Friday, November 14, 2008

Now Isn't That Just Ducky



Raining outside today and kind of raw weather wise...I miss the sun.
But at least it's not snowing instead as we would have had some
accumulation. I know I should love the snow, but last winter here in
Massachusetts was a particularly long and rough one...so once it starts
to snow it just keeps up for many months.
All this rain reminds me of ducks, as they actually like it.
One of my early futile attempts at intarsia was the little ducky hat.





I actually did this in a stranding style aka fair isle when I didn't have
a clue how to do it right. Thank goodness the little ducky is such a
tiny motif or I would have majorly screwed up on my floats (a knitting term
for non knitters [as have a few that read my blog], floats are carrying yarn
across the back of work...floats or yarn trails should lay smoothly,
but the tendency is too pull work tight
as you knit so it looks good on front part)
.
~Long story short...Duckie sits pretty good on hat as he is a lone ducky...had
he had buddies going around sides of hat...they would have looked all squished
up, and squished up ducks is just not a good look to go for.
The pattern for the ducky hat can be found in Creature Comforts by Amy Bahrt
This hat did go to charity.

Addendum: I have since learned to do proper fair isle and intarsia. It is rather
amazing when done right. I liked how they wrote the pattern on this one
to have ducky's little wing be 3-D, and if ducky were smart he would have flown
right off this first intarsia attempt hat, but a good learning experience.

I love to look at blogs. One of my all time favorite designers is Kristin Nicholas.
I have been lucky enough to take classes with her and have all her books. Her blog
is such an inspiration and there are always new things going on there.
It's called: Getting Stitched on the Farm and can be found at:
http://www.kristinnicholas.com/