Thursday, August 18, 2011

A Little Blue Bird



Eek! I'm so excited to start knitting again that I had to do a fast project. I returned to a pattern that had been in my queue for ages but for some reason I had never finished: A Blue Bird.

The blue is a saturated blue Palette fingering weight wool I made in a tutorial on dying yarn with food coloring on the stove. I used size 1 (2.5 mm) knitting needles for this project.


The hand dyed yarn used to make the bluebird.

The body of the bird was knitting up in a very pyramidal fashion. There was still a bit of a point at the bottom after I stuffed it, but this could be adjusted through blocking since I"m using 100% wool. Next time, I would increase the bottom faster.


The point at the top is supposed to be the bottom of this bird.


I prefer projects where all of the shaping comes from the knit stitches. I was disappointed when I discovered that the head is formed by weaving yarn around the neck and then pulling it tight.


Doesn't the body resemble an acorn (left) before the neck was formed?

Berroco has a lot of nice patterns, but I don't like the way they are written out. They don't provide their abbreviations (which wasn't a huge deal in this case) and they write out multiple rows on one line. It would be easy to skip some important directions! I didn't have any trouble this time, but then again it's a really simple pattern.


The pieces to assemble into the finished bluebird.


I may have over tiny-ied myself out this time. I had trouble sewing on the wings!


Having some fun taking pictures with my latest knit toy.


He's so small he fits in the palm of my hand!