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.
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| A family photo, including their pet duck |
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