Category: Knitting

All The Ornaments

What do a Sprout, Cat, Dog, Snow Baby, Chicken and Bunny have in common? No clues…? They are all ornaments I crafted for my family when we celebrated Christmas this year. I’ll explain the idea behind them below but first.. They’ve all been put into my tiny tree, so I present the evolution of Christmas Tree!

It all started with an evening browsing Ravelry, as I’m wont to do. There, I found a very cute little sprout. As you may or may not know, sprouts seem to feature heavily in English Christmas dinners. My dad likes them quite a bit. I hate them a lot. Hence, I decided that I would make him a sprout, so that the real deal wouldn’t have to enter my home. So I set out knitting and made the sprout. I added a hanging loop and popped him in the Christmas tree. (Pattern Brussels Sprouts by Amanda Berry).

If you make one gift, you have to make one for everyone, so second came the girlfriend of my youngest brother. She has rabbits; easy choice, therefore, was to make a tiny bunny. So I set out to complete a purple rabbit. Also added a hanging loop and put it in the tree. (Pattern Catnip Bunny by Selina Kyle).

For my mother, I chose to do a snowbaby. It’s got a red hat and purple scarf to symbolize the red hat society and not giving an iota about clashing clothes. The snowbaby also has a hanging loop and no snowball and its hat is a little shorter. (Pattern Snow Baby Ornaments by Mary Beth Koskie)

My eldest brother has a whole range of pets, but I wasn’t going to knit an ant so I decided on a tiny chicken. I did add a tail and a hanging loop. (Pattern Tiny Chickens by Anna Hrachovec)

The partner of my eldest brother has a snowy white cat named after a certain snowy Disney Princess. Therefore I set out to create that little creature. The cat is not allowed to go out, so the chickens don’t get threatened, but in a tree they can be together at last! (Pattern Tiny Parlor Cat by Sara Elizabeth Kellner)

My youngest brother and his girlfriend recently got a dog, and since I could do the rabbit for her, he got the puppy. While their dog is not a Scottie, that was the pattern that I chose since it seemed the right sort of size. I attempted to emulate the colouring of their dog, it failed but I tried? (Pattern Tiny Scottie Dog by Sue Stratford)

I also gave the puppy a ball and the cat a little knit whale to play with. So everyone got a thing! I’m contributing to trees all over the country..

Yellow Dinosaur!

I recently knit a yellow dinosaur! When I was browsing around Ravelry, I discovered a pattern of a scarf in the shape of a dinosaur. The pattern is aptly named Apatosaurus and was made by Carissa Browning. The idea of another wearable dinosaur really appealed to me, so I grabbed the one skein of yellow hand-dyed yarn and got to work. The only thing I forgot to keep into account was how much yarn would be needed for my dinosaur project..

So about three quarters through that skein, I determined that I was at most going to finish half the dinosaur. This meant nights and nights of looking online trying to find yarn to sort of match my existing yarn. This was going to be really difficult because the original skein from Dragon Hoard Yarn (great name!) was labeled OOAK, one of a kind. If only I’d known what that meant before… In the end, I settled on some Sticky Toffee yarn by Diva DK Star, which also had yellow in it. They do not match, but they do look quite nice together. Both yarns are 100% merino superwash, super soft and knitted up beautifully.

There was only one change to the pattern and that was to leave out a few rows in the middle because I was afraid that even the additional yarn wouldn’t be enough. In the end I had a little yarn left over, so that wouldn’t have been necessary. However, the finished scarf is very long, so I’m not upset about it. I managed to keep track of some of the progress here.

When it’s worn, the colour difference are less noticeable, but I don’t really care about that anyway. The Sticky Toffee gives more colour variation, which shows up quite harshly in the pictures but I feel is less in real life.

I wore it yesterday with a scarf pin and it makes me real happy, so yay!

Sir Octopus

The pattern designer from the previous knit gift had a sale on buying three patterns at the same time. So that is what I did, next to GOGEE, I also got a pattern for Dandy Sir Cephalopod and Bonbon. DSC is an octopus with a top hat and a monocle, I had to have it. Bonbon is a cute little rabbit, it will probably see my needles fairly soon.

On to DSC, I used the same yarn as for the GOGEE and got to work. First you knit the eight tentacles, which you finish with a three needle decrease. Once all eight tentacles are knit, you start the body, at some point, the tentacles are three needle decreased onto the existing body. This is a really easy join that only leaves you with eight tails to weave in (YAY!). The remainder of the body is then knit up, eyes are added a moustache is sewn on and then the head is closed up. Before finishing, a length of yarn is glued around one eye for the monocle. The pattern is wonderful and easy to follow. I really enjoyed knitting him.

