Easter Objects

 

 Not quite finished, but getting there!  These are daffodils from a pattern by Attic 24.  I can crochet but am still at the stage where I have to follow the pattern to the letter and even so it is touch and go.

A basket of knitted eggs, this time from the pattern by Little Cotton Rabbits.  They are made to fit over a polystyrene egg form which gives them that satisfying neat shape.

And three Easter creatures, made up as I went along.  Odd how the character of each one was not obvious until the ears went on.  The tails are pretty diagnostic too.  I had fun making these.

Of course, they are not for our house, where I find that aesthetic a little cloying.  They are for the NT property in our village, as seasonal decorations.

Wearable objects

 

So, here is the finished item, not only finished but also worn several times. I used a range of colours in Haworth Tweed, but not the cream or the colour sequence used in the actual pattern.

Some oddities in the pattern leaflet: Discussing the merits of cotton blend yarn - this is Merino and Nylon.  Giving handy tips about intarsia.  At first you think, stripes such as this do not involve intarsia.  Right at the end you realise that there is a tiny bit of colour change to make the front band match the neckband.  I suppose that is intarsia.

I was really please with how the stripes match across upper body and sleeves now - something the designer did not attempt.

I'm now working on another design in the same yarn which also has its oddities. I guess I have just got used to making it up as I go along.

Do pop over to my other blog: Coggeshall Chronicles.blogspot.com where I have reached 1891 in the census returns, but also locate some really interesting individuals who once lived in my street.

Matching stripes.

 Thank you for your kind comments, Maureen.  

I was regarding the striped cardigan as easy knitting.  Here's the pattern:

I decided not to use the same sequence of colours, because I did not like how the cream divided it into blocks. When I was buying the yarn another customer commented that she had knitted the same pattern, but had felt the need to sort out the stripes at the sleeve head so they matched those on the body.  This is the sort of thing you hope the designer would have sorted out for you. Sadly, I did not ask how it had been done.

So I started knitting a sleeve and then realised that it would not happen automatically: the only way was to start at the sleeve-head and reverse the shaping.  I cast on 10 stitches and knitted the first stripe, increasing instead of decreasing.  Hmmm... I knitted several stripes before realising that would not work.  So then I tacked the shoulder seam together and it came to me that the cast on row would cover the first whole stripe on the body, so the first full stripe of the sleeve-head needed to be the second stripe of the body. 

 

Reversing the shaping was relatively easy once I got past this point, although working out the rate of decrease down the sleeve was a puzzle.  Perhaps this is why the designer decided not to match the stripes?