There is something rather wonderful happening in one corner of Dog Desk Shop. It is populated by mice in tiny outfits, beautifully dressed dogs, hedgehogs, hares, penguins and an assortment of other characters getting on with remarkably busy lives considering they are made from felt.

We have always had a weakness for things with character, and these little felt creations have an extraordinary amount of it. Perhaps it is the softness of the material, the expressions on their faces or all those tiny details, but it is very difficult to look at some of them without immediately beginning to imagine who they are.

A mouse wearing an apron is no longer simply a mouse. Clearly, she has things to do. Put another in a chef's outfit and suddenly there must be a very small kitchen somewhere that the rest of us haven't been invited into. Give a dog a pair of glasses or a ridiculous jumper and an entire personality appears.

That is really what we love about them. They take animals we recognise and give them just enough human personality to create a tiny story, and some of those stories are wonderfully absurd.

We have skiing animals, sledging animals and creatures dressed for occupations they have absolutely no business pursuing. There are tiny hats, scarves, coats, flowers and accessories. Some look extremely pleased with themselves. Others appear to have been caught in the middle of something. A few have the unmistakable expression of an animal who knows considerably more than it is prepared to tell you.

Felt is particularly good at creating this kind of character because it doesn't need to be perfect. It has texture and softness. The shapes don't have the hard uniformity of something produced from a mould, and all those little details give each character its personality.

Perhaps inevitably, the dogs were always going to be favourites of ours. It would have been rather surprising if they weren't. But the mice have become serious competition, and then there are the hedgehogs, hares, cats, birds and all the other animals that keep finding their way into the collection.

The danger, of course, is that once you have one, another begins to look perfectly reasonable.

Felt decorations are often associated with Christmas, and many of these characters look wonderful hanging from a Christmas tree. There is something lovely about decorations that come out year after year, particularly when you begin to remember where they came from, who gave them to you or when you bought them.

But we think some of them are far too good to spend eleven months of every year packed away in a box.

A felt animal can sit on a shelf, hang from a cupboard handle, appear among houseplants or take up residence on a desk. Different characters work beautifully with the seasons too. Hares appear in spring, hedgehogs seem made for autumn and some of the dogs and mice appear perfectly capable of remaining in charge of the house throughout the year.

They also make wonderful little gifts because they can be incredibly personal without being expensive or grand. There is usually somebody who immediately comes to mind when you see one. The friend who loves hedgehogs, the person who has always had Labradors, the relative who collects mice or the colleague who spends every spare moment in the garden.

And sometimes there doesn't need to be a reason at all. You see a tiny felt animal wearing an inappropriate hat and know exactly who needs it.

We rather like gifts like that.

Not everything we buy has to be practical, necessary or serious. Sometimes something earns its place simply because it makes us smile, and these little characters are exceptionally good at doing that.

A mouse does not need a profession. A dog does not require a jumper. A hedgehog has absolutely no sensible reason to go sledging.

And yet here we are.

The more felt characters that arrive at Dog Desk Shop, the more it feels as though we are assembling a slightly eccentric little community of our own. New characters arrive, favourites disappear off to new homes and occasionally we find something so completely ridiculous that we know immediately it belongs here.

Perhaps that is the real appeal of our little world made from felt. They may technically be decorations, but somehow they feel much more like tiny characters waiting for their next adventure.

And we suspect there will always be room at Dog Desk Shop for one more.