The most difficult part came with the moustache. I didn’t have a moustache button available. It was Sunday, he had to be completed by Monday and all shops in the vicinity were closed. I had no choice but to bust out my trusted fimo clay. The (metaphorical) cobwebs were wiped from the pasta machine and it was put to work. I drew a moustache on some paper and traced it on my flattened fimo clay. Holes were punched and the clay was baked. I also decided that none of the safety eyes I had in the stash were large enough (see above, he just looks silly with tiny eyes). So with the remaining moustache clay, I made some half domes that I squashed onto smaller safety eyes. These cover-eyes were also baked and then glued to the smaller eyes. I learned again that I cannot be trusted with superglue since I got some on my finger.. again.

Once the eyes and moustache were added, I closed him up and knit the top hat. Since the octopus itself was quite .. busy in his colour scheme, he needed a neutral hat. So I got out some grey and got to work with that. When he was finished he couldn’t really stand on his tentacles, but if you perch him just right on a cup, he looks ever more wonderful. He’s currently living in the office on the desk of the birthday girl, so I still get to see him. She’s still deciding on his name, but it’ll definitely start with Sir.

Knit GOGEE

So, since the interchangeable knitting needles arrived, I’ve been longing to knit again. Just looking at other people’s projects in Ravelry is not sufficient to curb my knitting cravings, or so it seems. This meant that I have started knitting again. I’d already started on a rabbit, which is now packed up in the corner of shame since its body is way too large for its head and I’ve not been in the mood to unpick. I’m also knitting a hidden dinosaur scarf that it still waiting on more yarn (I was an idiot and didn’t read the instructions on how much yarn to use). But I recently finished two different knit gifts. Today we’ll discuss the first.

Now, you may have wondered what in the world a GOGEE is, I don’t blame you if you did. GOGEE stands for Guardian of Good Energies Elf, it’s a pattern created by Susan Claudino-Aguilar. The idea is that you knit it with purpose so that it catches all the good will you knit into it. It’s a little creature with arms, legs and a pocket on its front. I thought it was super cute and if I made it, it would be a wonderful opportunity to put in some good energy and a positive message for a friend of mine.

From the pattern page, I’d discovered that this was an updated version of the Voodoo, You Love Me pattern. Since I really like the zombie-esque-ness of the Voodoo pattern, I decided to make some modifications to the GOGEE to get the best of both worlds. I knit up its arms, legs, pocket and body exactly as described in the pattern. I did not knit the ears, since I didn’t really like them and when I came to the last couple of rounds in the head, I decreased quicker without additional knit rounds to create a rounded head shape.

Once the knitting was finished, I sewed a little mouth and added a felt heart on his front. A little message was written and put into his pocket for any bad times. He’s quite cute if you ask me, if a little floppy. For some reason his head is larger than I expected, even though it’s the same size in the pattern pictures. In any case, he now has a new home and I hope that the recipient can look upon him with some fondness!

Knitting Needle Case

Sometimes you just have to impulse buy a full set of interchangeable knitting needles with cables and other bits and pieces, right? Anyway, once that hurdle has been taken, you need a place to put all those needles and other bits. So off to the pinterest I went for some inspiration. In the end I settled on using the case from Sew Fearless as my jumping off point. Found some of the quilting fabrics in my stash, bought a bit of vinyl tablecloth and located a set of zippers to get me started.

It’s got a couple different elements. First, a center pouch with two vinyl pockets along the outside that close with a zipper. The pockets are split into two to house more of the cables. Then I added an additional zipper along the top (more storage!) and finished the pouch with the blue bias tape I used on my quilt. Then I created the needle holding section on the lining. Lastly, I added another zippered pocket, this time split in three, on the other side. There’s some elastic to hold pens and one other pocket that doesn’t have additional closures. The outside has a handle also made from the bias tape and I added some fusible padding. Lastly, I added a double sided zipper to allow some opening and closing.

So far, it seems to hold up and is quite easy to spot in my very chaotic sewing room. We’ll see how it works when I’m doing more knitting and will actually use it.

Polar Bear

Recently, I got a free pattern in my e-mail inbox of the cutest little polar bear, courtesy of Claire Garland. It can be found here. On Friday the 9th, I decided that it was imperative that I made the little polar bear. So I set off to find the ball of white furry yarn that I remembered I had, somewhere. I also got some thicker white yarn that was also required. I did not follow the gauge or yarn thickness as stated on the pattern at all and just wing it.

I finished the back of the bear up to the front legs on Friday and set out to finish it on Saturday. The furry bits have the thicker white and the fur yarn held together. I did manage to finish the entire knitting and most of the sewing. When I’d finished all the instructions it didn’t really hold the right shape, but it took a few days to get around to stitching him down so that he held his shape correctly.

There’s only one real deviation from the pattern, and that is that I used a dog-nose for the tip of his face instead of stitching. I’m not sure what I’ll do with him, so we’ll see where he ends up. He’s quite adorable though.

Baby Rabbit

I was browsing the internet recently and came across the cutest little rabbit: here. It was posted by From Britain with love as a free Easter bunny pattern. Of course I decided that I needed to make it a.s.a.p. So on Monday night, I started knitting. I finished knitting the body late Monday night, then on Tuesday I knit the legs and arms and went out to get eyes. On Wednesday I finally put it all together, notes here.

The instructions were a little hard to follow at times but knitting it was fun. Always nice to finish a knitting project so quickly. I think the finished project is really quite cute although I had a hard time getting the head to be the way I wanted it to. Tip for next time is also to not push the eye backs in as far as they can go. They should have a little more space.

I probably pushed my arm a little too far by knitting the entire body in one night, and I really should pay more attention to myself. It didn’t hurt excessively, but it was a little uncomfortable.

Arm Knitting

Since Tuesday, when the yarn was delivered, I’ve made a number of arm knit scarves. In almost all of them, I cast on 7 stitches provisionally, using an arm as crochet hook, and and arm as knitting needle. I would arm knit until I spotted a knot in the skein and finish knitting. I’d need about half a meter or more to kitchener stitch the stitches together.
This ended up resulting in a grey one and a yellow one that are slightly too long to single wrap and too short to double wrap.

For the double wrap blue-cream-green one, it’s a full skein and a little more of another skein. The remainder of that second skein was used for the doubled single-wrap version (right two pictures is the same thing). That was the only one that had 10 stitches cast on. These all did not take more than an hour or so each.

I’m finding that I quite enjoy arm knitting. It’s quick, easy, nice result and most of all, fun. I have another skein of grey and yellow and two of some blue/green/grey stuff that is less thick. So you might just see more giant knits.

Hopsalots Slippers

I’ve had a pattern on my radar for years now (2014, apparently). Almost since I discovered the existence of Ravelry. Hopsalots is a pattern by Tiny Owl Knits for bunny slippers. The are absolutely the cutest bunny slippers I’ve ever seen. Now, I’ve been too cheap to purchase that pattern for all those years. Even though I had already started purchasing 100% wool yarn. This January, I finally convinced myself that I really needed bunny slippers. So I bought the pattern and got to work.

The slipper bases and ears I managed to finish knitting in one day. I also felted them on that one Saturday, but then it took me a week more to actually put the things together and add the little pompoms for tails. While sliding around my house, I discovered some form of anti-slip might be safer. So I went and got some sock stop to put latex dots on the bottom. It still makes me very happy to look down while walking around with those little floppy ears bouncing around.

Purchase well made!

Caps

I wanted more stuff to put on some people’s heads, so I made some!

It started with a knitted hat for a friend of mine. I used the same pattern as I did for the Watermelon Hat, because it’s very easy and very quick. The yarn I used was the few bits that were left over from the Grey Scale Sweater. All knit in one day, which I really shouldn’t do anymore, because my arm does not like that!

The next was made from the left overs of the Plaid Jumpsuit. I wanted to make another cap. I remembered that I had some sort of stiff plastic stuff that was supposed to be used for the bottom of bags. I figured it would also work as a cap. After searching around pinterest for a free pattern, I came across one from Blue Marguerite. I added a little bit of seam allowance, and it since it turned out too small, I needed to incorporate a band to make sure the thing stays on my head. I quite like this one. The lining is of cats, which I also enjoy.

The last one was a beret pattern that I found while browsing for the second hat. I found some black stuff in my stash, sewed up the size 56 hat in little to no time. Unfortunately it’s a little too big, so I need to add some more elastic to the rim to keep it on my head. I still think it’s cute though.

I’ve been busy with finishing some other knitting and sewing, so you may see that soon.