September 2012

I say that every year and I always forget. Not this time. September 19th is marked in my diary. Now to rehearse:

Yaaarrr... n

Yaaaarrgh... n

What do you mean one track mind?

16/09/2012

Making the Apple

I'm a little unclear as to whether this counts as attempt no. 1 or attempt no. 7. I restarted this apple 6 times but only finished it once.

I like the bottom view of the apple best. It was designed to look like an imperfect fruit. I enjoy it when a bit of random shaping happens in my knitting, it feels more organic.

14/09/2012

Planning the Apple

A whole knitted apple should be pretty straightforward to make a pattern for. Knitting a sphere will give me the basic shape. Then I can make it a bit more appley by sewing back and forth through the centre to pull the top and bottom inwards.

When I knit spheres I usually start at a point and space out the increases over the first third of the ball. The middle section is worked in the straight and the decreases are spaced out over the last third or so.

In knitting my apple I'm going to group the increases as close as possible to the starting point. I've noticed that when you increase more than 5 or 6 stitches a row in round knitting the fabric can't spread out enough to lie flat and you get a series of bumps around the central point. If sort of looks like the lumps you see on the base of an apple. Convenient that.

Most of the apple is going to be knitted straight to give the fruit a smooth finish. It doesn't matter how neat my increase/decrease stitches are, they still don't look as neat as plain knitting.

The top is going to be knitted as a disk.

I'm hoping that despite the strange arrangement of increase/decrease the apple will end up the right shape. I am hopeful because of the first rule of 3D knitting: stuffed objects tend toward the round.

11/09/2012

Finally

The website is updated and it is now officially September. Autumn has arrived and I've decided to knit an apple (autumn fruits, harvest time etc – it seemed appropriate).