Neep!

This is a picture of a knitted Neep* I made a few years back, and it popped up on my FB feed recently - one of those FB 'remember this?' autoposts. I made him for a friend who commissioned him as a birthday present for their little girl, and I believe he is a much loved favourite (which is very gratifying).

At the time, he was a one off. I didn't write up a pattern. I just did it and that was that. I have had a quick look again, and there doesn't seem to be much out there on the internet - quite a lot of crocheted ones, including the CBBC ones. Not as nice in my opinion (nothing to do with the fact that no matter how hard I try I just can't seem to 'get' crochet though). There are some photos of a really really nice dipped dyed version that someone made, but otherwise they're all a bit 'clunky'.

And that I guess is why a couple of people have 'ooeed and 'ahhhed' at this one, and wondered if I couldn't make more. Well. I could...but he took a long time. So for now, I'm offering up an immediate response, which might well turn into a more detailed pattern. But, if you have knitterly friends or family, what I say here might help bring another knitted Neep into being somewhere near you sooner than expected!

Here goes....

I can't remember the exact yarn - except that he is definitely made from 100% DK wool; we wanted natural fibres and I picked merino because it's nice and soft (don't want scratchy for kids toys...well, not for kids you like anyway...). I am sure I shopped in Hobbycraft for the yarn and thought maybe it was from one of their Women's Institute lines (very nice those yarns) but I can't see anything that fits now. The other one it might have been is King Cole. Any nice soft DK would do.

To get the blend from purple through pink to cream I used a multi strand technique. There are four colours in there: strong purple, a soft grey-ish purple, a rosey pink and cream. So, from bottom to top we go thusly: start with two strands of purple, change to one strand each purple and greyish-purple, change to one strand each greyish-purple and pink, change to one strand each pink and cream, and finally to two strands of cream. Easy peasy!

Also, I will have used a smallish needle size - at a guess, using a double strand of DK, then probably a UK 4 or maybe 3.5 or even less** might be the thing. Unless your natural knitting tension is incredibly loose this would give most knitters a nice dense, firm-ish fabric which is good for a stuffed toy (basically, you don't want too many holes to appear once you start stuffing, so packing the stitches closely together is a good idea). 

He's in reverse stocking stitch*** - the purl bumps sit quite tightly on top of each other compared to ordinary garter stitch and give a kind of layered, more turnip-y look to the 'ombre' (lol...ombre! I take it all very seriously, but still...'ombre'...lol!).

The eyes and mouth, and the pinky cheeks, are embroidered. I think I did the arms, legs and nose by making them up separately and sewing them on - I vaguely remember trying to knit them 'off' the body, but it was difficult to get the angle right.

He's basically a ball, knit in the round, but with a long taper (decreases) to make the turnip shape, and some short row action to make the split tops curve a bit. 

He's pretty big this one. Like baby-sized big, which is making me wonder how I stuffed him - just with ordinary poly toy stuffing stuff. It would have been quite a mission to knit to the ends of the split tops and stuff from there. I THINK I must have knitted to where he 'splits', then stuffed, then knitted up the short one, stuffing as I went and then the same on the other side. That seems like the sensible way to do it given how much stuffing he needed - and as I know he's gone a bit flat I guess he could have taken more. But, because he is/was big I think I couldn't pack the stuffing down hard enough; it just kept sproinging out in all directions. 

On reflection I'd make him quite a bit smaller next time. It would be a) quicker to make him b) easier to stuff him successfully c) cost less in materials.

To those of you fancying a version or a pattern, well..yeah I reckon that could be a possible, I'll keep y'all posted. 

Don't forget though, to also check out Joel Stewart's other fantastic work too.

* For those of you that don't know, Neep is just one of the characters in the delightful and brilliant Adventures of Abney and Teal created by Joel Stewart. It is a work of gentle, quirky genius, and I personally think that Joel Stewart's work is fabulous and worthy of comparison with the wonderful Oliver Postgate who made Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog, Bagpuss, and The Clangers. 

** You're going to experiment though aren't you? You know, have a little test run. Of course you are. Because we all love knitting tension squares and preparing our projets and knowing where what we are about to do is going to take us, we knitters are famous for that aren't we....she said. Yeah. I always do that.

*** Well, I say reverse stocking stitch which makes it sound all very complicated (to non-knitters anyway) which it isn't...but because he's knit in the round (...which is a bit complicated to be fair), you don't even need to purl instead of knit, you can just do the do and then turn it inside out, and voila you've got your reverse stocking stitch. Lemon squeezy.

Summer is over....christmas is on my mind....

Usually, I don't like to contemplate christmas until a week or two before it arrives. I just find it overwhelming. So much to do, so many things to think about and prepare for, such a lot of money that doesn't exist but must be found to cover the cost of all of the above. It's true, my inner grinch/scrooge often gets the better of me at christmas time. It's not that I don't enjoy sharing, I do. It's not that I begrudge the cost as such. Generosity is a wonderful and glorious thing. But the whole business of christmas does fill me with a powerful urge to hibernate until it's all over, round about the end of February would be just right. So, instead of trying to pretend it isn't coming I'm going to take a longer run at this time, in the hope that spreading the management of all the demands and expectations will ease the process, and enable me to fulfil my own desire to make lots of lovely things to give away. I have one gift on the needles, about half done. It's a start, but I know it just isn't going to cut the mustard. I've found a gorgeous pattern for knitted baubles by Alex Lawson which I just love and which will help me to use up a lot of stash and bring a smile or two to the faces of the lucky recipients.

With the spirit of giving in mind, I've been trying to develop a pattern to publish here for free. I've been trying to design a beret constructed with short rows. I pretty much finished the first trial piece, only to decide I hated it....the wool is chunky and I'd made a couple of design features that made it look a bit like one of those comedy scottish tam-o-shanters, so I ripped it out. I then discovered that Isolda Teague had already done one using the very same trick, you can find the pattern Urchin for free on Knitty. It's a good trick, as it gives a good beret shape without having to block it, and so I will continue refining my idea. Let's hope I manage to finish it before December!

knitting ambitions....

I have a knitting ambition. I want to have a pattern published. In Knitty. Writing knitting patterns is not particularly easy! But....I've wrastled with my starfish pattern and have finally come up with a version that I think works. I think the pattern is clear and accurate. I took what I think are some nice photos out at the beach yesterday, despite the stiff breeze, and marauding dogs. All I can do now is sit back and wait for Knitty to get back to me. I really hope they say yes! It feels a bit like really wanting to pass the driving test. If I've understood everything ok, and have managed to deliver on performance, then just maybe they will. I can't publish any photos yet as this is one of their submission conditions, but I should know by December, by which time several children will be destined to receive said item in their stockings, which, even if I don't catch Knitty's eye (this time....), will make all the effort and obsessive swatching and experimenting well worth it.

In the meantime, I've grown a tad disillusioned with crochet - I like it, but for me it doesn't have half the charm and elegance that really good knitting can deliver. It's kind of fun, rustic - well, my efforts so far certainly have a rustic feel to them. A bit chunky, lacking drape etc. I suppose that this is a bad case of the workman blaming his tools. I don't know enough about the process or the possibilities of the process to make a decent fist of anything yet. Will have to keep trying.

So, current work in progress is a scarf version of the Summit shawl by Mandie Harrington. This is a fabulously clever...no, that doesn't do it justice, it is a devilishly clever bit of knitterly engineering..... and elegantly beautiful to boot. It is actually much simpler to work than it looks, and has solved my problem of struggling with a couple of skeins of gorgeously soft, smooth, drapey yarn that have lost their labels. This may become my luxury handmade gift of choice for quite sometime yet. It has lots of lovely big holes so a small amount of yarn will go a good long way, which means quality can be top notch as quantity is not going to prohibit purchase of silk or alpaca or whatever lovely fibres float your particular yarn boat.

