Hi everyone! So I just started working on the Jack Skellington pattern over at ravelry (pattern found here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/jack-skellington). The pattern doesn’t explain how to put any hands on the little guy, but I saw a lot of finished Jacks with hands. I can’t find instructions on how to make them though. So my question is, can anyone give me their insights/thoughts on how they make hands for Jack or other knitted toys? Thanks!
It is a little tough. Waiting for some skilled person to help us out.
I make mouse cat toys all the time. It’s basically a tube that’s decreased on the end for a pointy nose. When it comes to the ears, I cast on three stitches, knit 1, knit 2 together, purl, knit two together. I cut the yarn, and draw it through the remaining loop. This makes an isoseles (can’t spell it) triangle shape. I reverse the decreases for the other ear. The ears are sewn to the head along the cast on stitches. If you want, you can do a tack stitch on the short end of the triangle to make it look more like a thumb. It would be mitten shaped. You’ll probably need more stitches. You can do fewer decreases to make it round on top. Play around with it.
This particular toy looks like it’s a simple I cord for the arms. You would just switch from black yarn to white toward the end, knit maybe half an inch in the white, and draw the yarn through the loops for simple hands.
If you look at this person’s finished Skeleton Jack you’ll see in the bottom picture a close up of the hands. It looks like you could simply just separate the hand into fingers, knitting the fingers back and forth.
Thanks for finding this pic! I’ve looked at this one before, but not quite so much at his hands. I really like the way they look and think it would be cool to emulate. But I’m not quite sure how to do so. The arm is simply an i-cord and then I could switch to white, but how then do you separate the fingers out? What do you mean by "knitting the “ingers back and forth”.
Wow, your little cat toys sound so cute! Thanks for the idea using the ears. If I can’t figure out how to make the fingers, I do think I’ll do as you suggest and just change to white. Thanks for the help 
Well when you switch to the white, instead of continuing the i-cord you would decrease the sts from 6 to 5, then seperate the hand into fingers by just knitting 1 st back and forth. The 5 sts would form 5 fingers each 1 st wide. Or from the pictures of the link I posted before, I think you’d increase the sts from 6 to 8. Then knit 2 st i-cords to form 4 fingers.
thank you!!! i know exactly what you’re talking about now. not sure which way i’ll try, but thank you so much for your help!
Have you contacted the designer to ask her specifically how the hands are made?