Things that are cuter in twos (or fours)

Cats.

 

No, I don't know why Ziti's laying like that.  I suspect he was sleeping normally, and then Sophie jumped up on the couch.  And then Ziti started slowly reaching down... just to touch her, of course, not to swat her or anything like that.  She, however, is clearly uncertain about his intent.

Turtles.

AKA, gifts for my soon to be niece and nephew.

This is my first stab at knitting toys, and I found it quite a bit of fun (though requiring a bit more sewing than I usually prefer).  The pattern's "Sheldon" (hah!) from knitty (here, or the pattern's ravelry page here).  It was very straightforward, and quite a nice easy knit.  For once, I used the called-for yarn and needles, though I did two things differently (well, three if you count using a different color for the second shell).  The pattern calls for you to knit almost the whole body and then stuff it... I put stuffing in the body before finishing the narrowing for the neck, and then finished the head at the end.  And I embroidered eyes with embroidery floss (not that well, I'm afraid) rather than use plastic eyes.

The shells come off... they're like little shell suits.  And they're just really cute, I thought/think.  A four-year-old friend "helped" me work on the brighter green one--he became quite fond of holding my yarn for me, which actually didn't end in disaster, even if the yarn moved farther and farther away from me and became a bridge.

Also cute when doubled?  Baby booties.

 

One pair's cute, but two pairs?!  These are Saartje's booties (see the pattern link on the side here, and the ravelry page here), which is a pattern I saw quite a while ago and have been meaning to make ever since.   I first made the blue pair, using leftover yarn from the socks I knit in Russia; it's Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in "Edgewater," knit on size 0 needles.

I knit one according to the directions, and then decided that in this particular case, I'd rather purl a little than seam (the stitch pattern is garter stitch, which means that if you knit back and forth [in this case, that would mean seaming the sole and heel of the bootie] you knit every row, but if you knit in the round [no seams, just sewing in ends], you have to alternate knit and purled rows).  And so I knit two new ones in the round, starting by casting on using Judy's magic cast on (which I had such a hard time with at first, but which is now easy as any other cast on) and then alternating knit and purl rows.  It worked well.

(Also Lorna's Laces, this time colorway "Tuscany")

I made one more change.  On the final knit row (the row before the cast off for the main bootie) I added in two more decreases, just to close up the toe a little bit more.  I like the shape that gives the booties a bit more than it would have been without it.  I don't know for sure that it made much of a difference, but I like the end result.

Right now I'm working on a baby blanket that's made me have a different take on the seaming/purling divide.  It's a garter stitch blanket, but knit in the round from the center out, with every row adding four stitches.  That means that by the end, the rounds are HUGE.  I've ended up deciding that in this particular case, I'd rather knit the whole thing and sew one seam rather than alternating knitting and purling.  We'll see how that comes out in the end.

Comments

[Carrie K]

The cats, the Sheldons and the booties - adorable! Purling long, long rows sounds like a circle of hell.

Hez sleeps the way Ziti is posed, she likes to drape.