Mini Penguins

Pondering knitting some soft toys for young friends, one of them commented that her older brother, who is about to turn 18, is a great fan of penguins. They thought he would appreciate a knitted toy penguin for his birthday.

I was a bit dubious, but then we spotted the mini penguins in Sachiyo Ishii's book 'Tiny Toys to Make'. It didn't look too difficult, so I thought I'd try one and see how it looked.  The book recommends 2.75mm needles and double knitting yarn, but I prefer 3mm ones; I knit rather tightly anyway.

The book shows one penguin in grey and white, one in blue and white. I was pretty sure penguins were black and white, so I set to work with black yarn, left over from another project. The pattern only takes very small amounts of each, and was so quick to knit that I finished it in about forty-five minutes. The head and body are made in one piece, and the feet, wings and beak are separate tiny parts. Sewing together and stuffing took another twenty minutes or so.

When I checked online later, I discovered that I was correct; penguins all seem to be black and white. Moreover, their feet are black too, not yellow as the pattern dictated. By this time I had decided to make another penguin to go with the first one, as they're so small, so for the second one I used dark grey yarn rather than black.

I then put black feet on the first one, and yellow on the second. The trickiest part was attaching the beak, which I couldn't get straight. But still, I think they're quite cute. They're too small for toys, really, so I wouldn't recommend them for a small child, but as ornaments for a fan of penguins, they're rather fun.

They don't stand up by themselves, but leaning against a wall they stay upright. A slightly out-of-focus photo demonstrates this:

If I do any more, I will have to remember to ensure that the black or grey yarn, carried behind the white in the stomach part, is a lot looser. I thought I had left it quite loose, but when I started stuffing I realised that I couldn't stretch it any further, so the penguins are both rather thinner than those in the booklet.

Knitted pink pig (Jean Greenhowe)

I offered to knit some soft toys for some young friends, who had showed a lot of interest in the toys I was making for my grandchildren. They liked the idea, and spent some time browsing my booklets. Slightly to my surprise, one friend - soon to be seven years old - opted for the pink pig in Jean Greenhowe's 'knitted animals' book.

It's not a toy I've knitted before, but it looked straightforward, and I had some pink yarn already, which she agreed was a suitable colour. She asked for the pig's neck tie to be dark pink rather than blue.

The pattern said that the set of small animals on the page - a koala, a rabbit and a bear, in addition to the piglet - only needed oddments of double knitting yarn. That's probably true for the ones knitted in more than one colour, but the piglet is pink throughout, and in fact took about 25g of yarn, which is more than I would consider an 'oddment'.

I used 3mm needles and followed the instructions exactly. There was about three hours' worth of knitting, or a bit less, which I did over a few days, and then the sewing/stuffing part which I don't like so much, but which probably only took about half an hour in all.

The result looked fairly close to the image in the booklet:

The only slightly tricky part was the tail, and it's not pictured in the booklet at all so I wasn't entirely sure how it was meant to look. It's made from a twisted cord, made with four pieces of yarn, doubled and twisted in classic Jean Greenhowe style (the neck tie is made from two pieces twisted in similar fashion).

Each yarn end of the tail had to be sewn into the body; I threaded some of them down the legs, and knotted ends together before pushing into the tiny gap at the soles of the foot, to ensure that the tail could not be pulled out. But it was difficult to get it to curl. The booklet suggests 'catching' it to the body, but I couldn't work out how to make that work, so in the end I tied it loosely into a knot:

Quite a nice little knitting project; I may try the others in the same section some other time. 

Knitted black-and-white cat Jess

I completed my most recent knitting project just a few days before my almost-three-year-old grandson (and his family) come to stay. He's a great fan of Postman Pat, so a few months ago I ordered 'The Postman Pat Knitting Book' by Joy Gammon. My aim was to knit a sweater, and that's nearly completed, but I also rather fell in love with the black-and-white cat Jess, and have been knitting that as well.

Here's the final product, which, I realise, is similar to the original Jess in the 1980s/1990s series, but doesn't really look all that much like Jess in the 'new' Postman Pat books and TV show:

But I hope he'll like it anyway.

It's been quite a project. The book suggested using brushed yarn, but I couldn't find any easily, so I decided to use ordinary double knitting wool.  It wasn't until I was over half way through that I realised that the main body, head, legs and tail sections are all 'inside out', as it were. the bumpy (purl) side of the double knitting shows, rather than the smoother, more normal side. That's not entirely clear, other than a note at the start that Jess is knitted in reverse stocking stitch; and, from the photos in the booklet, it was clear that the ears, eyes and nose have the more usual side outside.

One of the options in the book is to knit it as a pyjama/nightdress case, with an extra gusset and a zip at the bottom. I am glad I didn't decide to include that extra complexity.

