Knit a Little Lamb: Exciting Conclusion

The Hollywood writers are still on strike, so I figure I got a decent shot at you tuning in to see how the little lamb turns out. You could choose to walk away and watch old episodes of "Bosom Buddies" on DVD, but it would make him cry.



Knitter's choice.

At the end of part two we finished the main shapes and only needed to add small details to finish up. Frankly, I could have covered this all in two installments but I forgot to knit a background swatch to stick the thing on.



Plus it was lunch time and I'd developed an unaccountable craving for souvlaki.

Okay. Pretend the green square (note the garter edges; I love you so much I made the swatch neat and pretty) is the pocket of Abigail's sweater. Whipstitch the lamb body onto it.



It still doesn't look much like a lamb, though. We have to give it a face. And just as we reduced the body to its simplest elements in order to knit it, so we must pick out only the essential details in the face. Happily, there's not a whole lot going on in a lamb's face.



That's all, sister.

Easy enough to render with a bit of doubled sewing thread–chosen in lieu of yarn or embroidery floss because the former is too thick, and the latter is unlikely to stand up to much washing.

Using our simplified sketch as a guide, we add the nose, mouth and beady little eyes.



Now, ears.

You could drive yourself cuckoo knitting two itty-bitty little ear flaps, then painstakingly sew them onto the lamb only to find out they make it look more like an albino bat. But since I've already done that, you don't have to.

Instead, simply embroider a single petal from a lazy daisy on either side, and fill 'em both in with a couple stitches each.



And behold, the lamb.



Awwwwww.

It's not just for babies, either. You can do so much with it! L@@K!



Trendy wine coaster.



Cozy antimacassar.



Avant-garde toupée.



Polishing cloth.



Bookmark.



Smurf hideout.



Ironic disguise.



Cat bed.

* Finis *

Knit a Little Lamb: Part Two

When last we left our little lamb, it looked like this.



As this lamb is going to wind up half inside a sweater pocket, we don't need to think about the legs, just the head and body. In the interest of further simplification, we're going to shift the basic shapes slightly to bring them into alignment, thus.



And that's what we've got to knit first.

This is where you have to draw on your own knowledge, experience, and preferences as a knitter. There are probably as many ways to realize those shapes in knitting as there are knitters. You could, for example, simply knit up two stockinette shapes in the appropriate sizes.

On the other hand, as this lamb will be placed against a stockinette ground, why not try out a textured stitch to give it a little more visual oomph? Maybe the render the fluffy body in moss stitch?

Let's try it. Cast on as many stitches as you think you need, and go.



Not bad. Good enough to continue. In fact, rather than knit two pieces, what if we used texture to suggest the separation between head and body? Maybe render the face in stockinette? And we could throw in a pair of decreases at the "shoulder" line for shaping.



Promising. Enough to go on. I find that when you're improvising like this, it's extremely important to make frequent stops for assessment–something I learned from Maggie Righetti in Knitting in Plain English. When I started knitting I felt guilty about constantly pausing to look at my work, until I read Maggie's sound advice that you should do so to decide if you like it–and rip it back if you don't. That has saved me a lot of time and trouble.

So, here's the finished body and head in one piece.



It's okay. The top corners are a bit sharp, but maybe they can be fudged in the sewing. But the face looks sunken when it should project forward, as a glance at the model shows.



(Awwwwwwww.)

We could undo the head. Or, before we go that far, we could try knitting the lamb a little oval snoot, since that's the bit that really sticks out in the original, and apply it over the stockinette face. Maybe that'd counteract the sunken effect. It'll only take a few minutes.



Hmm. Not bad. Let's sew it down, and tuck a bunch of yarn ends underneath to give it a little extra volume.



And there we are–the basic shapes are in place. It's not quite ready to baaaaaaaa, but it's gettin' there.

Next time, we'll finish up by adding the details to the face and head.

New in the Shop

I was procrastinating feeling inspired a couple of days ago and made up a new design for the shop, which for the moment is on bags and shirts. If there's interest in having it on magnets or journals or cards or whatever, do speak up and I'll see what I can do.



(Yeah, I played Dungeons and Dragons as a kid. You wanna make something of it?)

