It's all in the ears

I have mentioned previously that I subscribed to a knitting magazine.  At that time, the regular contributor for toy patterns was Alan Dart.  His designs are amazing.  They are so full of character.  An added bonus is that his instructions are detailed and easy to follow.

In the June 2014 edition, the pattern was for a Peruvian Llama, with chullo hat and poncho.  

This photo is from the original pattern at https://www.alandart.co.uk/peruvian-llama/

As you can see, it was stunning and colourful.  My immediate decision was to take it in to show my friend at work.  Why? Because she has three alpacas.  When I showed her, she too was amazed at the detail and llama-likeness, which prompted me to ask, what is the difference between llamas and alpacas.  In essence, she said there was very little of significance, bar their ears.  "The way I remember," she said, "is that llamas have ears like bananas!"  This made me chuckle and then she asked me if I would make her an alpaca following the original pattern but with the obvious ear adjustment.  With such a stunning pattern, I could not refuse.

I have a considerable stash of yarn so the colours for the hat and poncho were not a concern but I needed to buy the specific yarn for the llama - correction, alpaca - body.  Then I had to wait for it to arrive. Patience is never really a strong suit of mine and I just wanted to get on with making it.  I had colours, I had needles, I had the pattern - so I began with the alpaca accessories and set to on the poncho.  

Whilst the instructions to follow are laid out clearly, that does not mean the knitting was easy.  You will recall in the previous story I mentioned about working with multiple yarns at a time.  Well this was not so complex as that but the item was considerably smaller and thus a tad fiddly.  I took my time and checked it as I went along.  On the first attempt, I messed it up. The crosses that you can see to the top of the poncho did not initially turn out like crosses. I think I made an error due to confusing myself as I needed to make stitch decreases as well as colour changes.  Whatever the reason, it was undone and reknitted - just that section, not the whole poncho.  Once it was all knitted, the fringe had to be added.  That is a seriously time consuming effort but well worth it.

By the time I completed the poncho, the body yarn had arrived so thoughts of the chullo hat were set aside and the alpaca body was started.  I was fascinated as I knitted at how it was possible to come up with the pattern I was following. The changes to make the chest puff out were simple and yet so clever in the effect it had on the knitted piece and this became more apparent once it was sewn up.  I will not bore you with all the clever pattern nuances but I will tell you though that the legs are made such that the llama/alpaca stands steadily due to some ingenuity involving drinking straws.  Suffice to say it was a joy to make and intellectually stimulating too.  Even the stuffing needs attention to make sure it shapes the toy appropriately.  Mr Dart is a very talented designer!  

As mentioned, my friend requested an alpaca not a llama so some minor adjustment was required for the ears.  I knitted the original pattern to see the size then worked out, of course with the aid of my trusted graph paper, an alpaca ear design.  I think it worked well because when I took the completed alpaca in to her, adorned with poncho and chullo hat, she was over the moon.  

The first alpaca

She showed those who visited her desk and one colleague requested an even more bespoke alpaca - that the hat and poncho to be in the design of the hat owned by the friend they intended to gift it to.  They provided me with a photo of the hat.  You know how when you zoom in on a photo it can pixelate? Well on this occasion, it was an advantage.  I printed a standard copy of the picture and the close in one and used them to work out the pattern to be knitted up.  It was an enjoyable challenge and the result was very pleasing.

Alpaca with bespoke hat and poncho

Some time later, my son came home from secondary school and said that he had a request for me from a friend.  He had mentioned to them that I had been knitting llamas and alpacas and they asked if I could make them a llama with a hat.  It turns out there is a comedy series called "Llamas with Hats" which they really liked and thought it would be fun to have their own llama with hat.  As I recall, there were subsequent requests with differing hats but this is the photo found of one of them.

A llama with a hat

These handsome toys were fun to make and never failed to raise a smile on those who saw them.  A year or so after making the first, my friend with the alpacas gifted me some alpaca yarn made from the fleece of her alpacas.  It had to be done - I made one using that yarn for the lower half of the legs.  It made me smile to know there was real alpaca in the making of the alpaca.

