A while ago the shark plush has found a new home, but I didn’t want him to be the only plush in his new abode. So I made him a friend!
I used the same Kraken pattern from SewDesuNe as for Brian, however, I exchanged his face from one from the Octopus pattern. The original features included in Kraken are ‘angry’ and ‘happy’ but I wasn’t too big a fan of the happy one. The Octopus has some other fun options and I chose the ‘smiling eyes’. I tried to use fabrics that were sea-coloured, hence the blue-ish hues. For the bottom suckers, I used a dotted minky.
I think he’s very cute and hope he’ll have a lovely life.
I am a tiny potato And I believe in you You can do the thing
It was my friend’s birthday recently and I decided to make the tiny potato for the occasion. I used the Knit Potato by Carina Lee as the basis and added a pocket to his back for some cute greetings. The saying has been used by us a lot in the past, so I though it would be fun(ny), to make a tiny potato. I started the project in the evening and finished it that night. It’s really a lot more pink like the source image than this pictures make you believe. He’s such a doofus and I love him immensely.
Almost stripy scarf in blues, with little eyelets along the way.
Another knitting machine experiment. I wanted to see if I could make a triangular scarf that wouldn’t grow as fast as most of the ones I’ve tried before. As such, there wasn’t a published pattern involved with this, just one I made up as I went along. The yarn was Alpaca 4ply sock, dyed with one side dark blue and the rest turquoise on 28 March. The scarf itself was started on May 2nd.
The experiment was quite nice, and you can really see the effect blocking has on pointy things. The scarf has a much better point after blocking even though the edges continue to curl a little. I’m not sure I mind though. I really like the striped effect that this dye job created.
This is the pattern:
CoR e-wrap cast on 6 stitches from 70L to 65L.
Knit 3 rows (CoL).
*Transfer the second and third stitch on the left, one needle to the left. Transfer the last two stitches one needle to the right (this creates two eyelets and one increase). Knit 4 rows.*
Repeat ** until there would be 11 stitches between the eyelets on the increase row. In that row transfer the middle stitch one needle to the left to create a decorative eyelet. Knit 4 rows. (Decorative Eyelet Section (DES))
Repeat ** 3x (15 rows from last middle eyelet); and repeat DES (the decorative eyelet will be two needles to the right.) Once there are enough stitches between the side eyelets, make decorative eyelets by transferring the 10th stitch from the center eyelet to the needle on the left.
Repeat until half of the yarn is knit.
Create the second half by e-warp casting on 6 stitches on the right and reversing all shaping.
Use a three needle bind of or some other method of attaching the two sides together.
To add to the little Giraffe gift, I wanted to make an animal themed hat. It needed to be a safari animal and my Ravelry searches unearthed a zebra version. Baby Zebra by Marji LaFreniere, a cute little hat in black and white with a mane down the back. I didn’t want to make it too complicated so I knit the body of the hat on the knitting machine. Since the yarn was very thick, I cast on my 74 stitches (72 + 2 for seaming down the back) by putting 2 needles in work and skipping the next one. Once I reached the length, I pulled the knitting off the machine and onto 4 mm needles.
Since a hat needs to be smaller on top, I did the decreases by hand. Once it was done, I sewed the back seam, leaving space for the tufts of the mane. I made the ears mostly according to the pattern (either the maker can’t count or I can’t because the row numbers didn’t match up) and attached those to the hat. I then cut lengths of yarn and knotted those in the seam of the back for the mane.
I have No Idea whether or not this hat is actually baby sized. I’m notoriously bad at this, generally making baby hats sized for like 1 to 2 year old kiddos. We’ll see on which end of the spectrum this one ends up. The bottom of the hat rolls a bit, but I think it still like it. You can also still see the skipped needles in the body of the hat, it almost looks like ribbing. However, I still think this thing is stinking cute!
Months ago, I had a chat with the colleague who made the Safari Mobile about what she wanted to get for a gift. I showed her some of the stuffed animals from the past and she immediately fell in love with the giraffe (and who wouldn’t!). So I set out to make the giraffe during my holiday in June. She asked for realistic colours so I googled giraffe and set out to find some brown felt. I chose to do his body in the off-white that I had, because none of the other colours would really work. The horns, legs and tail would be brown, with his snout and inner ears white.
