Twin Studies

Doppelgangers have enormous appeal for me in all forms: professional celebrity impersonators, Dostoyevsky’s The Double, Nabokov’s Despair, houses with miniature/to-scale versions that serve as mailboxes—the list goes on and on! But my current Top-of-the-Heap favorite is crocheted toy twins.

To begin, a question: What makes a good doppelganger? Ideally, it should be both precious and eerie in its sameness—but with most small toys, you’re also painting with a broad brush. Therefore cats (and the like) are a terrific subject, because very simple changes can be made to a pattern to mimic their varying fur and markings.

Recently, I found Claudia van K.’s joyful “Mr. Tibbles the Cat” free pattern on Ravelry and I knew exactly who to model it after…

Meet Harvey, my boyfriend’s cat. He enjoys dirt, moths, making Snoopy noises and sleeping on his very own military cot:

harvey

Now, meet Mr. Harvey the Cat. He enjoys eating polyfill and being very quiet:

FeltedKitty3.

To mimic Harvey’s snowy coat, I used 1 ball of Palette in “Cream” (and still had about 50 yards to spare when I was done). To finish, I lightly hand-felted throughout—so there’s a still some stitch definition in the fuzziness. Also, l should add that I deviated pretty heartily from the “Mr. Tibbles” pattern because I wanted to crochet in the round; essentially, I used the pattern as a guide for increases and decreases to achieve a very similar shape.

FeltedKitty1

Do you love making twins as much as I do? If so, please deposit more cat pattern suggestions in the comments! I know a lot of cats. A LOT.


4 comments

  1. MargaretC / June 4, 2013

    My only comment and desire is that you could have gotten a picture of the two of them, side-by-side. They both look pretty awesome! >^..^<

  2. Katy Bug / May 16, 2013

    Cute! I have a very fuzzy orange and blonde Maine Coon, and I want to make some projects in his honor. I also have a tortoiseshell cat who I’d love to honor as well, but her three color coat would be hard to duplicate. She’s beautiful, though, so if I could figure out how to knit or crochet something that looks like her it’d be the bee’s knees.

    The Cuddly Cat Crochet Scoodie from mooglyblog.com is a great pattern. I made one in gray for my sister-in-law, and it turned out adorable! I want to make – you guessed it – a tortoiseshell one and a fuzzy orange one. 🙂 Here’s the link: http://www.mooglyblog.com/cuddly-cat-crochet-scoodie/

  3. Margaret / May 16, 2013

    Apparently I like making twins, too, as mine are now 6 1/2 years (that 1/2 is important!) and about to finish kindergarten. 🙂 I have two triceratops to knit for them (the boys have been asking for them for over a year!). Sorry, no cat patterns. But what dinosaurs do you want to knit? 🙂

    • Linguist77 / May 16, 2013

      Ha! I am in the same boat! My twin boys are 9. Last year I had to knit hedgehogs for both of them for their birthday. This year it was mice. Cannot ever knit something for one of them without the other wanting exactly the same thing!

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