Knitting the body was hard going at first, as there's a lot of rapid increasing, from 7 stitches to 112 in just eight rows, doubling on every knit row. I knit fairly tightly anyway, and it was remarkably difficult on the final increasing row.  The rest was easy, and I finished with relief, only to realise that the head piece is made in exactly the same way!

Still, eventually I had all my knitted pieces finished, kept together in a large bag.  The part I don't like so much is the sewing, and worst of all is the stuffing.  The head and body took huge amounts of foam stuffing, and I had to push it in by the handful or it would have taken hours. Unfortunately that meant that there was foam everywhere by the time I was finished... and black isn't this kind of black-and-white cat:

I thought about using a vacuum cleaner, or vast amounts of sellotape to remove it, then thought about our Ikea cat fluff removing tool:

It was effective:

When I had sewed the knitted parts of the face in place, I felt a bit discouraged. It didn't look at all cat-like:

However, the ears, mouth and whiskers made a lot of difference, even though the facial features are rather wonky. But I wanted to embroider whiskers rather than anything that might detach, and with something this squashy, even with marking pins, it was very tricky. And I'm not good at embroidery!

Sewing the limbs in place wasn't too hard; I pinned them to the body in the right places first, and then used the lint roller thing to remove excess foam.  The biggest problem was attaching the head to the body; the head is large, and very floppy. I didn't want to make it too rigid, but ended up sewing the back of the head further and further along the back.

It was quite a relief to finish it at last!

Despite reading the dimensions (30cm tall), I hadn't expected Jess to be quite as large as he is.  Here's the comparison with one of our cats:

Twenty more books read

Early in March I wrote a post about the first twenty books I'd finished reading in 2017.  A few days ago, I reached my 40th book, a couple ahead of schedule.

So, the next twenty books, with links to my book reviews blog for anyone who might have an interest in knowing more about what I thought about them.

Christian books

The first one I finished was a Kindle book: Beth Moore's devotional study 'To Live is Christ'. It's a series of studies on the life of the apostle Paul. I started reading this in January, and found it worked well to read a chapter (or part of a chapter) each day.

'The Secret Message of Jesus' by Brian McLaren is written in his usual thought-provoking yet very readable style. I thought it contained a lot of good sense, although I found it rather strange that he kept saying that the message of the Kingdom of God was a secret.

For contrast, I next picked up a much older book that was nestling in our bookshelves, 'Spiritual Warfare', by Michael Harper. An interesting author who was an Anglican minister but converted to Orthodoxy later in life. Terse writing on a subject that's often ignored.

Next I decided to re-read one of my favourites: 'The life you've always wanted' by John Ortberg. Very well written, with anecdotes and some humour, and also some immensely helpful points.  I should probably re-read this more often than once every ten years or so.

By this stage I'd had a birthday, when I was given several new books so I embarked on 'How to be here' by Rob Bell. His slightly odd style of writing has grown on me over the last few years, and I found this thought-provoking and encouraging. It was exactly what I needed to read.

Writing Books

I completed two more of these, the classic, 'Becoming a Writer', by Dorothea Brande, and Michael Legat's 'Non-fiction books'.  The latter is about 25 years old, and Dorothea Brande's book, to my surprise, over eighty years old! I bought it online, second-hand, after reading recommendations for it in several places.

Inevitably both books were very dated in the information about typing, editing, presenting documents to publishers and so on. Even 25 years ago computers in the home were rare, and email almost unknown. However, whereas the topic covered a significant part of Michael Legat's book, it was only a tiny part of Brande's, which is one of the most inspiring and helpful writing books I have ever read.

Children's Books

I included teenage/older children's books with the novels section in my earlier post, but this time there were three I read that were clearly intended for children.

'Linnets and Valerians' by Elizabeth Goudge is a book I liked as a child, and have read at least two or three times over the years. I last read it eighteen years ago, and spent quite a bit of time searching for my copy, in vain. Eventually I went ahead and ordered a second-hand and inexpensive paperback online, and thoroughly enjoyed re-reading it.

'The Chalet School Triplets' by Elinor M Brent-Dyer is one of the later books in the lengthy series, one which I'd almost entirely forgotten. It was about incidents in the lives of the Maynard triplets, Len, Con and Margot, and although I only have the paperback version, I don't think much has been removed.

'The Children of Primrose Lane' is by Noel Streatfeild, one of my favourite children's writers. Many of her books are about extremely talented dancers or musicians, but this one is an exciting adventure story set in the 1940s, involving six fairly ordinary children. Unfortunately no longer in print.

Novels

I read nine novels in this period - or eleven, depending on how they're counted!

