Elephant!

While I was in Texas this past March, my sister was in...India. With husband and baby. That's right, she took a four-month-old baby to India. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I didn't set foot on an airplane until I was fifteen years old. Can I be jealous of my nephew for being more well-traveled than I am? Is that okay?

They went to an elephant sanctuary and had a great time. I assume that Nephew slept through it all; he certainly won't remember any of it later. So I knitted him an elephant (Rav link), another one of the patterns in Zoe Mellor's Knitted Toys.

I love the projects in this book so much, but the patterns are so badly written. So much unnecessary seaming! It's infuriating! Not that I plan to knit another elephant, but I've been trying to figure out how to improve the process of this pattern -- what can be done in the round, etc. So dumb. But I digress...

I used Colinette Cadenza again, the same yarn I used for both toy bears I made last year. A great yarn for baby toys, soft and washable, and also good quality. I used the "Jewel" colorway for the elephant, because the colors made me think of the flash and color and beauty of India (not that I've seen them myself). And although I looked at this colorway on the shelf a zillion times and thought, "goodness, that's some ugly yarn! Who in the world would want those colors together?" when I decided to make this pattern, I knew that was the exact right colorway for this particular elephant.

I did manage to do a three-needle bind-off for the two gusset pieces (can I just say, how unhelpful is it to call the belly of the elephant a "gusset?" Legs, body, trunk...gusset? That is not a body part! Dumb!!! It's the underside of the elephant, the belly!!! GRRR!!!), so didn't have to get out the tapestry needle for that one. Then I blocked all the pieces -- and I must admit, I didn't know the Hot-Iron-On-Wet-Washcloth Blocking Trick before doing this pattern, and I love it and will forever be grateful to Zoe Mellor and her terrible pattern-writing for teaching me this technique -- and set about the stupidly time-consuming task of sewing them all together.

Seriously, it took me as much time to do the sewing as it took to do the knitting. Eye roll. The entire car ride to their house, then two nights on the couch... I had to give Nephew the not-quite-finished elephant before bed in order to get pictures of him playing with it (he liked it, I'm glad to say!), and then had to stay up until the wee hours of the morning before our departure to get all the seaming and stuffing done. Hence the terribly-lit late-night photo above.Still, I'm happy with the finished product, even if the process left something to be desired. Also, my nephew is so beautiful! He's slightly over six months in this picture (and today is his 7-month birthday).

Baby Strawberry Hands

Several months ago, while Sister was still pregnant (but very close to due), I decided that Baby needed a pair of thrummed mittens that looked like strawberries. Then we could call him Baby Strawberry Hands -- which sounds vaguely like Edward Scissorhands, but much cuter.

I improvised the pattern, using the leftover Cadenza from the Red Bear, but didn't write it down. I made the first Strawberry in one night (maybe two?), and then it took me longer than I'd anticipated to sit down and work on the second one, so I had time to forget what I'd done. And then the first attempt at Strawberry #2 was terrible, so I frogged it and started over... well, my nephew is now three months old, and I just finished the second Strawberry today. And this after making a concerted effort to finish!

But SO CUTE!!!! He may have already outgrown them, I don't know. He is a BIG baby. But I'm popping them in the mail soon, and maybe he'll get a couple of days' use out of them.


I think I cast on two or three stitches and kfb-ed every stitch a few times, working in the round (size 5 DPNs). Then I just kept increasing randomly, adding the occasional thrum, and probably got up to around 100 stitches total. Then I started decreasing, also randomly. I also threw in purl ribs here and there along with the decreasing, so that the surface would have that irregular bumpy shape like a strawberry. (Inasmuch as you can make mittens look like a strawberry, that is! They're not very pointy/triangular.) I decreased down to 20 sts, all purls, and then switched to larger dpns and the green yarn, which is Jill Eaton Minnow Merino, by Classic Elite Yarns. I think I used size 6 for the first mitten, and 7s for the second mitten; it's hard to tell. Anyway, I did 6 rounds of k1p1 rib and then bound off loosely. I did a single-crochet chain to connect the two, so now they look like strawberries on the vine! And the vine can go through his coat sleeves.

Seriously adorable.

Teddy Bear #2

A friend of Husband's saw the red bear I was knitting for Sister's Baby, and asked me to make one as a gift for her knocked-up daughter as well (but in yellow). So I did. I used the same yarn as I did before (Colinette Cadenza -- really like this yarn), but on size 5 needles instead of size 6 so that I could stuff the bear a little more tightly without the stuffing showing through like it did with the red bear. This time, I got smart and knit the darn thing in the round, which makes it so much easier. The pattern is written for stripes, so there's seaming. But if you're not doing stripes, then the seaming is unnecessary. And a pain. Anyway, here's the result:
(in progress)




I had to finish in a hurry (about a week after running into the friend on the street and learning that I had "plenty of time," because she wouldn't be seeing her daughter for "a while," Husband came home and said, "M just called me, and she's coming to pick up the bear tomorrow because she's going to visit her daughter the next day." Ummm... okay!). I used this brown embroidery thread for the face because that's what I had -- but then realized it was not high-contrast enough. I rimmed the eyes in blue at the very last second (I was tying the final knot just as Friend walked up onto our porch), but didn't get a photo. Still, you get the idea, even with the bad lighting in this pic: