Severus Snape knitting pattern

If you fancy knitting your very own Severus Snape, you can now buy my knitting pattern for my Snape doll as a digital download from Etsy.

Once you've checked out, you'll be able to download the pattern straight away and get knitting! Magic!

Jane Austen costume drama dolls

One for the Sense and Sensibility fans - here's my Colonel Brandon doll, accompanied by Marianne Dashwood. Both are for sale in my Etsy shop - you can see more photos of them there, too. I'm thinking of working on more Jane Austen and costume drama characters in the future. The costumes are just so much fun to knit up.

If you're an Alan Rickman fan, you may also like my Severus Snape doll, who you can visit over at the Slytherin House Knitting Club, along with my Lucius and Draco Malfoy, Voldemort, and Harry dolls. You can buy patterns for all of the Harry Potter dolls from ye olde Etsy shoppe.

Slytherin House Knitting Club

You've probably noticed that nestled among all the vintage knitting larks that I post on my blog, there's been a fair amount of Harry Potter-related knitting nonsense. Well, I've decided to move all of the Harry Potter postings to a magical blog of their own, the Slytherin House Knitting Club. This is where you can keep up with all of my Harry Potter hand-knitted dolls and maybe pick up a few knitting lessons from Severus Snape if he's in the mood.

Just finished this Lucius Malfoy doll, hope you like him, and hope you bookmark both Knit For Victory and the Slytherin House Knitting Club!

Severus Snape knitted doll

***UPDATE October 2010: Professor Severus Snape has proven so popular that if you would like a Snape doll of your own, check out my Etsy shop. Otherwise contact me for Snape doll commissions. The world needs more knitted Snapes.***


I have finally finished knitting the Severus Snape doll. Here he his, playing the piano with his feet - a sight you'd normally only ever see at the Slytherin house Christmas party.


Snape is about 40cm high and knitted from acrylic DK yarn. I'm normally a make-do-and-mend craft recycler, using things from charity shops and Freecycle, but this time I splashed out and bought some tiny, tiny doll's buttons to sew on his jacket as a finishing touch. This was the first time I'd knitted a doll without using a pattern, so I'm pretty pleased with the final result.

My daughter's verdict? "He's very cute." (He got a big hug, too).

How to make doll's hair for a knitted doll

I have nearly finished the Severus Snape doll, and have just spent a pleasant morning making his hair.

To make doll hair for a knitted doll, you need to cut lengths of yarn that are twice as long as you want the finished hair to be, plus maybe an inch and a half more, to allow for the knot and a final trim - it's always better to make hair too long, so you can trim to the exact style you want, rather than hair too short, which doesn't look right.

Insert a crochet hook into the doll's head where you would like a strand of hair to be.

Fold one of your strands of yarn in half and put it on the crochet hook...

...then pull a loop through.


Take the two ends of the yarn and pull them through the loop you have just created...

Then pull gently to create a firm knot. Voila - your first two strands of hair. Repeat all over the doll's head. This method gives you great control over your doll's hairstyle! Try using a mixture of different yarns and different thickness.


And here is the finished result, enjoying a cup of tea with Lucius Malfoy - you can buy both dolls and patterns in my Etsy shop.

Severus Snape finger puppet

"Mummy, can you knit me Professor Snape for Christmas?"

Having ascertained that the request was for a doll-sized Severus Snape, not a life-sized one (a spectacular talking-point though that would be), I cautiously replied in the affirmative. I didn't have a pattern for a pocket-sized potion master, but I did have a pattern for a creepy-looking Lady Diana doll that might be adaptable.

Now, I've never knitted a doll before, let alone morphed The People's Princess into the head of Slytherin house, but I suspected that this might be the route to a nervous breakdown just before Christmas. I decided to knit a Snape finger puppet as a back-up plan, so at least there would be something Snape-shaped in the Christmas stocking in case the bigger doll isn't finished in time (or ends up looking like Princess Diana with Michael Jackson's hair).

I'm pleased with the way this finger puppet has turned out, although his cape keeps curling at the edges. The whole puppet is made out of scraps of double knitting wool, apart from the hair, which is half double knitting, and half fine black crochet cotton. Completely DK hair was too full and bushy, so I ended up unpicking it and adding crochet cotton for a nice lanky effect (sorry, Severus...).

Ten points to Slytherin!

Any requests for famous-people finger puppets?