Bulldog pillows

Inspired by the excellent bulldogs, Lola and Messier. This is my first experiment in heavy duty color knitting. Here are pictures of the finished product, along with both dogs and their corresponding pillows.

I started by drawing a color sketch of both dogs' faces, then scanned that and outlined it using GIMP. I printed the outlined version on knitting graph paper, which I colored in to make a rough pattern for knitting.

The backs are attached using blanket stitch. I used an acrylic yarn (Paton's Canadiana), chosen for their wide range of colors and the fact that theoretically, the pillow covers are machine washable, just in case the real dogs get too close and have some kind of slobber incident.

I've posted the original sketch and one of the outlines here too, just so you can see the whole process from beginning to end (minus the messy part of weaving in all those ends). The project took maybe 6 months of irregular working to complete.

Sam's soccer hat

These are pictures of a hat I designed and knit back in November for Sam, a very cool kid I know who is also a soccer star at the ripe old age of 5.

I searched all over the internet for a soccer ball pattern, but couldn't find one. I ended up stealing a black and white image of a ball and transferring it onto knitting graph paper. I knit the white ball and black pentagons into the hat using intarsia, which required working a section of the hat back and forth instead of in the round. (I had to seam up the gap when I was finished, which ended up looking OK.

I added a white outline to make the ball appear rounder and stitched on the black lines between "spots" when I was finished using a backstitch.

Sam also requested that I add his name to the back of the hat so nobody in his class could steal it, so I did that in backstitch as well on Thanksgiving day.

Here's a picture of Sam wearing the finished product.

Jason's rune hat

The traditional knit argyle shape also forms the 33rd rune of the Anglo-Saxon Futhark. Called "Gar,"which stands for all and none of the other runes, is sometimes called the "spear of Odin," and sometimes associated with the tree of the world, Yggdrasil. I created this hat at the request of my friend Jason, who knows a lot more about the runes than I do, and who claims to feel empowered by wearing the 33rd rune of the Anglo-Saxon Futhark on his head. On the knitting side, this was a fun experiment in using intarsia in the round, which really made a mess of loose ends on the inside but turned out nicely on the front.