The cow and the reptile

Finally finished object: Cow sweater for my niece. She commissioned this sweater when she turned 18, it should be a look-alike to a sweater she loved as a kid, and it took me just 2,5 years to knit it..... why? Because I took some side-tracks in-between and knitted some other easier projects, because this was a hard one. I had forgotten a bit how tiresome it is to do this kind of color-blocking work were you need to twist the two colours of yarn on the backside, and you need to deal with the mess of 7-10 yarn balls getting completely tangled up. But hey I managed! Hehe.

So it’s me to the left (the reptile or dinosaur, whichever you like) wearing my COS sweater and my niece to the right wearing her cow-sweater that I knitted. 

I developed the pattern myself. The nice thing about knitting is that you can approach it just like a pixel painting. So basically I just used some checkered paper and the tried to make a drawing looking like a cows spots, asymmetric and irregular.

Here came then also the difficulty of the knit. Because of the complete irregularity and randomness of the pattern you need to look and count on every single row. It’s not a knit to relax with, it actually requires high concentration.

I used twisted rib on the edges, I just love the twisted rib, because it gives such a nice definition, on the neckline I made a double folded edge, I love the puffyness it creates, opposed the the flatness of the single layer.

The beloved sweater from 15 years earlier

Sketch

From when I just started and had not realized yet I would need to toggle 7-10 yarn-balls simultanously

Goodbye Ally mini-mi

Unfortunately Ally has decided to leave us. As a goodbye gift I crafted a mini-me in her "tenue du travail" wearing some important bling brand assets such as the shield and a golden mean necklace.

Amalie's mini-me

made this crochet copy of Amalie on her big day of communion. This gift item is turning out to be one of the favorites for young girls in my family.

Getting the dress and shoes right was a real challenge

To the left, Amalie on the day, to the right the amigurumi mini-me. By the Knitbitch

In the making

julies mini-me

proudly presenting the mini-mi amigurumi doll that I crocheted for my favorite niece Julie for the celebration of her "confirmation" (first communion) specially on request of her. Worked out quite nicely if I should say it myself.

and yes! all star sneakers

The dress was a bit of work, I first knitted one, then realized it would never look anywhere near the real dress, then resorted to stitching one by hand from scraps that I had.  

Julie's amigurumi mini-mi backside

the hair really wasn't easy. It ended up quite tussled, which I thought was kinda ok, as Julie's hair on the day was also quite casually, naturally tussled

Oeps, for the actual party it was still only half finished

half finished in the box

Da-Mi's mini-me

When it became clear that Da-Mi was going to leave us, there was only one thing for me to do to say proper good-bye; crochet a Mini Da-Mi to give her as good-bye present!

 

Da-Mi was always so enthusiastic about the crochet. First one to want a Queensday ring etc. And she had made several attempts to try out the crocheting herself, on saturdays we had gotten together and I had been teaching her the crochet, she had made a start at making a doll herself. But it turned out to be slightly more difficult than anticipated. and there was a bit of bad luck, the hair we had decided to put on her doll, really, was looking like afro. What a throw-back. after that never much came of it ever again. That's why I thought if anybody deserves a doll, it's Da-Mi.

Here are some more pictures

New amigurumi; Jo the rockbitch

For Jo's leaving party. jo is a biker girl, so I thought let's make a rockbitch, easy to make it look like Jo with all that hair. She's from Scotland, which you hear when she talks :-) so we gave her a celtic cross on the front of her t-shirt. The amigurumi is wearing the recognizable Jo signature elements; golden sneakers and leather jacket.

John helped brainstorming about the styling elements, Ozgur helped with the photography. It's Ozgurs LEGO bike.

rockbitch amigurumi

rockbitch amigurumi

rockbitch amigurumi

Jo and her rockbitch avatar

New Amigurumi: Sandy's miniature

Because Sandy was leaving us, I decided to crochet a doll for her. When Sandy's son was born I crocheted the first robot-amigurumi (thx to Elisabeth and Craft magazine) so it seemed just right to make one for Sandy too.

She's wearing bright yellow pants, pink t-shirt with skull-print a hoodie with miniature space-invaders and of course tiger-striped adidas shoes. Just like Sandy does. Sabine made this picture, I really like the posture.

The hoodie was the most difficult part. As I wanted it to be really color-ful I made only one stripe each for each color, which means I had to change color each time.
also this time, I tried to use gradient-yarn for the eyes, in the end I think that worked quite well.

the skull on the t-shirt is a simple felt-cut one, after gluing it on with textile-glue (yes, that's a dirty finger that got stuck :-() I stiched it down. It just makes it look more finished and it sticks better.

Pants have a thin jeans-wear stitch along the side and fly. and real Adidas 3-stripes on the shoes. That was really tiny work. To make the zebra stripes you have to crochet-stitch one stitch in white, then one in black. In the end it works quite ok, but would have been even better, if I would also have made the stripes on the bottom-part of the shoes. But gosh, that would have been extremely complicated.

Here she's in the gift-pack just before we went to the party.

Amigurumi update

My latest amigurumi is Findus. He's based on a drawing that Julie made, unfortunately we lost it in the process. Findus is a hedghog builder, that's why he's wearing orange wellys and suspenders. His belly and the inside of his ears are soft pink. Findus as you can see has spines on his head and all the way down his bag. Findus is feeling a little bit cold that's why he's wearing a warm and comfy scarf. He might even be on the edge of having a cold, because his eyes are very tired too. hope you like him! 

And so whilst I'm at it, here are all my amigurumi over the last 5 years!

you can see them all at www.flickr.com/knitbitch

here are a couple of zooms on some of the avatars that I have been working on.

Helene and Oliver at their wedding

Leo at her 40 years birthday

Stines miniature

What Stine really wanted for her confirmation (sealing of convenant made at baptism), was a mini-mi portrait doll of herself, as was looking on the day.

Of course I could not have the doll ready for the day, because untill the last minute it was not clear what she was going to look like :-) amongst others the hair-do was decided last minute, on the morning itself. So in order to compensate for the shameful lack of present I made a little illustration and used it as a gift-card as a token that she would get the doll later.

This is what Stine looked like on the day itself. Pretty lady, heh? I particularly liked the hair-do, which I think I didn't render very well on the doll.

Here are some of the details; the marguerite/daisy bracelet, a very traditional Danish type of jewellery famously made by Georg Jensen.