Autumn Cape 2016 A long Term Project Part 7

Autumn Cape 2016 A long Term Project Part 7

Last time I wrote up my blog I had reached the point of putting the finishing touches to my Squirrel Design on the Pictorial Chart. The only thing I had left to do was colour in the tail.

Nearly Finished Squirrel Design

As you can see in the photograph above the Squirrel Pattern was almost complete but most of the Right hand side of the pattern needed to be drawn. However I could knit the first few rows of the Squirrel.

Beginning of Knitted Squirrel

You can just see on the Left hand side the tips of the ears. Obviously this is just the plain version of the blocked colour. All the outlines would be embroidered on afterwards.

Squirrel Close up

Before I could go any further I needed to get more wool so I visited my friend Eleanor at her new shop.  -http://www.knitnottingham.co.uk/

I had a great time looking around the place – so much room.  Apart from stocking up on extra balls of yellow (which I seeming to be using more of than I thought) I needed some white for the Squirrel's chest, paws and tail. However as I suspected the white was very stark against the other colours therefore another colour had to be found. In practise this meant running around the shop grabbing every shade of near white we could find and trying them one by one against the other colours.

If anybody is particularly interested we finally settled on a Merino Blend from King Cole which according to the label is 776 Aran. I don’t think that I particularly went into detail about the yarns I am using because generally they are discontinued.  If I can find the labels which are lurking somewhere at the bottom of the knitting box I will tell you what they are. See Bottom of Blog

Along with the aforementioned Aran which for easy I will still call white I also have mainly used a Ginger for the main colour of the squirrel. It is a King Cole Masham Double Knit entitled Bracken.

So now I had the colours I needed I could continue filling in the rest of the design and of course knit it.

First Pictorial Chart Fully Detailed

In addition to filling in the detail for the Squirrel and the Right hand side of the chart you may notice that I have embellished the trunk. This is the beginning of the crevice in the tree trunk. I shall give more information on that in the next blog.

As per usual I transferred the Pictorial Chart into a Written Chart.

Last Completed Written Chart for Pictorial Design Chart 1

The final result of the Knitted Squirrel?

Knitted Squirrel

The Squirrel seems somewhat larger than I anticipated but I think it has come out reasonably well. The dimensions are as follows

First Full Knitted Chart 23.5 Inches

This was a bit of a surprise as it is longer than I thought it would be so I will have to take that into consideration on the Pictorial Chart.

Knitted Squirrel's Height

The Squirrel's Height is approximately 8 Inches.

Knitted Squirrel's Width

The Squirrel's Width is approximately 6 Inches.

Time to finish off sewing in all the ends before going on to the next part which will be starting the second chart.

After scouring my yarn collection for labels I have used so far : -

King Cole Merino Blend 50 gram  Shade.776 Aran.  Dye no 52955

King Cole Merino Blend DK 50 gram Shade 109 Copper Dye 52152

King Cole Merino Blend DK 50 gram Shade 55 Gold Dye 55514

King Cole Masham Double Knit  50 gram 1298 Bracken. Dye 04

King Cole Masham Double Knit  50 gram 1296 Berry Dye 02

King Cole Merino Blend DK 50 gram Shade 23 Dye 45224 (no colour given so will call it Chocolate Brown)

Cygnet Aran75% Wool 25% Polyamide 100g Shade 1310 Dark Brown Dye 21843