I recently finished up one of the trickier pieces for my upcoming show, and thought it would be fun to show a little step-by-step post about how I knitted this big guy.

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(This isn’t a pattern, though—as you’ll see, I just figured it out as I went, and didn’t worry too much about counting rows, etc.)

Step 1: Carve an arch shape out of a block of foam.

rainbow_step1

Step 2: Measure how big around the arch is, decide how many stripes you want in your rainbow, calculate how wide each stripe should be, and knit a few samples to check.

rainbow_step2

Step 3: The bend in this rainbow isn’t rainbow-y enough, so let’s see if stretching it out will have any lasting effect on the foam. (It does!)

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Step 4: Continue to knit some stripes until they are long enough to cover the length of the rainbow. (This knitting part takes forever, so you probably want to have a few movie rentals on hand.) Pin them in place.

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Step 5: Get out your tapestry needle, and let mattress stitch do its magic on the first couple of seams at the top. When you get to the more bend-y stripes at the side of the rainbow, think really hard, and decide that you need to make wider seaming stitches on the upper stripe and shorter stitches on the lower stripe in order to make them bend properly and conform to the foam shape.

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Step 6: Finish knitting, knitting, and knitting the rest of the stripes. (Have I ever mentioned that Radiolab is a great podcast to knit to?). Then, hold your breath as you sew up that last seam…

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…and it actually worked! It’s a knitted rainbow, without funny scrunchy bumps!

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It was the hugest relief to know that I didn’t just waste four days of nonstop knitting making this guy. Now it’s onto knitting a herd of mini unicorns to slide down the rainbow. Also remaining are a river, a cloud, a possible cornfield, and tons more. Just about a month left to do it all!

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