When I was a child, I loved to play with dolls. Not because I had any interest in dressing them up or caring for them, but because of the narrative potential the dolls held–each one living a thousand lives, if only I could play with that doll for the entire day, and be the vehicle for telling that doll’s stories–or at least one of them.

When Mattel introduced Little Kiddles in 1966, I was smitten. Up until then, I had focused my doll play on Trolls with their vibrantly colored hair and rudimentary wardrobes, and while I continued to enjoy, and still love Troll dolls, the Little Kiddles opened up a more sophisticated world of play with more complicated plot lines.

I was reminded about all of this after I made Olive/Ollie the pig, I was kind of satisfied, but kind of not. As I loved playing with a collection of dolls each of whom had complicated inner lives, that is what I wanted to evoke in my design, and while I love my original pattern, the finished object lacked–to my mind–a certain narrative potential.

So in an effort to recreate the way a Little Kiddle made me feel, I spent the afternoon bouncing around from the pattern I wrote for a larger crochet pig, my project page at Ravelry that documented the development of the original pig, and my last blog post about the mini-meta pig to see if I had really and truly made any progress.

Eventually, all that was left to design were the legs, and I came up with these two options:

But despite my struggles, uncertainties, missteps, and straight up errors, the mini-meta pig has, despite my doubts started to come together:

There are, however, still steps to be written, ends to be woven in, an arm to be crocheted, pieces to be joined, and the list seemingly goes on endlessly.

So I took a break from designing and went to the tried and true crochet viking helmet pattern.

Undecided about what colors I will use to work the hat and the details, I focused on crocheting just one horn, and while I got no where near finishing it, I did make substantive if not substantial start.

So while I let the pieces of my mini-meta crochet pig percolate in my head so that I have clarity about how to make the most perfect mini-meta crochet pig ever, I will move forward on the Viking helmet, one stitch at a time.