'Ultimate Prizes' by Susan Howatch is the third in her thought-provoking and often shocking series about the Church of England in the mid-20th century. As with the previous time I re-read it, I hadn't recalled it with much enjoyment, yet found it unputdownable towards the end. Best read after the first two in the series.

Next I decided to read 'Don't Let me Go' by Catherine Hyde Ryan. This was a gift for my birthday a year earlier, which somehow I had not yet read - and I enjoyed it very much. All based around an eclectic mixture of people living in a block of flats, helping a neglected but very likeable ten-year-old girl.

After two novels of such high drama, pulling on the heartstrings and making me think, I decided to indulge myself in some classic Jeeves and Wooster. I hadn't read 'The Jeeves Omnibus 2' (by PG Wodehouse) for a long time. And here's where I don't know whether to count this as one or three; it's one volume, but three individual Wodehouse books: 'Right-Ho Jeeves', 'Joy in the Morning', and a collection of short stories, 'Carry On, Jeeves'. I thought it might be a bit much reading three Wodehouse books in a row, but it wasn't a problem at all. Wonderful writing, great humour, and no political correctness at all.

I try to vary the style of novel I read, so next I chose 'The Good, the Bad and the Dumped' by Jenny Colgan. I bought this a while ago at a thrift store. Colgan writes very light fiction, in the genre sometimes known as 'chick-lit', but I like her style. This one is a rather odd plot, where a newly engaged girl explores her past by visiting all her ex-boyfriends. Pleasant enough holiday reading.

Next I read 'Light a Penny Candle' by Maeve Binchy. This is one of her earlier novels, which I hadn't read since the year 2000. It's very well written, with lovely pictures painted of life growing up in rural Ireland during the second world war, contrasted, later with life for young adults in London. But the ending was, in my view, very depressing.

'Running Wild' by Victoria Clayton is another character-based novel, based in the 1960s. Most of this author's novels are out of print, and I found this second hand. It's a delightful story about a young woman running away to Dorset after deciding that she has to cancel her wedding. Beautifully written, on the whole, with the author's usual sprinkling of literary references.

I've been trying to vary the authors I read, but didn't succeed in another twenty different authors for this period. I embarked on 'Chasing Windmills' by Catherine Hyde Ryan, a recent birthday gift, having temporarily forgotten that I read another of her books only a few weeks earlier. This one is very different, featuring two lonely and stressed young people who meet by chance on the New York subway.

As a deliberate contrast, I followed this with 'Death in the Stocks' by Georgette Heyer, While I like Heyer's historical romance books best, I have enjoyed most of her mid-20th century detective ones too. This is, in my view, one of the better ones plot-wise, although her characterisation is always excellent. I did guess 'whodunit' before the end, but it wasn't obvious until quite a way through.

The last novel I read in this set of twenty books is 'A Song for Tomorrow', by Alice Peterson. This, as I discovered while reading it, is a fictionalised biography of Alice Martineau, a young woman who fought against the odds to become a singer with cystic fibrosis. Very moving in places.

Miscellaneous
And finally... I read just one 'miscellaneous' book that doesn't fit into any of the above categories. This one, 'Survival Games Personalities Play' by Eve Delunas' looks at the subconscious strategies used by people of different temperaments when stressed. It includes an overview of the Keirsey temperament system, and made very interesting reading.

Zig-zag knitted ball

Having knitted a soft pink and grey ball for my infant granddaughter, I thought I'd do a smaller one for my almost-three-year-old grandson, so he also has something that may be thrown or rolled in the house.

In the same trio of knitted balls in my Paton's 'more bazaar items' booklet, one was supposed to be knitted in chunky yarn on larger needles. I decided to use double knitting and my favourite 3.25mm needles (10 in old style UK measurement) so that the result would be smaller.  I'm not usually sexist about colours, but since I like turquoise and I had some available, I opted for turquoise and grey.

The pattern involved five identical panels, and they were rather easier to knit than those of the diamond motif ball.  Each one took me around 20-25 minutes and by the fourth one, I knew what I was doing and barely glanced at the pattern. Sewing together was straightforward, and the result not too bad:

The grey amounts look bigger than the turquoise; this may be because, although both balls of yarn were labelled as double knitting, they were different brands and the grey felt thicker than the turquoise. It didn't seem to matter.

The circumference is about 38cm (15 inches). This photo attempts to show the way the five panels meet at the top.

Pink and Grey Knitted Ball

One of the knitting pattern booklets I've had for a long time is the Patons 'More Bazaar Items'. Many years ago I knitted a couple of the soft toys from it, as well as a tea-cosy cover for one of my grandmothers. It's not one I'd looked at for a while, but I was intrigued by the three different soft balls. I thought they'd be ideal for rolling around a hard floor, so I decided to knit one for my infant granddaughter who will be here in a few weeks.