As usual, a Choly Knight/Sew Desu Ne pattern comes together really easily. It starts with meditative stitching of the spots and other details. Then sewing the pieces together where all the notches actually line up and then stuffing it to within an inch of its life. Once I had the head and the body both finished, I tried to pin the head on to see where it should go. It was a little lopsided and it looked so cute that I left it that way and sewed it on crooked. Look at his little face! I love him so much and I hope his new family will too.
This year, we had an award ceremony where all of the roller derby team mates got together and presented an award made for one of the others. You basically had free reign to do whatever. We got the names of the person assigned to you very early on but I just procrastinated forever. I’d been half-looking for inspiration for all those months when I suddenly found it. A sheep themed coaster rack. Made out of wood with the coasters pretending to be the sheep’s wool. I figured, I can make this too.
So in my holiday, I set out to the local home goods store and found a placemat in the right type of colour and thickness of felt. Much easier to do that than to try to find something online. I then went on to the local hardware store and bought some sticks. Back home, I got my trusty saw, glue clamps, drill, Dremel and sanding stuff and got to work. Some of the big stick was sawn off for its body, it then got a couple of holes for its legs and I cut off a bit of its head so it would look more like a sheep. Some of the smaller sticks were cut to be the legs.
Then it was time for its coat. I made some templates and cut those out of the placemat. From the leftovers, I made ears and a tail for my lovely sheep. I put it all together and thought “I know what’s missing!”, so I made some roller skates. I found an even smaller stick, cut that into bits and glued it on while sanding a ‘wheel divot’ in and gluing on a tiny bit of placemat as the stopper. To finalize, I printed the statements that fit my person the best and put them in between the placemat circles. It was fun to try and make a thing with wood. It’s not my best crafting material, but I learn a lot every time I try it.
Things I’ve learnt in this project: fringe knotting is not my thing.
According to Ravelry, I started this scarf on February 25 and finished blocking it on February 28. I may have been slightly neglecting writing about it for no good reason. This was a knitting machine project, hence the quick turnaround. I’d dyed two skeins of quarter round fingering weight yarn with browns, reds and oranges on February 9. Then followed the instructions in the Shawl for all reasons by Carole Thimidis pattern. I decided to do the fringe because I wanted to see how something like that would work.
Well, the knitting of this thing took a few hours. Unraveling and then knotting all the fringe took longer than actually knitting it. You basically knit three stitches, then skip a bunch of needles and then increase stitches to make a a quarter of the body of the scarf. Then those stitches are decreased again (while continuing with the fringe stitches). Half of the scarf is now done, so the stitches are increased again, which leaves little holes along the spine. Those stitches are decreased to finish the scarf. Wrapping my head around how this worked took longer than actually making the scarf. I’ve now figured out the logic but it took me so long. When the scarf is done, you start unraveling those fringe stitches row by row. Once you have one loop loose, you make a knot near the scarf body to prevent further raveling.
Once I had all the fringe knotted, the scarf was wetted and blocked to a nice right sided triangle. It came of the machine in a very different shape. It always amazes me how well blocking works, now that I’ve figured out that’s a thing. The most interesting thing about this scarf is that the colours look very different from different sides. You’ll see that in the blocking image too. While there is about 1.5 skein of yarn in there, and there are some minor colour differences between those yarns, it’s not like one is significantly lighter. It’s just the angle that changes the way it looks. Since it’s been finished, I have worn this thing a fair amount. It’s pretty big even if it’s not very warm but still cosy!
Making the little safari themed animals that dangle beneath a mobile.
It’s been a while, but I have been making things every now and again.
My colleague is going on maternity leave soon and she wanted to make a little Safari themed mobile for the crib. She asked me if I could make some safari animals and she would assemble the mobile. So I looked around on the internet and found a lot of options. I was especially inspired by the Puzzle Animals from ‘Felt with love designs‘ but I didn’t really like those specific patterns. So down the pinterest rabbit hole I went. The plan was to create some puzzle animals with two different colours of felt, with one colour being the main outside colour, and other being the middle layer that would appear in some small area(s). In the end, I made a lion, a giraffe, a zebra, an elephant and a rhino.
