Made for the local Children’s hospital which gives out over 1,000 knit finger puppets per month to children receiving “finger pricks” or needles for blood collection and treatments.

As children, my sister and I spent a fair bit of time at this hospital and remember thinking it was a real treat to be among the first patients on the phlebotomist’s shift, so that we’d have first pick of the best puppets, the ones with hair, cuter faces and/or more elaborate colouring and design. When I began knitting and decided I would contribute to the program, the challenge was to make cute, fun puppets with character, ones that my sister and I would have liked best, but that were still easy enough to make in bulk.

Eyelash yarn was the ticket! Knitting the simplest of all the puppet designs with furry yarn, and adding simple felt eyes, and occasionally a nose, created a great assortment of monster finger puppets like none my sister and I ever received! (In fairness, there were no eyelash yarns 30 years ago when we were patients, so these may not be entirely original, but I’ve never seen any like them and am very pleased with how they turned out!)

Today I made my delivery to the hospital, a supply of puppets and toys Ive been collecting for several months now, just in time for Halloween. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the current program organizer and introducing her to 80 furry monster puppets, 30 of “The Uglies,” a dozen little sock monkey finger puppets, some bunnies, some teeny tiny octopussies, one little ghost, and a dozen small stuffed monster toys.

Made with random 1pound bags of mill-ends in fur/eyelash yarn, some with glitter, obtained at an awesome price before Zellers closed-out. I got a lot, but now kinda wish I had gotten even more, they also had some good, soft variegated spun acrylic, I shoulda got a few more balls of that too.
64/11