Knit Advent Day 18
The cardinal is regular stockinette stitch intarsia and the pine needles are embroidered.
Cardinals stay around all winter in North Central Texas. They look like bright ornaments in our leafless trees.
Knit Advent Day 17
Here’s another garter intarsia ornament, a plain Christmas ball with band around it, which was knitted from side-to-side. The ball is shaped by increasing or decreasing only at the edges. The colors in the band just jog over and back to make its curved shape.
If you compare it with the drum (Day 10) you can see the difference that internal shaping makes. I shaped the drum by increasing and decreasing inside the outlines of the drum. That method moved the red body and gold rims of the drum in a curved shape, without creating jogs. The drum was also knitted side-to-side.
Knit Advent Day 16
Garter stitch is easy to chart, because 1 stitch is as wide as the height of one ridge (2 rows). That means you can chart it on square graph paper, with one block equal to one stitch and one ridge (2 rows). The other nice thing about this is that you can shape the edges very easily by casting on or binding off along the sides of a piece.
That’s what I did to make this candle. The three pieces are just garter stitch, worked to a graph that was the shape I wanted. A little embroidery serves as a wick.
Knit Advent Day 15
My daughter Eva’s favorite kinds of animals are insects and fish, so I have crafted a number of fishy things over the years. This ornament uses variegated and solid cotton embroidery floss, in the mosaic color technique.
In 2021, Eva is still fascinated by insects and fish. If I decide to redo this, it will be knitted with all solid-color thread, or a different variegated thread.
Knit Advent Day 14
To make this look like a bow, I had to shape the knitted ribbon. If I had knitted it straight and tied it, the knot would have looked clumsy and bulky. The strip of garter stitch was wavy and surprisingly long. I actually tied the knitting into a bow, and sewed it onto the felt.
* * *
This yellow swatch turned out much better than I imagined it would. It uses several different kinds of Lion Brand yarn: Wool-Ease in two shades of yellow, Lion Cotton variegated yellow, Fun Fur in yellow, Trellis (the dark stripe), and Incredible, which is the variegated ribbon yarn.
It’s a swatch for a vest for 10-year-old (in 2005) Eva, who looks great in yellow.
Knit Advent Day 13
This sweet little pinecone is just a series of knitted tabs, with a bow on top. The pieces rely on the felt as a foundation to hold them in place. Without it, this would just be a pile of knitted pieces.
Knit Advent Day 12
Garter stitch pinwheels are fun to knit. Short rows provide the shaping, and the squareness of the garter stitch/ridge makes the math easy. The plastic wrapper is what turns this pinwheel into Christmas candy.
Yes, with pinwheels, we’re back to pi times diameter. But you don’t have to know about that, because you can knit a pinwheel without a pattern. All you have to know is how far across you want the circle to be, and how many “slices” you want to divide it into (multiples of six are best).
I explained it all in “Round and Round with Garter Stitch,” INKnitters, pp. 78 ff., Vol. 3, No. 11, Winter 2003. Bonus information in this issue: turning pinwheels into ovals and hearts. And a Valentine heart pattern, knitted with Brown Sheep’s Cotton Fleece. In the issue before that, I wrote about garter squares, and how to knit quilt-ish motifs without a pattern. You may be able to find issues of INKnitters online at eBay or etsy.
Knit Advent Day 11
The red bow gives a nice accent to the mosaic knitted teddy bear for Day 11.
Knit Advent Day 10
It was so satisfying to knit this drum. The top of the drum (light beige) gives it its shape, using increases and decreases. It was the only way to get the look I wanted for the rim. All the rim and body stitches are on top of each other (no color jogs), giving the impression of a truly rounded rim and body.
I suppose I could have added darker reds at the drum’s edges to make it even more dimensional, but one has to draw the line somewhere! And that line is well short of perfectionism.
My ten-year-old, Eva, made our family proud this week (in 2005). She won first place in the University Interscholastic League Art Recognition contest, held among five school districts in our area. The contestants have been studying a packet of about 45 paintings. Fifteen paintings were chosen for the contest, and each student had to write the title of the painting and the artist. She scored 59 of a possible 60 points. Hurray for Eva!
The original Knit Advent stories were posted in 2005. TextileFusion.com was resurrected in 2021 after a catastrophic hack/virus/fail. I’m slowly recreating the blog. Since I use the knit Advent calendar every year, it seemed appropriate to post it mostly how it first appeared, but dated 2021.
Knit Advent Day 9, Mosaic and More Mosaic
Mosaic knitting is a kind of slipped stitch color knitting. Barbara G. Walker made it famous. She charted and published all kinds of patterns and motifs. Once you figure out how to chart mosaic patterns, you can make surprisingly representative patterns, like this mosaic pear.
Here’s another example of mosaic knitting, inspired by one of my daughter Eva’s drawings. She was seven years old when she drew the picture in 2003. The knitted version is a bathroom rug.
I teach a 3-hour workshop where you can learn how mosaic knitting works, and how to create your own charts. You never know when you might need to knit a child’s drawing! Find this and more of my knitting workshops here.
Speaking of mosaics, my husband and I love mosaic made of glass, stone and tile. We want to include several mosaic pieces in our new house, so he suggested that I might like to take a week-long mosaic workshop. When? In February. Where? Italy, of course! Why Italy? Because it’s the land of Roman and Byzantine mosaics. I’m all signed up and have airline tickets. This is another reason I needed fabulous new shoes (see Day 5).
