BUNNIES!
 I tried to knit just one...but you know how they multiply! :)
I have an old friend from high school who moved away a few years ago and got married. She came into town recently with her 2 and a half year old daughter, and I had a chance to catch up with her for the first time since she'd moved. I brought Jakob with me and was pleasantly surprised when my friend presented Jakob with a gift. I also felt bad, because I was empty-handed. I emailed her that afternoon to ask what her daughter's 3 favorite colors were, and I cast on for the bunnies as soon as I heard back with a reply. (It was pink, purple and blue...I think those are the obligatory favorite colors for all girls under the age of 8).
I used Kate's Bunny pattern, and a 4.5mm needle. (Or a 4mm. Shoot. My notes are downstairs. If anyone really cares, email me and I'll check). The first one was knit with purple Fun Fur only, and while it was fast and easy to knit, I HATED the seaming. I think I've mentioned here before that I enjoy seaming, and my preferred method is to mattress stitch. With this fuzzy yarn mattress stitch is not an option (at least not without some really good light and a magnifying glass), so I had to seam with a whipstitch on the wrong side of the work. It came out ok, but I didn't want to have to do that again. This wasn't Kate's fault, it was mine for forgetting that I hate to seam with Fun Fur. I also wanted a bigger bunny. The pattern comes in 3 sizes (Baby, Mama and Papa), and the purple one was knit to the Mama size. I didn't want the Baby bunny to be any smaller than the Mama already was, so I went stash-diving and came up with some white Bernat baby yarn.  This blue bunny was knit to the Papa sized pattern. Same needle size as the purple one, but this time I did 2 rows of the smooth white yarn only, and 2 rows of the white with blue Fun Fur carried along. I wound up with a bunny that was much bigger than the first one (which was what I wanted) and also with a bunny that allowed me to see the stitches so I could work a mattress stitch seam (which was really what I wanted). The nature of knitting fur-type yarns has most of the fur wind up lying on the purl side of the work, which was the wrong side for this pattern. I had the option of turning it inside out before seaming, but I liked the less-fuzz/more-stripes look of the right side.
 The pink bunny was knit exactly as the blue one, but with (duh) pink Fun Fur carried along. She is also knit to the Papa bunny size.
I was going to give them eyes but I didn't feel like embroidering them, I don't know where my sew-on googley eyes are, and sewn-on buttons made the bunnies look dead. So they will remain eyeless.
 I tried to get something in the photo that would show scale, but I couldn't figure out what I owned that would be standard everywhere. (Now that I'm typing this, I am coming up with a ton of items I could have used. Ah well. Hindsight/20/20 and all that). Here you have the Bunny Family with Yannick's sunglasses.
And yes, it was done deliberately that a blue Papa and pink Mama make a purple Baby. ;]
Labels: Bunny, FO, Kate Gilbert |
