Sunday, October 31, 2010

How To Eat An Elephant



One piece at a time, of course!


It's coming along nicely. All I need to do to the jar part is start the narrowing.


And here's looking inside.


As for the elephant head, I've got the ears made, and all that is left are the tusks and assembly. I also have to figure out how to join the head, or maybe I want to leave it like an actual jar, so the head can come off? I'm not sure.


The next blog post should be, How To Stuff An Elephant.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Unforgettable?



It finally occurred to me that if I wanted to use the elephant head pattern for the top of the knitted jar, I ought to find out what number of stitches I was aiming for, to get a smooth join. So I looked at the pattern, but it wasn't easy to tell, since the pattern starts at the tip of the nose and goes back to the tail.

Well, there's one sure way to find out, so I began knitting it. I began with a light blue, but as that got meager, I added in a Colinette yarn called Elephant's Daydream -- how appropriate is that?


Yes, a knitted elephant's head looks.....rude. There's no getting around that.

The only modification I made to the pattern was to knit it in the round until I got to the part under the chin. Less sewing for me that way.


Here is a closer look at where the division started. All I did was stop knitting in the round, and went back to the original pattern. This opening will be where the elephant meets the jar.

I can see that I'll have to improvise something at the back of the head, though, because I want the opening at the bottom of the head, and the pattern continues back to the body, so there's an opening at the back of the head. Fixing that shouldn't be difficult.

Who knew elephants dream in pale blue?

Friday, October 22, 2010

New Project


The next project is inspired by a design in Knitted Toy Tales, by Laura Long. If you go to that link, look inside the book and search on Pussycat (of the Owl and the Pussycat), then you'll see the design.

I was able to find a picture on Flickr as well of someone's knitted version of the pussycat.

As you see, it couldn't be simpler. But I also had in mind the canopic jars of Ancient Egypt.


So in essence, I want a knitted jar shape with an animal head, but I want it to look very much like folk art, all colorful.

I'm using the leftover colors from the last afghan, Under the Sea, and I decided on an elephant head for the top of the jar, using the pattern from the same Knitted Toy Tales book. For the jar shape, I am improvising my own pattern.

Here is the bottom.


That's my needle gauge, which is about 5 1/2 inches long, to show size.

All I did was cast on 8 stitches, and then increase in each stitch, and then increase into the original stitch again on every other row, so that 8 stitches get added on each increase row. I used two circular needles, which is my current preference over double points for knitting in the round.

When I felt like it was large enough, I stopped increasing and began to knit in more colors, varying the stitch patterns as I liked. I tried not to finish on the same stitch that I stated from, to keep from having a visible seam.


Here's a closer look.



And here's how it looks from the top.


This is making a nice change of pace. However, since I want to stuff the final product, I'm knitting at a tight gauge, which is a bit wearing on the hands.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Mandelbrot, Knitting and Everything


Benoit Mandelbrot, the 'father of fractals,' is dead.

As good as he was at math and geometry, his true gift was for seeing. He saw connections between widely scattered ideas, and saw deeper meaning where others saw mere curiosities.

The nature of fractals, where the same formula applied over and over creates a greater whole, gives insight into many parts of nature, but I want to talk about a simple one: sea shells. Think of a clam shells, which has a simple curve and a simple widening as it grows. If you change the rate of curve, so it curves just a little more, you can end up with a snail shell. If you angle the curve just a bit, you get a conch.

sea shells

And yet, it's all variations on what is in fact a simple process. A curve is just slightly more cells on one side, or one part, than another, so all it is, is a selective speeding up a bit. Widening is making two where there was once one.

Knitting helped me understand this. Simple patterns can be made by changing just one element, but doing it over and over. Change one bit of the pattern, change where a yarnover is in relation to a decrease, and you can change waves into zigzags. Small changes can have large effects.

For example, these two types of scarves are knit exactly the same, except one is in garter and one is in ribbing.



The only difference is in whether one knits all the time, or knits and purls all the time. 

To round out the theme of math, art and nature, the following link is to a TED talk which has a presentation of the crocheted reef you may have seen around the web, as well as an explanation of how fiber arts can be excellent echoes of nature -- in this case, hyperbolic space.

 http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_wertheim_crochets_the_coral_reef.html

Enjoy the show, and next time you see an equation, think of it as just another knitting pattern.


Saturday, October 16, 2010

Twelfth 2010 One Done


Under the Sea!


It was fun to do (except for the mistakes....). I'm not totally in love with it, because while I like the mosaic look, I'm not really pleased with some of the patchiness. Still, it was an adventure.


Here is the upper left corner, where I had to do the repair. You can't even tell, even in real life. Does this make you think of sky over mountains? It does to me, and I wonder if that would be a fun freeform entrelac to do.


Here's the right-hand side. That's a yardstick, which I forgot to include in the first picture. The side of this one is a yard -- it's a nice roomy afghan.


My husband's favorite part is the purples shading to yellow.


For the edging, I picked up all along the outside, and then knit in a zigzag following the entrelac shape, and I made the last outside row with a furry sort of yarn. The edging wasn't the most fun -- that's a lot of zig-zags! 

Not sure what's next, except a quick scarf as a palate cleanser. This one took a while, and, like a long but good book, finishing feels like saying good-by to a friend.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Wreck, Tangled!

Okay, the title is a bit of hyperbole, but I did get myself into some trouble. I got absorbed in making rows while having the piece all draped across my lap, and I didn't pay close enough attention. It isn't easy trace entrelac lines across knee bumps.

Can you see it?


Here's a closer look, flipped from the above view.


See it yet? Here it is, marked out.


Not only are there extra squares, but I went a couple of rows too far.

One more look.


The green rows should have stayed next to each other, instead becoming unzipped.

I'll have to take out the rogue squares -- that should be fun. (Not.) And I'll have to decide whether to add a couple of rows on each end to even it out, or whether to take out the two extra partial rows.

It's knitting, so I can make it do what I want, so I'm not really worried about fixing it.

I do regret having to give up precious knitting time to do it.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Rectangled

Close to finishing the body of the afghan.


It's looking more and more like a mosaic. Here are some closer looks.



I'm still enjoying the process, and I'm starting to think of variations, like using two yarns to make it more stripy. This type of meandering entrelac has also turned out to be a good use of some of the magic balls I've made in the past year.

Maybe I'll do a triangular one next. Maybe.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Two More Scarves

Two more scarves from the leftovers.


The brighter one was a simple 3 rows of each color, but for the thinner yarn, on the middle row of the three, I added one, two or three wraps on each stitch randomly, which gives the ladder effect.



The other one is a form of scribble lace, done using the multidirectional diagonal scarf pattern. Each time I got to the place where a segment was done and the knitting changed directions, I knit across with the feathery yarn, slipped back to the other side, and knitted as usual with the lace-weight yarn until that segment was finished and I was ready to change directions again.



The way the pattern is worked, it automatically resulted in the zig-zag. Sweet!

Monday, October 4, 2010

Wider, Broader, Bluer

So I've gotten this far.


It is still fun, although the patchy-mosaic look reminds me that it could have been knitted modular-style instead of in entrelac. However, I'm enjoying the entrelac more, because it never goes down to one stitch -- the turning back and forth doesn't get annoying.

Here are some closer looks.



This is taking a while, but I keep 'cheating' on it with scarves.