I studied all three of the ball patterns, and opted for the one called 'diamond motif'. I quickly realised that the diamond shapes shown in the pattern are embroidered on after the knitting. I prefer to keep sewing to a minimum, so I thought I'd try making the ball by itself.  The pattern said that it needed 50g each of two contrasting colours, double knitting. So as I had an unstarted bright pink and an unstarted grey, I chose them. Neither was Patons brand, but I don't suppose that matters.

The pattern turned out to be quite fiddly, not something I could have done while chatting to friends or watching children. It's knitted in six separate panels.  It starts by casting on one stitch, and knitting that, then increasing rapidly at each end: every two rows, then every three rows twice, then after the fourth row... and so on.  I had to keep track carefully of where I was, and if I put it down even for ten minutes, had to check carefully how many stitches I had, and where exactly I had reached.

The middle section of each panel, in the contrasting colour, is straightforward, then the top part involves decreasing at each end, again in a specified manner which works to give a perfect half diamond shape, but which is not intuitive or easily memorable. Even by the time I was knitting the sixth panel I could not remember all the details without checking.

Each panel took me around half an hour to knit, so it wasn't a time-consuming project. Sewing them together was easy, using the ends of yarn at the start and finish. I used my standard foam stuffing, then went over it with a sticky cat fur removing tool to get rid of foam dust. The result, I thought, wasn't too bad at all.

This first photo shows how the six panels work together.  Three used the pink as the main colour, and three used the grey. The circumference, as the pattern states, is a little over 17 inches (44cm).  The pattern booklet is old enough that it only gives inches as measurements.

This photo, at a slightly different angle, shows how the contrasting colours work.  It's not as interesting as the ball shown in the booklet with diamond motifs embroidered on it, but I don't suppose a baby really minds so long as it can be thrown and rolled. 

Little Beagle (Sachiyo Ishii)

Just over a year ago, when I decided to start knitting again, I browsed Amazon for some ideas. I put a couple of things on my wishlist, one by an author whose work I already knew, and one by someone I had never heard of. 'Tiny Toys to Knit' showed lots of very cute looking little animals, and I thought it could be fun to knit some really small toys or ornaments.

I started the 'Little Beagle', near the back of the book, some time last year.  The author is quite flexible about yarn thickness and needle sizes, She recommends double knitting (or even tapestry yarn for some parts, as it's easy to have oddments of those) and 2.75mm needles, but suggests her readers experiment. I decided to use 3mm needles instead. I knit fairly tightly, and 2.75 (12 in the old UK gauge) seemed a bit too small.

It didn't take much yarn at all. I opted for the black, brown and white one as I liked the look of it, and found it very quick and easy to knit. The head, a little confusingly, is rather larger than the body and there are four paws, two slightly bigger than the others.

The tail is supposed to be black and white like the paws but I opted for plain black.  The tail and ears are not stuffed, but the rest is; it was a bit fiddly but I used the point of a pencil to get small amounts of stuffing inside.

The result didn't look quite like the picture in the book. While I was sewing, I didn't think it was going to work at all, but to my surprised it stood up once I'd added the tail. Then using Jean Greenhowe style knots for the eyes, and a little embroidery on the snout, I didn't think it was too bad at all once it was finished.

The scale isn't obvious from the photo, but it's very small indeed.  About 7cm in height. It's really an ornament rather than a toy. 

Kitten (Jean Greenhowe)

This is another project which I started some years ago. I don't know exactly when, but probably about ten years ago.  It's called, simply, 'kitten' in the Jean Greenhowe 'Knitted Animals' booklet from which I knitted many toys for my sons, back in the 1990s.

I knitted this not with the recommended double knitting yarn, but with some rather thicker wool I had bought for something else. At the time, living in a new neighbourhood, I had no idea where I could buy yarn other than random small balls from the thrift store. But I had some thicker wool in cream, and used that. I don't remember what size of needles I used.

For some reason I had mostly finished the kitten body, and had stuffed and sewn it together, even including the facial features which I tend to leave until the end. But I had not sewn the tail in place, nor had I knitted the cushion.  Perhaps this is because I don't like pink, but couldn't decide on an appropriate colour for the cushion.

Whatever the reason, the unfinished kitten sat in in my knitting box until I decided to finish it today. I used some turquoise double knitting wool for the cushion, which I was able to knit in about half an hour. It's in two square pieces, so was very quick to knit. I used 3.25mm needles rather than the recommended 3mm, to make it slightly bigger.

Sewing it together and finishing the kitten took about ten minutes. I used the same turquoise yarn to make a twisted cord for a bow around the kitten's neck. I thought the result was rather cute.

I have no idea what I'll do with it, but it's joined my other completed projects and is one I might do again, experimenting with different colours.