It has been – and it still is – way to hot to knit… over 30° C, phhew.
I really should be knitting winter stuff in heavy yarn weights now: aran, worsted or DK to prepare for new patterns. I started a warm pullover and a cozy winter cardigan before the heatwave. But right now, I can’t stand having a large, heavy pullover on my lap. The thought of knitting a smaller thing like a hat or a pair mittens makes me sweat already…
Then I saw this wonderful, amazing, colorful ‘tableau’: knitted faces in all colors with all kinds of expressions. Fantastic. DNA (look here) from ‘ableramm’ on Ravelry. She did a wonderful job. It is based on a pattern from Katarina Brieditis. It is a free pattern and can be found here. I love what she is doing, a new discovery.
I had to try it too. It looks so much fun. And a perfect small thing to knit in these temperatures.
This is the first one: knit as per the pattern, only I did slip the first stitches purlwise instead of knitwise – I didn’t read carefully, must be the heat – and I did p2tog at the left eye ^^
Then I started to change a few things: the second one has unintentionally large lips because the yarn I used for the lips is a heavier weight. I also added more short rows under and above the eyes.
With the third and fourth I started changing the slipped stitches in the short rows to DS (double stitches as in German short rows). The knitting looks much cleaner, no long, sloppy stitches at the turns.
A longer nose, eyes closer together, larger mouth, more short rows around the eyes. One can go on for ever 🙂 More info on the changes I made on my project page here.
With every change comes another face, another expression. Finally when the eyes are added, they really are coming to life and interact with each other – or not.
Don’t know yet what I will do with them, but it is great fun and I learned a lot.
‘I saw four faces, one mad …’ 10CC
I also made a few other little things that are very handy. On the intro page of Ravelry there were these cute little knitted produce bags. I have been thinking to make some kind of reusable and washable bags to go to the market and replace the paper and plastic bags. We already reuse the paper bags and avoid plastic bags, but this is so much better: weightless produce bag by Julie Tarsha. They are really lightweight. I managed to make three of them out of 1 ball of cotton (50 grs, 170 m).
Tomatoes, red oignons, nectarines and oranges. They are just perfect: not too large and not too small. Although they look very small, the are very extensible: the larger one can hold 2 kgs of tomatoes. I think I will make some more and maybe a few smaller ones too.
This is another very quick project and very small too: reusable crocheted cotton pads. There are two free patterns for these. Both are quite the same: here and here. I used the first one, but in the first round I made the puff stitches with only 3 repeats. It got too difficult to get the 8 puffs in the first round.
In the meantime all the warm stuff is waiting for cooler weather…
Have a nice summer ✺
ALFAKNITS 