I still occasionally get asked to make a llama or an alpaca, the most recent being last summer.  Some have fringes on their ponchos, some do not.  It is all a matter of choice, as are the colours used.  Here is a small selection of others I have made.  I hope they make you smile too.

The Battle of Stamford Bridge

Reading this blog, you may think that knitting is my only crafty endeavour. That is not so.  I absolutely cannot crochet - I have tried many times, following written instructions, with one to one tuition and watching online video tutorials.  It seems that is one craft that fuses my brain cells.  One I enjoy almost as much as knitting is cross stitch.  I love the way pictures build up simply by sewing small crosses of designated colour onto the fabric.  It is good for me to do it from time to time.  When I knit, I am told it is at pace.  I never gave it a thought as I hardly ever find myself knitting alongside others but I have been told this now by many people.  Cross stitch is definitely a craft you cannot do fast.

As with knitting, I like to design cross stitch patterns.  The first I did was as a wedding anniversary gift for my husband which depicted our wedding day.  It was simple in that it was just words and symbols in essence so I could design it all on graph paper.  I thought I might like to do more adventurous designs so purchased some software that would translate photographs or pictures into cross stitch patterns.

I think I may have mentioned my software purchase at work because I recall a colleague said he thought the Chelsea badge would make an excellent cross stitch.  No surprise, he was an ardent Chelsea Football Club supporter.

Some months later, he announced that he was leaving having secured a new job.  I recalled his comment about the cross stitching of a Chelsea badge and set about finding a copy and running it through the software though not with the intention of cross stitching it.  No, I had decided that more interesting would be to knit it up.  I figured that when I designed my knitting patterns I used graph paper and that the software output was essentially graph paper designs in colour so it should be pretty straightforward.  Of course a knitted badge would be larger than a cross stitch one so determined it would be one side of a cushion cover.  I sourced a design I liked and used it to determine the dimensions.  I then purchased the yarn, cushion pad and buttons and set to work.  

Now I am not going to tell you it was straightforward, because it was not.  There were just five colours of yarn to use - white, blue, red, yellow and grey - but the detail in the pattern required multiple colour change points across many rows of the design.  Rather than buying several balls of each colour, I had to separate each colour out into multiple smaller balls so that each detail had its own yarn source.  This avoids having lengths of yarn across the back of the knitting which can get messy and make the finished piece not sit flat.  The downside of this was that across the main part of the badge, I had fifteen balls of yarn in play.  At each colour change, it is necessary to twist the two yarns together to prevent holes in the finished piece.  As you can imagine, this is some feat with so many balls of yarn on the go.  At the end of each row I had to untwist the yarns to free them up for knitting the next.  I am assured by my husband and son that it was quite a spectacle, especially when I got in a tangle with the yarn!  To give you a flavour, one of the rows would have been: white, yellow, blue, red, blue, yellow, white, grey, blue, white, grey, blue, white, grey, blue, white, yellow, blue, red, blue, yellow, white.  That is 21 colour changes.  Now I look back on it, what was I thinking?

It took a couple of weeks of effort, evenings and weekends, to complete but when it was finished, I was relieved to find that it did actually look recognisable as the Chelsea Football Club badge.  I was so pleased.  I grabbed the cushion pad and - bump - back down to earth.  The badge was good and fitted across the square cushion pad beautifully but it was considerably short.  What to do?  I pondered a while.  If you are wondering if there were any exclamations of frustration, I assure you there were but it was just using up time that would be more productively used to solve the problem.  I suspect I still spent a good half hour seething before I set to finding a solution.  Using the completed badge, I worked out how many more rows of knitting I needed. Just knitting a chunk to tag on the bottom would look awful so I decided to make it purposeful by knitting into it the year, 2012, to denote for the chap when he set off on his new adventure. 

Once that was complete, I made the back of the cushion cover, a two tone button up design.  Being single coloured and no variation on the chosen pattern, this was knitted up very quickly by comparison.  I confess to being pleased with how the finished cushion looked.

