Tag: Colour work

Mammoth!

A giant woolly mammoth is approaching through the winter forest.

My other travel project has been a knit cowl from the same designed who made the Christmas Mystery Knit pattern. This one is the Woolly Giants Cowl (knit) by Mary P. Hunt. I dyed some Donegal DK in a light gray and chose some undyed MCN DK to knit up this lovely creature. However, once I completed the woolly rhino section at the bottom, I decided that the original colour was much too light. The Light picture actually shows it much better than real life did. So I ripped it all out and dyed a new skein of Donegal to a darker gray. The colour difference was now quite stark and it’s a lot easier to make out the different designs.

Darker version
Original light gray woolly rhinos
Light version
three balls of yarn in white, grey and darker grey
Yarns

Knitting this was very fun. I had a print out of the design and a pen and marked off every row completed. It took me a while, mainly because it was mostly in my bag waiting for travel time. Several people along the way were impressed with how such a project is worked, which was cool too.

Knitted cowl with a mammoth and a forest.
Knitted cowl with a mammoth and a forest.
Mammoth scarf on a mannequin

I feel like I am actually getting better at colour work. It seems a bit less .. lumpy than previous projects. I did make one change and omitted the triangles at the top. I thought it was already plenty high and I didn’t really like them. However, I do now believe that a little more white (or those triangles) would’ve made his head ‘end’ a little better. He’s going to be a fun neutral option, come winter.

Changes, Again and Socks

Changes, not the things I like most in my life. Some happened, I needed to deal with them. I did, mostly.

Now, you may think that something bad happened, but that was not the case. On the first of May 2014 I started my new job at my old University. This involved a move and the leaving behind of my old life, both living at my parents and when I used to live here before. It’s difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that I’m not a student here anymore. I’m in some ways further removed from the school than when I was attending it, and in other ways closer than ever before. New stuff scares me and I’ve been busy adjusting to my new life.

House emptyHouse full

While I may not have been active at my own blog so much, I have been making some things. I made a bird to put on a key chain, but I have since given away said key chain without taking a picture, so that was stupid.
One of my friends and coworkers (friend first) had her birthday and I decided, the day before that I wanted to knit her a recordersockthing. She had her recorder in a regular sock and I decided it could use an update.

Not long before I had bought a book on knitting and had knit slippers (next time, my dears, next time). I also remembered that there was a pouch for glasses with a cat on it in the book. I was supposed to be taking care of her cat for a week when she was on holiday so I thought it appropriate to knit the cat.

The pattern stated that I was supposed to sort of weave in thread over the knitted base to form the cat picture. I decided to completely ignore that and learn myself some colour work. So I did, and I think it turned out quite well! I was going to make it a spitting image of their cat, but knitting it took a bit longer than anticipated so I didn’t have time to add the tiger stripes. This is the front and back:

Cat front Cat back

The insides are on the left. On the right you see a close up of the little cat button I’d scored at some point in my life and was precisely big enough for the hole I’d made and it had another cat. Double win, right? *cough*

Insides Inside

Honestly, I think it’s not bad for a night’s work. I do hope that non of you own the same book, because I’m worse than a pre-schooler at counting and managed to lose an entire.. column? A vertical row, so my cat is a little different from the original, but it still looks like a cat. In my eyes at least. Now we’ll see how it’ll hold up to real life…

Also, hang on for next time when I’ll show the fantastic ‘8 squares slippers’ I’ve made from that same knitting book.