Category: Knitted Things

How to Knit a Rainbow in Six Steps and 96 Hours

Posted on by Anna

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.

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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.

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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!

Itty-bitty Elephant

Posted on by Anna

Remember my failed experiment with super-tiny knitting? This time I got it right!

Using lace-weight yarn (Shadow Tonal from Knit Picks) and size 000 (1.25 mm) needles….

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I ended up with an itty-bitty elephant! He’s about half an inch tall, which is about half as big as the original Tiny Elephant.

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Just look how HUGE Tiny Elephant looks now in this actual-size photo. (He is feeling just a tiny bit less special now.)

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Once I had the right material and tools, the itty-bitty knitting was actually a breeze! I could only find the #000 needles in 8-inch length (I got my set online from Angelika’s Yarn Store)—at first I thought they would be awkward to use, but the needles balanced nicely in my hands, and the extra length seemed helpful for keeping the micro-stitches from slipping off the ends.

The hardest part was picking up stitches for the ears and feet. This can be tricky even when working in a larger scale, so I knew I just had to be very patient and keep trying until I got it right. It probably took a little less than twice as long to knit the itty-bitty guy than it took to knit the original Tiny version.

Give it a try if you have a little time, patience, and decent eyesight (or just a willingness to do a lot of squinting)!

Knitting Mochimochi Preview: Naughty and Nicey

Posted on by Anna

Somehow suddenly the release of Knitting Mochimochi is TOMORROW—I can hardly believe it! Time for one last preview!

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Naughty and Nicey are part of the “Impractical Wearables” section of patterns in the book. I wanted to include some patterns that had a new twist, and wearable toys seemed like just the thing. As the “impractical” indicates, these aren’t your usual animal-shaped scarves and hats, but something much sillier, like an angel and devil that you can strap onto your shoulders. Perfect for a costume party!

This was a particularly challenging project to shoot, both because Brandi and I would have to incorporate a model in the image, and also because we really wanted to convey “temptation” in the photo. We thought about shooting a model from the back, with her front facing a big wall of tempting yarn. That concept didn’t work visually, though, so we looked into bakeries in the Tulsa area for a shoot with a counter full of cakes.

In the end, our primary concern was showing the angel and devil as clearly as possible, so Brandi shot it without a background. The end result was a clean, simple shot, but getting it wasn’t so simple! Once we found Ching, our model with the right kind of narrow shoulders (so that Naughty and Nicey weren’t spread too far apart in the image), we had to find just the right shirt for her to wear (we actually ended up turning a the top around backwards because the neckline looked better that way), and just the right cupcake for her to be tempted by (from Sweet Cakes in Tulsa). We actually had a selection of cupcakes, and we had to switch them out during the shoot—it was taking so long to get the lighting and angle just right that the icing on them was melting in Ching’s hands!

Ching was a trooper throughout the shoot, doing her best to express a dilemma without being over-dramatic. We weren’t sure if her whole face would end up in the cropped photo in the book, but it did, and I think it turned out great.

The pattern for Naughty and Nicey comes with instructions for three sizes of straps, but it’s easy to make them to fit any size. And of course, Naughty and Nicey don’t have to be worn—they can also watch over you from somewhere else (a kitchen shelf, perhaps)!

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The Pigeons have Landed!

Posted on by Anna

Update: The Tiny Perching Pigeon Party was featured in Londonist! (Thanks, m@!)

I just had the best time making Tiny Perching Pigeons with Stitch London!

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About 40 London knitters turned out to this evening’s Tiny Perching Pigeon Party at St James’ Park. I was wowed by how many brought multiple pigeons already finished, and all the many variations were a riot to see.

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After a couple of hours of knitting and chatting, we all paraded over to Trafalgar Square with our feathered friends to replace the pigeons that were chased out a few years ago. (Feeding them is now banned in the square and surrounding areas.) No one seemed to object to our temporary flock of cuties, fortunately—although we certainly got the attention of some tourists.

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Once in place, the pigeons all got their picture taken by the group.

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After the photo shoot, most knitters took their birds home to cozy captivity. I’m planning to set a few of my own free in the city and in other parts of England that my mom and I travel to this week.

Thank you to everyone who made pigeons and contributed to this fun display of knitted cuteness in all shapes and sizes. And a HUGE thank-you to Deadly Knitshade and Stitch London for arranging the pigeon-perfect party!

All the Fun of the Fair

Posted on by Anna

Wow, London has been so much fun! It helps that we’ve had great weather so far—I’ve even gotten a tiny bit sunburned, which I wasn’t expecting. My mom and I have packed an unbelievable amount of sights and shops and food into one weekend, so I’ll share a bit of that here on the blog when I can!

