Sunday, October 27, 2013

Tiger Woobie


This year has certainly been the year of babies.  As I prepared to welcome my own baby into the world, there were multiple other important babies that needed special projects of their very own.  I selected the Woobie Kitty pattern for some family/friends.  It is a great gender neutral project for people who don't have a strong color preference.


I was given the entire Woobie Patterns Collection - Series 1 as a Random Act of Kindness (RAK) gift for being an expectant mother.  I have earmarked other woobies for certain parents when the time comes.  I cannot wait to create them all!


My harmony options needle set doesn't get small enough for this project.  Thankfully I needed to hit the $50 free shipping mark and SunStruck needles were on sale.  I loved the opportunity to add a size 3 - 32" fixed circular set to my collection!  I knit this woobie on size 3 (3.25 mm) knitting needles and KnitPicks Shine Sport yarn in White (57 g, 126 yards) and Clementine (119 g, 262 yards).  

I decided to try this picot edging without doing a provincial cast on.  Provincial castons and I have not gotten along very well, and I know that I could pick up the long tail CO stitches where directed.   I ended up with not such a long tail, but it should work out.

Not quite the long tail!
The day I started this project, I really needed to be working on my fish project, but I knew that this would be an easier one to bring with me to crochet club.  Why do I always start these projects the morning of?  


Notes from Construction
  • Clementine Ball 1 finished in the middle of row 16.    
  • Picking up stitches from the cast on edge to close the picot edge worked beautifully (see above pictures.)  
  • After the 7th white stripe, I noted something off with my stitch counts.  In between markers, I counted 49, 48, 47, 48 sts.  Now I clearly messed up with replacing the markers after the picot round, and I'm not going to rip back to fix that.  However, I am a bit confused about the numbers.  I would have expected the division to be odd rather than even.  I am going to continue to the decreases as written until I have an average of 36 stitches in between each marker.  (And then add the second decrease.)  I'm willing to fudge things a bit until I get to the kitty center.  
  • Clementine ball 2 finished in the middle of Orange stripe 9 (decrease round - not counting edging as a stripe.)  
  • Before white stripe 10 decrease we have 39, 38, 37, 38 sts.  
  • Before orange stripe 10 decrease we have 37, 36, 35, 36 sts (144 sts total).    Continue the cdd as written so there are 35, 34, 33, 34 sts.  136 sts where it should be 140 at this point.  We somehow have 4 too few stitches, which is a secondary issue to the miss-aligned stitches.  
  • Next decrease round (CC): K15, CDD, PM, K15, CDD, K14, K2tog, PM, K15, CDD, K15, PM, K15, CDD, K14, K2tog, PM, K15, CDD (with the first stitch of the previous round.)   There now should be 124 sts and evenly spread between the original markers (31 sts - alternating 15 or 16 sts between the 8 markers.)  Please note that the new decreases in the rounds are NOT perfectly centered in accordance with the original instructions. The way for them to be centered would be to have even # of sts in each round.  I then continued instructions as written.  
  • I reached 28 sts at the end of the 14th white stripe.  I switched to MC to knit around before the "next rnd" decreases
  • After the stitches were cris crossed to secure the center - I made sure to keep the yarn tails behind the first stitch to mark the beginning of the round.
  • White ball 1 completed in head round 8.  
  • None of the other projects on Ravelry show the back of the head, so here is a quick little view.
  • The ear pieces took very little time to knit.
  • I used scraps of palette in black and hand-dyed green for the embroidery.  I was worried that these would be easily pulled out by a little toddler fingers, so I secured them with a bit of non-toxic glue.  


I am so happy with the way this little woobie came out!  Now I just need to cast on the woobie for my own child.  What animal do you think I'm going to create?