MERRY CHRISTMAS! Our gifts to you - PATTERNS!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

 

Merry Christmas!

We wish you all the very best Holiday Season! 

A very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year to All!

Our gifts to you:
Muppet Patterns!

Christmas Elmo for Mia

Elmo Peep:

  link to pdf of Elmo's pattern

Christmas Cookie Monster for Kristina

Cookie Monster Peep:

   link to pdf of Cookie's pattern

the Thing Pattern? 

The Thing for Matt's birthday

Well, the pattern's written and the photos are in it, but it's not fully proof read. 

But here it is anyway!  :o)

the Thing:   
link to pdf of the Thing's pattern

 

Nellie the Musical Elephant

Nellie the Elephant is ready too!

link to pdf of Nellie the Elephant's pattern

Much Joy and Many Blessings to Everyone!

Please check out www.flickr.com/knittycat for larger photos and all of the peeps.

Nearly a pattern for the Thing, and other Peep patterns!

Please check out www.flickr.com/knittycat for larger photos and all of the peeps.

A pattern for the Thing?!  Is it possible that she's FINALLY finished it??

Well, It is possible... 

The Thing pondering life and creation

Yes!  I've finally finished writing the pattern!  Whew!  No wonder it took me so long to MAKE him!  I had no idea how much work he was till I wrote it all down.  Being quite a lazy knitter, I would never have tackled such an ambitious project if I'd known in advance how much work it would be.  ;o)  And writing his pattern was even HARDER than MAKING him!!  Sheesh!  All of you pattern designers out there, I take my hat off to you.... or I would if I were wearing one.

But don't let me put you off of making a Thing of your very own.  Although the pattern is pretty long (at least for MY standards ...  I like things I can make in a day or three!), each part of it is fairly simple to do.  I do recommend that you are an experienced knitter, or at least a very adventuresome beginner!  I knit him in the round on two circular needles, but you could use dpns if you are more comfortable with them (they always make me feel that I need two extra hands), and there are no seams to sew, but the head and arms, and brow ridge, are knit separately and sewn on.  Other than knitting and purling, I use k2tog for decreases, and two types of increase stitches, the kfb and the kinc.  Video help for the kinc here
http://www.knittinghelp.com/videos/increases 
scroll about halfway down the page for increasing in the right side of the stitch, where she calls it a KRL (“Knit Right Loop”, and  KLL for the left side of the stitch).  Then it's just knit purl knit purl.... and so on and so on.... till you have a big orange Thing!  :o)

I will be posting the pattern in pdf format very soon (I just need to add photos to it first).  It's my Christmas gift to Marvel fans and the knitters who love them!  :o)

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  A slightly belated Happy Thanksgiving to all!

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More Patterns Coming?
 

Nellie the Musical Elephant

In other peep news - I've nearly completed a pattern for Nellie the Musical Elephant (because our niece wanted one like her - so I took notes while I made hers - Hurray!).

Unbroken Heart

Also, I'll be posting a pattern for the Unbroken Heart soon as well.







Christmas is nearly upon us and I have LOTS of tasks (as I'm sure you all do), so I don't know how much I'll be able to get to, peep-wise, for the next month, but since I've been so bad at adding posts here, you probably won't notice.  ;o) 

Elmo & Goldy

The good news (for some folks) is that I'm planning on making an Elmo and a Cookie Monster for Christmas gifts and I'll be making notes on their

Cookie Monster

construction as I make them, so apres Christmas, there may be patterns for them soon. 

We wish all of you  
Very Happy Holidays!  
And we hope that you have lots of fun preparing for them.  :o)

 

The Thing in progress ... Jean Greenhowe Patterns and Kinki Knitting

Please check out www.flickr.com/knittycat for larger photos and all of the peeps.

A Pattern for the Thing?
It's taking me a lot longer than I had hoped to write up a pattern for the Thing.  Making him was a bit more complicated than I'd realized. 

The Thing & reference photos

When I approach "sculpting" with knitting, I nearly always create as I go, without much, if any, plan.  I sometimes have a specific image in my mind, or at least the approximate size and shape of the item. And sometimes I have an image or images on paper (like the

Hello Kitty for Nicole front 3 qtr

Muppet characters, Hello Kitty, the Marvel Comics' character, the Thing,

and Matt's character designs of Ted and NegA-teD, amongst others).
 

Matt's character, Ted - 2 versions

I simply begin, usually at the bottom, and work my way up, creating the desired shape with increases and decreases as I go.  I am not really conscious of the difficulty of the process till some time has gone by and completion is not yet in sight.  :o)
I'm sure that I wouldn't have tackled some of the projects I've made if I'd thought out the difficulty in advance!  ;o)  I like simple and quick projects!

Cookie shows his stuff! Cookie, Elmo and Kermit

With the Thing, I was knitting pretty intensively for a few weeks, so I guess he was rather difficult for me.  Hard work, anyway.  Though not difficult to figure out how to manage the shaping.  He's pretty blocky.  It's proving much more complicated and challenging  for me to analyze how I did what I did, and put it in writing, step by step.  I want to say "make this part as tall and wide as desired", but that's not much use to someone who wants to work from a pattern, is it.

