📅 Sunday, 20 September 2026 · No. 170

Dolly Bun and a Crochet Dolly Parton

🌿 Daily Logs · ✎ 4 min · by Azmi in Meknes

Azmi's note My personal log from Meknes, not vet advice. Just what I did and saw tonight.

I am Azmi, writing from Meknes, and tonight my craft corner collided with my hutch corner in the best possible way: I set a small crochet doll of Dolly Parton beside my rabbit Dolly bun, and the two legends sat side by side, both fluffy, both blonde in spirit, both completely unbothered by the comparison. The doll is wool and patience. The bunny is fur and appetite. Together they looked like the cover of an album I would buy on sight. Dolly bun, indeed.

Let me describe the still life, because a moment this composed deserves careful looking. Bottom layer: the blue blanket, folded twice, its weave catching the lamplight. Middle layer, left: the crochet Dolly, all golden yarn hair and a tiny stitched smile, guitar no bigger than a spoon resting against her shoulder. Middle layer, right: the real Dolly bun, loafed low, ears soft, eyes half lidded in the particular expression of a rabbit tolerating art. Top layer, invisible but present: the smell of hay drifting over from the rack, grounding the whole composition in barn reality.

Study of the wool legend

The wool legend rewards close attention. Someone made her stitch by stitch, and you can feel the hours in her: the tight even rows of the dress, the loops of hair that spring back when touched, the beads of her eyes catching light like wet stones. I turned her slowly and admired the engineering of small things, how a few grams of yarn can hold a whole personality. Craft like this always humbles me. My own crochet attempts curl at the edges and unravel when looked at directly. This doll arrived perfect and stayed perfect, the professional in the room.

The living legend, meanwhile, conducted her own critique. Dolly bun approached the doll nose-first, the way rabbits approach everything new, and sniffed it with juridical thoroughness. Left side. Right side. The yarn hair, at length. Then she licked the tiny guitar once, declared it hay-adjacent but disappointing, and settled beside it with a thump that said the exhibition could continue. Sniffed and approved. That is the highest review this house offers, previously given to exactly one new tunnel and a cardboard castle documented among my cardboard mansions where my rabbits loaf like royalty.

Colour is doing half the work in this still life. The doll gold against the bunny cream, the warm brown of real fur picking up the amber of the yarn until the two blondes rhyme. The blue blanket underneath cools everything down and makes both figures glow, the way a stage backdrop makes performers pop. I moved the lamp twice to catch it, and Dolly bun followed the warm patch both times, improving the composition without knowing, the way animals always outperform art direction. She looks, a friend told me later, like she plays jazz. I look in the photos like her biggest fan, which is accurate.

Study of the pair that plays together

What makes the duo work is temperament. The doll is frozen mid-song, forever cheerful, forever mid-verse. The bunny is frozen mid-relaxation, forever nearly asleep, forever one ear open. Side by side they tell a complete story about performance and rest, the show and the green room, Jolene on stage and the quiet dressing room after. I hummed Jolene while arranging them and Dolly bun remained magnificently unimpressed, which felt like the correct critical response. Some audiences make you earn it.

There is a lineage here I keep thinking about. Dressing rabbits for photographs is an old temptation of mine, and some costumes work better than others. The great debate of our house remains the night I staged sombrero against cowboy hat to see which costume wins, judged entirely by which one she shook off last. Tonight needed no costume, because the pairing itself was the outfit: the bunny beside her miniature icon, both fluffy, both legends, neither trying to be the other. The best duos do not match. They harmonise.

I took forty photos and kept six. In the best one the doll leans ever so slightly toward the bunny, as if mid-harmony, and the bunny gazes past the camera with unfocused dignity, thinking about parsley. Light pools on the yarn hair. One whisker catches the lamp and draws a silver line across the frame. It is not technically perfect; the blanket edge intrudes and one ear blurs with motion. But it holds the tenderness of the evening exactly: wool permitting, patience holding, a keeper in Meknes arranging small joys on a blue blanket while the kettle cooled in the kitchen.

More duos are planned, wool permitting, but tonight stays framed as it is. Craft corner meets hutch corner, and both are richer for it. I put the doll on the shelf where the evening light finds her, and Dolly bun claimed the blanket hollow for the night, already forgetting her brush with fame. Two of the cutest sights I have ever seen, side by side for one hour, and the house feels larger for having held them. If joy is a muscle, evenings like this are how mine stays in shape.

🐰

Written by Azmi

I track my rabbits' diet, weight and naps to see what works. Photos are mine, mess included. Say hi on the contact page.

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