Knit a Little Lamb: Part One

I remember the first time I read a knitting blog in which the writer described how she often started projects not only without patterns, but without any fixed idea of what she was going to make. She said something akin to, "I just pick up the needles and watch what happens."

That gave me chills.

Back then, I was newly emerged from long, dark years of knitting the same scarf and mittens over and over in solitude, using whatever yarn I happened to find. My proudest technical achievement was figuring out on my own how to work the thumb gore in the mitten pattern. It was incomprehensible to me that person could use yarn and needles as a sketchbook. I'd been "making up" stuff for years on paper; but what sort of freaky genius would you need to be to doodle with wool?

As it turns out, you don't really need to be genius, and I'm proof. When I put up the pictures of Abigail's Sheep in the Meadow sweater, this question came to mind because several of you were kind enough to ask how I'd made the sheep for the pocket. I realized I had no handy answer, because I improvised as I went along. I'd doodled with wool, or in this case a wool/cotton blend. Fancy that.

I've decided it boils down to having these things at your command:

1. enough curiosity to want to deviate from written patterns, or make up your own;
2. a willingness to pause and examine what's in front of you;
3. a willingness to try different approaches until you create what pleases you;
   
4. a working knowledge of basic moves in knitting, including increases, decreases, and the basic effects on the fabric created by knit, purl, and y/o;
5. patience; and
   
6. the understanding that it's just knitting, it's done one stitch at a time at your own pace, and you can undo it if you don't like it.

Since you asked, I 'm going to press my mental rewind button and see if I can reconstruct how I did it.

Mind you, this may prove incredibly boring. But as you asked for it, you have only yourself to blame.

The task before us is:

Knit a lamb to be attached, as appliqué, to the pocket of a baby sweater.

Step One: Take a Good Look at Your Subject

I'm a firm believer in a dictum often expressed by Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts and a personal household god: if you can't draw it realistically, you can't cartoon it convincingly.

Not that you must be able to sketch a photorealistic lamb in order to knit one. No.

But if you're trying to simplify an object in order to render it in stitches, you should have the level of familiarity that comes of from closely examining the original. You can't show everything, so you'll have to determine what the absolutely essential details are. What makes a lamb look like a lamb?

So, in case you don't have a flock in the backyard, here's a photograph of a lamb. (You may pause to say, "Awwwwwwwwww.")



Wait–who said, "Pass the mint sauce?"

That's not my own sheep; I found it online. When you need reference material in a hurry, Google's image search function is your friend. Just be forewarned: seemingly innocent queries like "sheep" or "cupcake" can yield shocking results. Turn on the "safe search" filter if you have a low tolerance for surprises.

Usually, when I'm drawing an object I haven't worked with a whole lot, I don't just look at one picture. If possible, I seek out the real thing and make sketches or photographs on the spot. If that's impossible, I look over photographs of as many as I can in order to synthesize in my head what the essential characteristics are.

In the case of the lamb, you might decide after some concentrated looking that these characteristics communicate "lamb" visually:



Or you might find yourself focused on other aspects. There are no correct answers. This is your lamb, seen through your eyes. You will find your own path to lambishness.

Step Two: Establish a Simple Silhouette

Usually it's the shape or outline of the object, also called the silhouette, that most efficiently communicates at a glance what one is looking at. I find this to be especially true of animals.

Smaller details, like noses, are often suprisingly similar even across species. Here are two noses from that perennially opposed pair, the lion and the lamb.



Simplify them, as in a cartoon, and the similarity is even greater.



Silhouettes are another story. Pull back to reveal the full outline of the head, and you're never going to mistake these two for cousins, even with all other details removed.



Since in this case we're knitting a small, flat item at a relatively large gauge (about five stitches to the inch), our silhouette is extremely important–there won't be much room for smaller details. Furthermore, the silhouette must be reduced to its absolute basics–the simplest and fewest geometric forms.

So, as the final step for today's entry, here's how you might see the major outlines of the sheep you intend to knit.

You need a head.



And you need a body.



Together, they look like this.



Next time, we pick up the needles.

I hope you can bear the suspense.