Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Knit poppy and a penguin sweater

In Canada, November marks Remembrance day, celebrated on November 11th.  We pay tribute to our military personnel, past and present.  We wear poppies on our lapels as a sign of remembrance.  The poppies are pinned on using a small straight pin, and  I often lose many poppies each season. I hate the thought of losing a poppy and having it lay on the ground somewhere.  I think I lose them, in part, because I drive so much and the seat belt often moves the poppy that I wear on my left side.  I was browsing Ravelry and found a pattern for a knit poppy.   I thought this was a great way for me to have a poppy that I wouldn’t lose. The pattern was written by Laura Chau, and she also has it posted on her blog here .  The poppy was my knit flower, and it knit up quite quickly.  I didn’t have any black yarn, so I used some left over dark grey yarn.  I added a few rows to make the poppy larger; the grey yarn was double the thickness of the red yarn, and I wanted to keep the flower proportional to the size of the centre.  I added the following rows:

                           Round 10: Knit
                           Round 11: kfb k2 repeat to end 56 stitches
                           Round 12: Knit
                           Round 13: Knit
                           Round 14: purl
                           Round 15: bind of pwise

I’m happy with how my very first flower came out.  The first few rows are the trickiest; the needles (2.75mm) are very small and I felt like I kept getting tangled in the yarn and the needles.

 

 

Poppies are received when you make a donation to the Royal Canadian Legion Poppy fund.  I’ll continue to make a donation when I see the Legion members with their poppy boxes, while wearing my knit poppy.

 

 

And now for  a penguin sweater update- it is complete!  I finished knitting and then added the elastic thread on the collar and on the bottom edge as recommended.  I don’t have a stuffed penguin, so I modeled the sweater on my Harrod’s bear.  He looks pretty cute!penguin sweater 2

The penguin sweater is on it’s way to Australia. It might not help this round of penguins (the request went viral and the wildlife centre received an abundance of sweaters), but perhaps some other little animals can put it to good use.

 

Happy Tuesday!

 

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