May (and June) 2014

It's going to be a big project, but not knit a big thing -big. More like take ages and make loads of small things -big.

27/06/2014

Progress Report

It can be really hard to predict which patterns will be easy to write and which will have you bending your knitting needles in frustration. I've written in the past about how difficult I found it to decide on an echinoid fossil pattern. Modern starfish are from the same family so I certainly didn't expect the pattern for one to go well first time.

Only it did.

The first complete starfish I made was as good as I think it will get. Sure there were a few false starts as I was making it but overall it went really smoothly.

To celebrate I worked on a seaweed pattern. Channelled wrack to be specific. As usual here is the technical sketch.

As you can see it's not a particularly complicated form of seaweed. The pattern is actually pretty close to the tinsel I made in April.

On another note My collection of beach bits is building up quite nicely so here's a progress shot of my shelf.

I think I'm going to need a lot more pebbles. At the moment the ratio of rocks to interesting bits is pretty good but in this picture I haven't added any of the old shells, let alone made new ones. I could cheat and make felt rocks but I really want an entirely knitted scene.

15/06/2014

Still Here

So. Beaches. Beaches, beaches, beaches. What do you find on a beach? I've done pebbles and shells (definitely not finished with shells), then there's rubbish, seaweed, dog muck, driftwood, more rubbish and dead sea life.

That list is a lot less appealing than I was hoping. I'm going to have to pull back on the realism of my knitted beach and concentrate on more attractive options.

First up starfish!

Here is another of my highly technical planning diagrams:

It describes knitting in the round from a central position, working in a patterned texture then splitting the stitches to work each of the starfish legs separately. The top and bottom sections are knitted in different colours and then sewn together when complete.

Yep that's totally what the sketch shows.

Thanks to maths I know that I need to increase four/five stitches each round to make the central section flat so I can dive right in and have a first try at the pattern.

Here it is, a 100% genuine first draft pattern I wrote down as I made my first starfish.

Thrilling isn't it.

30/05/2014

The Pebbles

I've knitted a couple of pebble-like objects already. The back of my geode was purled in the round, decreasing until the yarn could be pulled through the remaining stitches and pulled tight.

I could make a whole pebble like this, increasing on one side and decreasing on the other, but I would prefer an oval shaped pebble.

The back of the trilobite rock I made was also purled in the round but instead of pulling the yarn through the centre stitches I grafted them in a line. This forced the knitting into a more uneven shape, but also gave the face of the knitting two little dimples that I can't get rid of no matter how carefully I sew.

Trying to make a whole pebble with this method gets complicated surprisingly quickly. To get the invisible join on both faces at once I need to have live stitches at both ends of the knitting. That means undoing cast on stitches and picking them up and there must be an easier way.

My next plan of attack for a simple knitted pebble was knitting short rows in the round to make the oval shape. Sort of like this...

…as you can see that's a highly technical drawing. It is also the absolute best way I have found to work out shaping with short rows. Sketch it out!

Normally I would show you a picture of the short row pebble but I can't find the silly thing so I'm not going to. Seriously, my flat is tiny and I always knit in the same spot. How can something disappear when it's almost certainly within arms reach?! Anyway the short row pebble was extreemly fiddly to make which is why I only made one. That's not something I am looking for in a pattern I want to knit multiple times, in multiple sizes.

Finally I did a quick pattern that went from one end of an oval shape rather than starting on the flat side. It used a lot more straight knitting than the other patterns so it was quicker to work through. I fact I'm getting quite a collection.

The pebble does tend towards a cylindrical shape when stuffed so I've been squishing them flat for the photos. I'm considering stuffing them with foam for a more fixed shape.

18/05/2014

The Beach

My local beach is at Littlestone and it looks like this:

At least it does some of the time. When the tide is out you're lucky if you can even see the sea. And when the tide is in it comes right up to the shingle bank.

That shingle bank is the first thing I'm going to replicate. I'll work out an easy pebble pattern in several sizes, then knit lot of pebbles in blues, greys, sandy browns and whites. Like this...

...only knitted. That should give my shelf a good base for more interesting beach related knitting projects.

13/05/2014

The Project

Basically I have this shelf.

At the moment it is an empty shelf. I am going to knit things to fill it and then I am going to photograph the things. It will be a complete scene of knitted things and the theme will be...

DUN

DUN

DUUUUUUUUNNN...

the beach.