los Angeles - I decided to try something totally different. You see, Heather is a HUGE Mary Poppins fan and I became obsessed with making the perfect Mary Poppins poppet. That fascination that I had left simmering on the back burner had suddenly come to a full boil. I was able to find a Mary Poppins doll pattern on Ravelry, by Lynne Price-Haskins that provided some inspiration. But it didn't fit the vision I had for Heather's doll. Back to the Lola pattern with some adjustments. The biggest challenge? I attempted to give Mary a "womanly" figure without any inkling of how to do it. Upon completing the body, I just prayed Heather would never take off the doll's clothes! On to the clothing and accessories, the really fun part. I was able to adapt the clothes from the published Mary Poppins pattern to fit my doll and added a few details of my own. I obsessed over the minutiae in making her come alive, and I loved every minute of it! I proudly named her Practically Perfect Mary.

My doll making started in 2017, thanks to Roald Dahl. And my daughter, Hannah. I was trying to come up with an idea for a hand-knit gift for her. She was already the proud owner of four or five mom-made sweaters and I figured it was about time for something different. Knowing she is a Roald Dahl fan, I thought I would recreate one of his characters as a doll, and eventually came up with Fantastic Mr. Fox. Ah, he was so much fun to make, and I really enjoyed the details required to replicate the book's star. But of course, Mr. Fox really missed having his loved ones around him, so over the course of the next months, his family grew. During the summer of the same year, our friends from the Netherlands came to visit for a month, including Oma and Opa, their two girls and their partners, plus two meisjes, Sophie and Evy. As a treat for the girls, I made them each a wee fox, using Fox in a Flowery Frock pattern by Julie Williams. Not only were they a big hit with them, it also inspired them to learn to knit during the visit! To that point, everything I knitted had been a BIG project: sweaters, jackets, shawls, blankets.... But realizing that my loved ones were weighted down with the fuzzy fruits of my endeavours, and seeing the joy in the faces of those who received the knitted gifts, I thought I might continue the toy trend. My daughter, Hannah, had been reminiscing about a beloved childhood book series called Ivy Cottage by EJ Taylor. In passing, she suggested that I could make dolls that look like the main characters, two adorable dolls called Violet Pickles and Ruby Buttons. A seed was planted. Our copies of the books had long since disappeared, but thankfully there were many images available online of the pair. No patterns were available for these characters, but I searched out doll patterns with similar body shape (Lola by MagdaLaine), and clothing design and adapted them to replicate Violet and Ruby. In the meantime, I found copies of each of the books in the series at online used book stores around the world and voila - Hannah's Christmas present was complete. And that was the beginning that eventually blossomed into Crickle Pickle Knits.

If you had asked any of my co-workers during my more than two decades in the news industry what I would be doing post-retirement, I am quite sure none would have predicted I would be knitting dolls and doll clothes. And yet, to me, it makes perfect sense. Dolls have always held a fascination for me. My earliest memories of childhood are usually tied to "dolls I have known and loved". Deep in the darkest reaches of my memory bank is Thumbelina, a baby doll I craved as a pre-schooler. There were tiny dolls like my treasured, inch-tall Disneykins, my Liddle Kiddles and trolls. There were the fashion dolls like Barbie and Tammy and (be-still-my-heart!) my namesake Debbie dolls. There were soft and cuddly Raggedy Ann and Andy, and hard and brittle three-foot walking dolls. I even loved paper dolls. Every month I would look forward to the Betsy McCall cutout dolls that my grandmother would save for me. A special memory is my talking doll, red-headed Charmin' Chatty, a tall, freckled and bespectacled charmer who said random phrases when you pulled a string on her back. There were matryoshka dolls and, alas, the exquisite and fragile collector doll with real horsehair braids and hand-made and embroidered traditional Ukrainian costume that I adored but ruined as a young child, too young to truly appreciate its worth. The list goes on. Come to think of it, from the very beginning, I hand-stitched dolls from fabric scraps and crafted clothes from bits of fabric, felt, yarn, even kleenex and toilet tissue! As I got older, I took up sewing, making my own clothes and the odd outfit for a doll. When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, it was always the same answer - "a dress designer"! That is, until I entered high school, when I realized I possessed neither the drawing skills nor the imagination to be successful in my coveted career! So, you see, it's not so odd to find myself spending my retirement in my loft craft room I have dubbed The Playpen, turning skeins of yarn into one-of-a-kind dolls with individual personalities, and miniature fashions for stylish poppets. I am just coming home. My second childhood.