The chap from work was speechless when presented with the cushion.  He could not believe that I had recalled our throwaway chat about the Chelsea badge and been prompted to make him such a personalised gift.  

I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of making it but the pleasure in knowing how happy it made him was the greater reward.

A tall order

As already mentioned, my knitting and the resulting knitted items cause interest and curiosity amongst family, friends and colleagues.  About a year ago, the lady that I had recently started sitting next to waited for a quiet moment and enquired if I had any patterns for giraffes as they are her favourite animals.  I said I would look and a couple of days later, brought in the patterns I had found in my collection, some from the magazine I subscribed to and others from the online yarn site I use, for her to see if any suited her.  She selected the colours from one and the design of another.

When I agree to knit something for someone, unless I am mid-project, I like to try and get on with it as soon as I can.  I checked the volume of yarn required for the giraffe, made sure I had sufficient toy stuffing in stock, and ordered the colours to be used.

A word of advice for anyone else who is willing to make things for others, whatever craft or skill you employ.  Before you agree to the task, read the pattern or instructions through to make sure it does not require skills you do not have.  Guess what?  I failed to do this for the giraffe.  It was only once I had committed and ordered the yarn that I read through the pattern and found that the spots were not knitted as part of the pattern but added after completion through Swiss darning.  Are you wondering what Swiss darning is?  Essentially it is sewing over the knitted stitches in another colour yarn. Think of it like tracing over the shadow letters in your exercise book when you are learning to write at primary school.  Sounds simple doesn't it?  Well my handwriting skills far surpass my sewing skills.  Every attempt I have ever made of Swiss darning has resulted in an awful mess.  Two choices - tell the lady I could not do the giraffe for her or find some other way of adding the spots to the giraffe. What to do?

It occurred to me that when I looked at the picture of the completed giraffe I had assumed that the spots were knitted as part of the giraffe.  Well if that is how it looked, could I adapt the pattern so that they were knitted?  The Swiss darning instructions were to use the picture as the guide for putting the spots on the giraffe.  Out came the squared paper and I drew out the giraffe body from the knitting pattern.  Looking at the picture in close up, I estimated where on the body each spot was located and drew them onto the squared paper.  Once complete I reviewed the finished sketch to make sure the spots seemed balanced and not too regimented.  I know I have a tendency towards fixed and rigid order when I set things out so I fought that instinct.  Nobody wants a giraffe that looks like it has been made by a robot.

Even though I was pretty comfortable that the pattern would work, I was concerned that the resulting giraffe would not look like the original picture and therefore would not be what the lady from work was expecting.  I took a look in my yarn stash to see what I had in sufficient volume to be able to make a mock up of the pattern.  Another little confession.  I do not like pink.  I do not know why, it is just not a colour that cheers me.  So, when I looked in the yarn drawers (there are several, and bags and bags besides) and saw two shades of pink yarn in abundance, I decided to willingly sacrifice them to the cause of the giraffe pattern-proving.  

I cannot recall the timeline exactly but I suspect that I knitted up the pink giraffe over a weekend and took it into work to show the lady on the Monday morning.  I explained that I had not read the pattern, could not Swiss darn and thus had had to modify the pattern and that I had used yarn from my stash to make a version of the giraffe but that if she did not like it she just had to say but that if she did like it, it would be in the colours she had requested.  Yes, I was more than a little nervous of whether she would like my version of the giraffe.

My worries were immediately allayed as she exclaimed her joy on seeing the pink giraffe.  I confessed to her that I had chosen to use pinks because I do not like the colour but that I had found that, as the giraffe took shape, the colours kind of suited it.  Not only that, it was very hard not to smile when you looked at it.  She agreed and the pink giraffe was soon getting plenty of attention from passers by.  By the end of the day, I had decided to keep the giraffe on my desk to cheer the place up.

By the end of the week, the giraffe had been named Jezzy (actual name Jezebel but shortened to avoid offending anyone's sensibilities) and had a tissue paper scarf.  Her popularity did not wane and she ended up being a bit of a mascot, going to the desk of anyone having a difficult day to help them through it.