There was still a large amount of felt in the stash, so I looked around for the colours that seemed most suitable for each animal. The lion was of course yellow, with an orange mane. The giraffe was brown with less bright orange spots on its back. The zebra was white with black stripes. Since I didn’t want to double colours, I had to make some less realistic choices for the elephant and the zebra. The elephant ended up in a darker grey with blue ears, and the rhino was light purple with light grey horns. There was some faffing about with cutting outsides and insides and adhering them together. Then I sewed around the outline for some extra strength. The legs and elephant ears were connected to the bodies with a little extra thread, for security. Those can still be removed if someone wants to play ‘exchange the legs’.
The example mobiles also had some leaves, so I looked around for leaf templates. Luckily there are a lot of those around and I found some cute ones. Some monstera leaves were cut from a light green felt. Some more temperate leaves were cut from dark green felt. All the little green strings you see were there to indicate the midpoint, weight-wise, for the little leaves and critters.
My colleague has since finished the mobile and I hope it’ll bring all of them much joy!
Nice pops of colour and texture on otherwise plain grey.
I saw the The Bright Side scarf by Lori B at some point last year when I was looking for scarf patterns on Ravelry. I was immediately intrigued. It looked like such a fun idea to have different coloured bits of texture in a scarf. This was one of the projects that I really wanted to make and finish. So on November 1st, 2022, I died some Chester Wool Company Alpaca 4ply Sock yarn in a nice light grey while leaving some yarn out of the dye pot. A short rainbow gradient was then applied to the undyed section and further steamed to set. It hang out in my house for about two and half more months before I finally picked it up and started my Rainbow Bright Side.
This was my travel project from January 14 until February 19. It was in a plastic bag in my rucksack and traveled with me on daytrips and to the office. I would sometimes do some knitting on it at home too. The pattern is very simple, there are some edge stitches on both sides, but in the middle just knit (and purl on the reverse), if you come across some rainbow stitches, purl them on the knit side and knit them on the purl side. You’ll end up with a giant crescent shape at the end. As the rainbow was dyed on the skein on one side, there’s approximately the same amount of stitches between each section of rainbow. As the width of the scarf changes all the time, this means that some interesting pooling can occur if the circumstances are just right. It’s very fascinating to see how these develop while knitting.
As you end on the widest part of the crescent, I had a hard time estimating how much yarn I still needed to finish. In the end, I won yarn chicken by about 4 cm and felt very lucky about that. I really didn’t want to take that many stitches out again. After winning chicken, the scarf was wetted and the blocked. I tried to pull it into an aesthetically pleasing shape on my pool mats. I think it worked. The point of the triangle is not in the middle of the scarf, which means I can wrap the short side around my neck once, but the long side twice. It also goes with a lot of different things because the colours are both neutral and bright – at least in my opinion. It’s already seen some wear, and I’m sure it’ll come out more often!
“What happens if you separate out random partial sections of yarn and dye those a different colour?” Was the question that spurred the 28 March round of dyeing yarn. I wanted to try and see if it would 1) be possible to even separate out different parts without making it impossible to ball up later and 2) whether that would then create a more random pattern. I started with two skeins of Krypton 4ply yarn and started pulling out random strands and strand sections. The majority of the skein was dyed with a low percentage of black. It’s more grey in appearance because of that. The strand sections that were left out were dyed a nice dark green.
The second skein was Alpaca 4ply sock and got the same separation treatment. I wanted to dye this a bright light blue/turquoise colour with the contrast being navy. However, part of the skein that wasn’t supposed to be navy fell into the pot so there are some more blue spots than intended. I also had another skein of Alpaca 4ply sock that was dyed in some leftover yellow dye. Later, some orange and brown speckles were put over the top.
The first and second experiment also had some leftover dye in the pot, so I wanted to test out the Tweed Effect DK yarn that’s been hanging out in the cupboard too. I took a full skein and started it on the yarn winder until about half was into a ball. Cut the skein and had two tweed experiments. The ball was unwound gain and dropped dry into some blue dye. It did actually take on the barber pole effect that was indicated on the website. The green experiment was not as successful. The yarn came out very uneven and without much barber-poling.
After these experiments, I’ve been able to answer question 1. Yes, it is possible to separate out without making it impossible. It did take a bit longer than normal because certain bits didn’t want to let go of each other. I’ve not gotten around to question 2 though. I’ll report back once these yarns have reached either the knitting machine or the needles!
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