Then as now I have little patience for making things that don't give fairly immediate results; French Knitting was a quick win. You need a wooden cotton reel (haven't seen one of these for a while) for the authentic Renka experience or a commercially-made knitting dolly. Tap four small nails into the top of the reel, stuff a tail of wool through the hole - I'm getting a bit bored trying to describe this - so for excellent instructions I shall refer you to: http://www.how-to-knit-guide.com/french-knitting.html.Eventually a small woollen sausage will appear at the bottom of the cotton reel - if you are very impatient you can pull the tail and stretch the wool. Keep going until you lose the will to live or you have run out of wool. I would then sew the said sausage into hats, capes and skirts for my dolls. Alternatively I'd sew them into circles and give them to Nan -she would (loyally) put them on her dressing table as coasters for flagons of Oil Of Olay (aka Oil of Ugly ).
Another time-consuming activity was shoe box weaving (no - you are not weaving a shoe box - just read on). Take the body of a shoe box, on the rims of the short-side cut shallow notches at about 1cm apart. Knot some wool and thread it through a notch, take it to the far end and thread through the facing notch, wind around the tag (this instruction writing is obviously an art which is beyond me and a little dull) and then take it back up again. Continue until all notches are full - you now have your warp. You are now ready for the exciting (everything is relative) part. Take a small ruler and use it to lift up alternative warps and slide under a length of wool to act as a weft or woof (those Anglo-Saxons really knew how to make a good word in my uttlerly biased opinion). If you vary the wool colours and don't pull it too tight you will produce a tiny magic carpet (or big if you happen to have very large feet) - warning this takes ages and ages.
