Wednesday 27 February 2013

On the needles...

The ten stitch blanket is getting dangerously close to being finished.
Plus I am also knitting a bonsai tree.
This is for the Botanica Mathematica project; combining nature, knitting and numbers. Also whilst walking home I noticed that this mysterious owl has appeared on a wall nearby and is brightening up the area.
How cute!

Tuesday 19 February 2013

Eggcellent!

With the ten-stitch blanket still being worked on, I was looking for smaller, more portable projects. I picked a variety of toppers for Easter eggs and started to knit.  Firstly, Eggheads by Emily Ivey.
These are very cute, and very quick to knit.  There are three different hats to knit, and they look great topped with a tiny pompom.  These fit a Cadbury cream egg, or a medium hens egg.  Next I knitted a rabbit egg cozy by Linda Dawkins.  The ears are adorable.  The finished cozy is slightly bigger that the Eggheads pattern, and will fit a large hens egg or a Kinder egg.
They will also fit a guinea pig.  Here is Jeremy auditioning for a role as the Easter Bunny.
Finally, I knitted fuzzy Easter bunny egg warmers from Drops. These are knitted using two strands, scrap acrylic and a mohair-look yarn.
I then added felt eyes and nose.  They are very sweet!  These toppers with cover an egg completely, and they will stand up by themselves.
Are you knitting anything for Easter?

Wednesday 6 February 2013

Where is the bear?

Back in November I had a try at illusion knitting.  I had thought it was going to be very complex, but was much easier that I thought.  That is thanks to the excellent tutorial from Woolly Thoughts and some stitch markets (stitch markers are your friend in illusion knitting).  I chose a teddy bear pattern from Woolly Thoughts for a friends baby, some Sirdar Snuggly, and got to work.
The blanket took about 3 weeks, including the border.  Full details on how I did the border my ravelry project page.  The blanket is very cute, who would have thought that knit and purl could create such a great illusion.  And the bear will be perfectly seen from a baby's-eye-view.  I had a little yarn spare, so added a simple baby hat by Allison Williams, with added teddy bear ears (obviously!).
And also some cute booties.  These are Seamless Baby Booties by Laura Yarnthrower.
These were all good fun to knit, and I would certainly like to try more illusion knits.  Ps) Apologies for the dull lighting in the photographs, roll on Spring!