Hey, what about the giraffe in the requested colours??  The yarn arrived during Jezzy's first week in the office and I knitted him (yes, he was a boy giraffe) up and took him into work the following week.  The lady who requested him, adored him.  But she was not the only one.  As you can see from the photo at the beginning of this story, he became Jezzy's beau but that is not where their story ends.  A few months later, there was another giraffe on the scene.

A family photo, including their pet duck

A Robin is for life, not just for Christmas

You hear the expression "Victim of your own success" occasionally.  Have you ever wondered what it means or how that could manifest for someone?  Well, I found out when a friend spied all the knitted creations for the Big Knit that I was making and asked if I would make something for her.  When I asked what, she said to let her think.

A few days later, she returned and said, as it was not long until Christmas, she would like a robin.  When I said that would be fine, she explained further.  She wanted a robin that could sit on her couch taking up the space of a person, to act as huge festive decoration.  Could I do it?  Why not? What would it take bar a lot of yarn, some needles, a pattern?  Did she have a preferred pattern?  No, so first task was to find the pattern!

I looked some out over the weekend and took them to her to look through early the following week.  Once she selected her preferred pattern, I set about knitting it up.  This served several purposes:

• make sure she liked the pattern (she did)
• make sure I was comfortable knitting it (I was, with a few modifications) 
• find out what size of robin it resulted in (about 3 inches tall). 

The next challenge was scaling up from 3 inches tall to approximately 24 inches tall.  Essentially I took a little cheat here.  The original pattern was knitted using double knit yarn (8 ply to those in Australia, worsted to those in America).  The easiest way to make something bigger is to use heavier yarn and larger needles.  I knitted the pattern again, this time using chunky yarn to determine the actual scaling up that was needed.  I will be honest here, I cannot recall the size of the robin that resulted from this and I did not note it but suffice to say it would have been somewhat bigger than the one in double knit though still well short of 24 inches tall.

Once I knew the size of the chunky yarn robin with the original pattern, I got out my squared paper and pencil and drew up the original pattern.  I then drew out a scaled up version of the pattern.  Why did I bother to draw up the original pattern?  With that I could see the proportions of the original pattern to make sure that the scaled up version was similarly shaped and proportioned.  No good making a large robin that does not look like a robin.  That is not what the lovely lady would want to pay for!

I estimated from the chunky weight yarn used to make the original pattern how much I would need to make the huge robin and purchased the yarn and, of course, stuffing.  It would be no good knitting it and having nothing to stuff it with. 

Now a 24 inch tall robin was going to need an immense amount of stuffing and I was concerned that it would be difficult to ensure it had structural integrity.  I puzzled on this for some time and eventually decided that what it needed was a structural core.  Something to build on to plump it out to full robin shape.  But what could I use?  From somewhere the idea came to me - I would use a ball.  You know those soft children's balls that you see at supermarkets or the beach in summer?  No, not a beach ball as I could not risk it bursting.  Imagine coming down Christmas morning and finding your robin wilted on the sofa.  No, no.  I selected a lightweight pastel coloured child's ball to be the robin's core.

As you might suppose, the couch robin took some knitting.  Whilst constructing him, further modifications were required, particularly for his legs and eyes, but finally he was complete - knitted and stuffed.  I arranged  a date with my friend to present her with her couch robin.  I was excited, as I thought it looked pretty true to the original robin, and anxious, in case it was not what she had imagined it would be.  I imagine she too was excited after the wait and anxious in case she did not like it.  Neither of us needed to have worried.  She was absolutely over the moon with it, though initially I think a little lost for words.  Can you imagine being faced with a toddler sized robin!  

That's my boy!

She immediately took Robin and his dad (that is the original one knitted to make sure she liked the pattern - hey, without him there would have been no couch Robin), packed them in her car - Robin had the seat belt on - and took them over to show her mum and dad.

