First knitted "Thing that's not a hat"

 

My lovely mum sometimes brings me knitting patterns from her favourite weekly magazine. Most of the time I look at the patterns, try to follow the instructions and instantly get lost in a mixture of a lack of ability, and total confusion over how the person has opted to write out their instructions. 

I'm definitely a 'lead me by the nose' guy with stuff like this, so this little lamb was a heck of a challenge on multiple levels. 

Firstly, it used a LOT of Blackberry stitch. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with Blackberry stitch, it's a lovely textured stitch type that involves knitting into the same stitch multiple times, alternated with knitting three or more stitches together to make those lovely bobbly clusters. 

Fine when you're making a swatch, SUPER complicated when you're also shaping the various components of a knitted creature. Your brain is telling you to blindly follow the pattern and as the shape of each body part emerges, you're absolutely convinced that it's all completely wrong (until you start sewing it all together, I guess!)

The first things I knitted were the arms and the legs, and this was where I was utterly convinced I was going wrong. They had a bit of shaping to them, and some alternated knitted / purled stitches, but also some weird stitches that didn't really make any sense (like the strange little raised stitches along the length of particular rows opposite where the seams would be). Still, I dutifully knitted them up but thought "Hang on, why are the arms so long and the legs so short?| Simple answer is that this is exactly how the photo (the one single photo!) in the pattern looked, so I carried on. 

Knitting the body and the head were super-tough as well. Firstly the body was in two parts (a base and a body) that didn't seem to fit together at all and didn't seem to be in any kind of a symmetrical shape. 

In crochet I'm very used to things being crocheted in the round, being largely symmetrical, and not needing tons of sewing up afterwards. The exact opposite is true of knitted patterns, well this one anyway!

Knitting the head (which was actually in three parts) was also challenging as it was lined (to stop the stuffing showing through, which was neat!) and the face shape was almost like a pillow, with the nose made from one corner. 

In total this took about 5 days of knitting a couple of hours a night to complete, a long haul but I was absolutely determined to finish it off and make it NOT look like Frankenstein's Monster when finished, as it's for my Mum's birthday. 

I'm pretty pleased with the result. There's still a couple of bits to finish on it (like the mouth and nose embroidery) but here's a photo of the original pattern (as I said, the only photo to work from which just added to the challenge as there were no 'making up' diagrams either!)

Lessons learned: 

1) Slip stitch then knit over isn't the same as 'yarn over' in Crochet!

2) Blackberry Stitches are a pain in the bum at first, but eventually they start to make sense and now I love them and I feel like using them for everything!!

3) Never underestimate the value of lining something with fairly 'open' stitches with some simple stocking stitched lining shapes. It makes a huge huge difference to the quality of the finished product

4) Don't understuff or overstuff (I understuffed this, you can tell!) Again though this was mostly because I didn't want the stuffing showing through those gorgeous Blackberry stitches

5) When making all the bits, label them in some way if you can as you finish. Don't make the mistake I did (I couldn't remember which bit was the body base and which bit was the actual body but got there in the end!)

6) Lastly, use a very fine needle with chunky wool. Try it, you'll be surprised what a huge difference it makes to your stitches and how close together they are.