Starfish so far......

This is how far I've got with the starfish.

It's quite nice, pleasing to hold, especially the moss stitch texture on the underside. I've stuffed it with one of those nylon scrubby puffs, with the idea that it can be used in the bath as a nice soft and fun washing 'sponge'. I haven't tried it yet, and I'm worried that it will take ages to dry out and grow nasty mould as a result, which would be no good at all.

In all the face/wash cloth patterns I've seen, they recommend using 100% cotton yarn. This is made from Calico by Sirdar, which is a 60/40 cotton acrylic mix. It feels lovely and soft, and I'm hoping that the synthetic mix will work well by not absorbing so much water and therefore drying out quicker.

I've written up the pattern - a process of trial and error and writing it all down as I go along. I need to try working from that now to check for mistakes, confusing instructions etc, but I'm thinking it's not too far off being ready for submission to somewhere. If it gets turned down then I'll put it up on Ravelry.

A moment of clarity.....

Trying to figure out the best way to make the starfish and write the pattern has brought on a moment of clarity about self discipline and motivation and the usefulness of a unavoidable deadline.

I confess, I thought the starfish was going to be easy. Just iron out the glitches, make a few adjustments, write it all up as I go and 'tadaaa!', there it is. It hasn't been quite so simple, and here I hang my head in shame, confessing that with knitting I've often given up when the going has got tough and given up on the project as a wasted effort - that self doubting 'other' on my shoulder telling me it's no good, I'm not earning any money from it, I'll never get it finished....

Here's the thing. Besides trying to be a knitter, I'm also trying (and trying and trying) to be a writer, and often what I do simply doesn't feel particularly 'concrete' or satisfying, in that the end product can take months - or more - to reach, and even then it is more a case of being unable to continue....as Paul Valery said, a poem is never finished, only abandoned. The great thing about knitting is that it is very concrete, very real, you end up with a 'thing'. Of course, some knitted things can take forever too, but they come into being and exist in the real world as you go along, and end up as something you can hold, feel, or use. I guess writing is not really so very different - you might end up with an actual book after all! But the process, while similar in stitch by stitch/word by word comparison, feels less tangible to me. I've frogged uncountable projects back into non-existence, for want of any number of reasons - lack of self belief, lack of staying power in the face of a hitch, and perhaps the most important thing.....lack of a deadline. When I say deadline, I mean ones that are imposed from the outside ie going to work so you don't lose your job and can't pay the bills, or a study deadline so you don't fail the very expensive MA you are doing that is a gigantic step towards being the above said writer 'for real'.

It's not like there aren't any number of tips and tricks out there for creating deadlines, and I use them to some extent - submission deadlines for competitions are figuring large in my life at the moment and they are really useful. But I'm very skilled at evasion and procrastination, I have had a lifetime of experience in that!

The starfish doesn't have a deadline. It's just me with a little idea that probably doesn't amount to much in the greater scheme of things. And yet....I don't know why, but for some reason, this little thing is going to get done. And that surety has made me feel I can write (and of course knit) in the same way too....just keep at it until it's done.

Just thought I'd say.

Starfish Toy

Having recently made a couple of knitted starfish from the charming book by Hansi Singh I decided to have a go at designing my own. This is the first attempt, and I'm kind of pleased with it. It's quite small, around 17 cm point to point across, and I'm really pleased with the textured side in particular. If you only use one colour like I have here, then you also only need to cut and rejoin the yarn once. This isn't stuffed with anything, but it's still quite pleasing to handle. I'm so pleased with it in fact that I'm going to write up a pattern for it once I'm sure it really works.

I really like the idea of creating stash busting patterns so you don't have to have exactly the right yarn or needles, or have to worry about gauge, and little toys like this are ideal for that. I might even consider having another go at submitting to Knitty again.