One of the highlights so far has been my visit to All the Fun of the Fair, a knitting shop just off Carnaby Street in Soho.

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It’s a darling little shop, with very pretty yarn and lots of fun buttons and other goodies. The neatest thing about All the Fun of the Fair is the way that they specialize in silly knitted foods, tea cozies, and other cute and more or less impractical stuff. Right up my alley!

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Sarah was behind the counter there and I chatted with her a while about the shop and knitters in London. I was happy to learn that she had seen my Tiny Perching Pigeons from the Stitch London newsletter!

… Speaking of which, today is the Tiny Perching Pigeon Party at St James’ Park! I can’t wait!

Check out the perched-upon logo that Stitch London used in their latest newsletter.

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Totally squee-worthy!

Knitting Mochimochi Preview: Pigs with Wigs

Posted on by Anna

It’s time for another preview from Knitting Mochimochi! This one is the beauty shot for the Pigs with Wigs pattern.

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The name of the pattern is pretty self-explanatory: it’s pigs. wearing wigs. Can you guess how I came up with the idea? I wanted to design a pig, but it had to have something a little special about it, and so I thought of words that rhymed with “pig.” And soon a design was born, including the wigs Awesome Afro, Buxom Bob, Magnificent Mohawk, and—of course—the Beautiful Beehive.

I wanted to show this photo because we (my photographer Brandi, my sister Leah, and I—but mostly Brandi) worked really hard on this one, and I think it turned out fabulous. Brandi’s friend Sandi runs a beautiful spa in Tulsa (Serenity Aveda Day Spa—check it out!), and she was nice enough to let us use one of her rooms and all the equipment in it.

The room had a cool retro-salon vibe to it, but it was quite small, and since we wanted to show all four wig-wearing pigs in the photo, Brandi had to get creative with how to do the shoot. First, we moved everything in the room into one small corner to shoot from one direction, and Brandi could only fit everything in the shot by crouching down under the sink! Then we needed a vertical option, so we moved ALL of the stuff from one side of the room to the other side to shoot from the other direction.

The photo above is the second composition that Brandi shot, with one pig in a mirror and the others watching. You can’t tell from the photo, but the pigs are sitting on a stool that’s precariously perched on top of a hamper, and the busts with wigs behind them are just barely balancing on the edge of the sink and the stool and the wall. I seriously thought everything was going to collapse! I was the one holding the mirror up, and you can see a little muscle strain in my wrist because I was pressed right up against the wall and I had to hold the angle just right for several minutes.

So this shot was hard work, but we were rewarded with a great photol The Pigs with Wigs themselves are a pretty silly pattern, but I thought there might be a few other people in this world who would like to make them too.

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I plan to post one more preview from the book next week, so stay tuned!

How Tiny can you Go?

Posted on by Anna

The Tiny obsession is still going strong here in Mochimochi Land, and the other day I attempted to take it to the next level by knitting with two strands of embroidery thread and sewing needles.

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It was a complete bust! I just couldn’t get the cotton thread to cooperate, and the needles were pretty slippery too. Very frustrating. I’m certain I’ve heard of people using this technique and succeeding, so I must have been doing something wrong.

So now I’m dying to ask all of you if anyone out there has tried and succeeded at knitting with embroidery thread on sewing needles. Or, if like me you’ve tried and failed, please share your story too!

Knitting Mochimochi Preview: TV Guy

Posted on by Anna

The release date of Knitting Mochimochi is now less than a month away! (It will be on sale starting June 29th.) I’m so excited that the countdown is finally here. It’s time to start showing some previews, don’t you think?

The first pattern I want to preview for you is TV Guy, a snowy box with a lot of personality. The photo that Brandi Simons took of him is one of my favorites in the book.

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The shoot for TV Guy was really interesting—it was in my parents’ living room, and believe it or not, it was daytime, and very sunny! Brandi is an expert with lighting and camera settings and whatnot, so she figured out how to get it just right for that fake TV glow.

I chose the saddest-looking TV dinner I could find at the grocery store for him, and we had to heat it up in the microwave to get it looking authentic. (Brandi fluffed the potatoes to perfection.) We had a selection of beverages that TV Guy could be drinking, but my editor liked the beer bottle the best. (Unfortunately the beer went to waste since were shooting before noon. And needless to say, no one ate that TV dinner, either.)

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The pattern involves some techniques that would be best for intermediate knitters, but it knits up pretty quickly—you could easily finish one in two to three days. I think it would make a great gift for a pop-culture lover!