So, the upshot is that it's taking me a lot longer than I'd hoped to put it all down in a useable form.  Especially since I no longer have the fellow and have to work from the photos that I took.  Happily, I took a lot of photos!
And here's a collage of some of the in-progress photos that I took during his creation:

The Thing in progress collage

I'm still hard at work, analyzing his structure and writing up the steps to create him, in between making other peeps, of course.
I have such admiration for all of those prolific pattern writers out there!  How on earth do you do it?!

Jean Greenhowe Books...

Jean Greenhowe's Little Dumpling Ladies

On a happier note - speaking of prolific pattern writers - I recently received two of the absolutely marvelous Jean Greenhowe pattern books that I'd ordered from www.anniesattic.com!

Her knitted characters are just so wonderful!   I especially loved the Little Dumpling Ladies!  (just look at this adorable lady in the YARN SHOP!!)  Besides, I'm rather a "little dumpling lady", myself.  ;o)
  

Jean Greenhowe's Storybook Dolls

And, although I am unlikely to ever actually make anything from one of her patterns (since they are knit in pieces and sewn together and I dislike doing that, and they have LOTS of little details that make them gorgeous, but I don't like to fiddle with), I really enjoy looking at the pics, and thought that I might pick up a tip or two, like a different way of making hair, etc.  Or just more inspiration!  :o)  Just looking at these beautiful creations makes me very happy!  :o)



Kinki Knitting...

KA Circular Needle

I've recently purchased some new circular needles from www.spinblessing.com (I use circulars for all my knitting), and I'm just crazy about them!  They're lovely, silky smooth bamboo, with nice flexible cables, really smooth joins, and SWIVELS inside the joins!  I really love working with them! And they have sizes all the way down to US 0!

The brand is Kinki Amibari (KA), with prices starting from $7.35 for 16 inch needles (the length I use for knitting small items in the round).  The sizes range from US0 up to US17 and most sizes cost under $8.00!  Compare that to Addi Natura's (which are nice but don't have a very smooth join) for $13.00 to $16.00 each!  The Kinki Amibari needles come in several lengths, though I didn't look at the prices of any but the 16" length.
Previously, my favorite needles, and really the only needles I liked to work with, were vintage nylon circs, which haven't been made in a lot of years.  I've been collecting these needles for several years, getting them wherever I could find them, but it's becoming more and more difficult.  So I'm ecstatic to find needles that I'm really enjoying using that are readily available!  Hurray!   Be forewarned though, there is usually a one week delay before the needles are shipped from spinblessing.com since they are ordering them from the manufacturer in Japan.  But they're definitely worth the wait!  :o)
Well, I just talked myself into going and ordering some more!  Yay!

(A little post script:  Please forgive the erratic spacing in this post.  I'm having some trouble with the coding produced by Vox's compose window.)

Character Peeps - Marvel Comics' the Thing

The Thing for Matt's birthday

I recently posted a new Character Peep to our flickr pages modeled after the Marvel Comics' character the Thing (link), and suddenly, it went a little mad in our e-world!  :o)  Apparently, there is a LOT of interest in the Thing (member of the Fantastic Four in Marvel Comics, and recently immortalized even further in a big screen movie).  Folks were viewing and blogging about our humble little version, and interest in a pattern became apparent.


Making the Thing
Unfortunately, as I've mentioned, I rarely knit from a pattern, and usually knit freehand, inventing (sculpting the shape) as I go, so there is really no exact documentation of how I made the Thing.  I can reconstruct a close approximation of how I made him, but the exact execution will be up to anyone who wants to duplicate my efforts.
Update: I'm hard at work, writing an actual pattern.  I hope to have it finished within the next week, and I will post a link here as soon as it is ready.

The Thing & reference photos

I did take a few "in progress" photos, during his construction, and hope that they will help you to visualize the process.  I will include them on the page with the pattern when it is completed.


BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE THING'S CONSTRUCTION:

There is really nothing very unusual about the construction of the Thing. He's actually engineered in the same way as any basic, two-legged, standing, toy, and can be crocheted, instead of knit, if you prefer.  My version is knit in seed stitch (k1p1 then knit the purls and purl the knits) except for the shorts which are stockinette.

If you've made other toys or amigurumi, he is made using the same process.

• Starting from one foot, knit the foot and leg in the round in the same way that you'd knit a simple sock or bootie.

• Put the stitches from the first leg onto a holder and make the second leg the same as the first and add the toes to both feet.

• Attach the color for the shorts and knit across both legs (front and back), picking up the stitches for the first leg from the holder.

• Knit the torso in the round up to the neck, (changing back to the body color at the waist).
• Knit the head and arms (including the fingers) and sew them onto the torso.

• Knit the brow ridge and sew it on.
• Knit the waistband and sew it on
• Pop in the eyes and embroider the mouth

VOILA!  The Thing!

Since he wasn't going to a small child, I did insert pipe cleaners into the legs, arms and torso, to give a little posability and stability (because he's so top heavy).
For much more detailed instructions, please see the Pattern for the Thing linked to on the

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Our gifts to you - PATTERNS!!

post. (now finished!)    :o)