I pondered over what she would do with Robin after Christmas.  When I asked, she said he was so amazing that he could sit on the couch all year round.  That troubled me - a Christmas robin, all year round!  I thought about how he could be made year round appropriate and decided all he needed was a change of hat.  So I made him three more hats -  a Busby, a sombrero and a Robin Hood hat - all of which affixed to his head with Velcro.  I borrowed Robin back briefly to add Velcro to his Christmas hat and his head.  Finally he was a year round Robin.  

I am sorry to say I only have this one photo of Robin with his dad but I do know he is still happy and brings joy to those who see him.

Penguins aplenty

So, what is the story behind the team of penguins?

It all started in summer five years ago when I subscribed to a knitting magazine that was advertising for knitters to make miniature hats for Innocent Smoothie bottles to raise funds for the Age UK Big Knit campaign.  For each Innocent Smoothie sold with a hat on, Innocent Smoothie would donate 25p to Age UK.  I had loads of yarn already and there were many designs freely available, most of which would not take too long to make, so I decided this could be my lunch time activity at work. 

As you might imagine, knitting in the office environment caused some curious looks.  Some people were brave and came to ask what I was doing.  When I explained and showed them the collection of patterns that were available, I was asked if they could buy directly from me rather than having to wait until the hats were available on the bottles in November.  Other people asked if I could make them specific designs.  I agreed and set a price of £1 for a hat from stock and £2 for a custom order with all the funds going to Age UK.  Initially it was only those sitting in the same department that ordered and bought them but, as people saw them atop bottles on desks, word got out and I received more and more requests plus one variation on this – could I make it so that the chosen design would sit on the desk, not atop a bottle, more like an ornament?  I considered for a moment and said I thought it would be possible but to let me try first.  You see, the patterns were all for fitting the top of a Smoothie bottle.  To make any of the designs a desktop ornament meant I needed to design a base for them.

I knitted up the design that had been requested – I cannot recall what it was now but it may well have been a penguin – and then sat and pondered how to effect a base.  I needed a circle.  I could not recall having knitted one before so looked through patterns I had until I found the inspiration I needed.  It was a pattern for some tiny flowers, knitted in a straight line that when sewn up became a circle.  That gave me the guiding principle of how it was done, next was to work out the exact pattern to provide the correct size of base.  It took a few attempts but I finally worked it out.  I stuffed the hat with toy stuffing and sewed the base to it.  After a little manipulation to make sure that the stuffing was distributed correctly and that the hat stood up unaided, success was declared!

The recipient of the stuffed hat was exceedingly happy and showed friends and colleagues.  The upshot?  An increase in the number of requests for stuffed hats until there were more of those than standard hats.  The penguins and snowmen were very popular because their hats and scarves afforded the opportunity to customise them to suit the recipient.  In general the orders were for one or two at a time until the day I was stopped by one of the building security guards.  He asked me if there was any limit on the number that could be ordered.  He asked if there was any restriction on colour.  When I confirmed he could have as many as he wanted of whatever colour so long as I could obtain it, he explained that his son was a Tottenham Hotspur fan and that he would like 11 penguins in Spurs colours to give to his son as a special gift.

Standard 4-4-2 formation

So that is the story of the team of penguins but it is not the end of what the Big Knit started…. 😀

Click here to read more about The Big Knit

Time to get started

Well, I have finally done it.  For years I have been encouraged to set up a blog to share what I knit.  I have said I will think about it but never really done much about it.  And then the Covid-19 pandemic occurred.  Suddenly life for all of us has changed in ways we could not have envisaged.  For most of us it is just a restriction on activities we can do.  For others, it is much more.

The main motivation for my knitting is the reaction of those who receive what I make.  I admit, I love the challenge of doing something new and I challenge myself to finish things in a set time frame.  Ultimately though, I want to finish what I am making to see the reaction of the recipient.  The smiles, the joy, the happiness.  Their happiness makes me happy and motivates me to knit more - and more - and more.

Now more than ever we need to spread smiles, joy and happiness.  So I plan to do that with my knitting.  I will share with you past projects and new ones, with photos of course.  I hope they make you smile and brighten your day.  I have added a couple here, just to get us started.

Stay safe and well.

A team of penguins

Father and son

Jezzy the Giraffe and her Beau