YOU HAVE TO LOVE TERENCE

Children love dinosaurs, don't they? I guess it's the perfect combination of something utterly terrifying coupled with the sure knowledge that it doesn't exist that makes it so alluring. Maybe that, and the fact that as we only have their bones to construct a mental image from, we can pretty much create our own wonderful, colourful monsters.

Rebecca Danger, knitter and designer has created her very own world of amazing monsters including some not-so-terrifying dinosaurs that are very hard to resist. Although I had seen and admired her patterns on Ravelry, I hadn't had a good excuse to knit any as both of my children are teenagers. Happily for me, the perfect opportunity has now presented itself in the form of Katarina's son Freddie, who, at four years old is one of the worlds leading authorities on all things prehistoric!

Freddie has of course, got his own favourite dinosaurs and one of them is the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex, so it wasn't a huge surprise that he choose Rebecca's Terence the Tap Dancing T-Rex for me to knit. He selected the colours in our Naturally Soft Merino - peacock, scarlet and daisy, I downloaded the pattern from Rebecca's Ravelry Store and cast on!

Rebecca recommends that you use 'magic loop' for knitting in the round but I prefer to use dpn's (as in the picture). It's really a matter of personal choice, as both ways are equally successful.

The picture right, shows my progress so far - I stuffed the body with a good amount of fibre-fill to make Terence nice and plump. I've knitted many toys over the years and my best tip is not to skimp on the filling. The most appealing toys are those that have shape and good structure so that they can 'hold their own' - as well as an abundance of personality which is achievable with a bit of careful embroidery of the facial features.

The pattern is very well written with good tips on selecting needle size for knitted toys, plenty of diagrams for attaching the limbs and a choice of 3 weights of wool for making variously sized dinosaurs. I can see that a few of the methods she uses would be very familiar to sock knitters which may help with understanding how to construct something 3-D, but as Rebecca is careful to explain everything, it is simple enough.

The yarn is knitting up really well on smaller needles - I selected 2.75mm - producing a good firm fabric that should stand the wear and tear expected of a knitted toy. The 'brights' in our yarn are almost made for this type of project - fun, modern and decidedly appealing to children. Freddie chose for his Terence to be super bright and funky but you could always knit him in more muted tones as a gift for a new baby. Check out our other colours at www.millamia.com

(Picture of the three Terence's used with permission of Rebecca Danger)

(posted by Max)