Knitting

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Amazing Knit Characters from The Hobbit

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lotr-dragon-knitted


I love to see the amazing things that people come up with to knit. I generally stick to wearables, and have only participated in one yarn bombing, but I love it when people just go all out to celebrate something they love in knits.

Case in point: Denise Salway, a 50-year-old Welsh stitcher who has taken up knitting a hoard of characters from The Hobbit. She says she learned to knit in school and put down her needles for decades until her daughter asked her to knit favors for her wedding.

Once that colossal project was done, she turned to knitting dwarves, Gandalf, Bilbo and Smaug, who is stunning. There’s even a knit Peter Jackson complete with camera.

Even more amazing, she doesn’t work from patterns and has just been designing in her head, though she says she has started writing some patterns down. Somebody needs to get this lady a book deal!

[Photo from Wales News Service Ltd., via the Daily Mirror.]

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Comments

  1. Really glad you like my designs I made of the hobbits. Thanks for posting me on your site, hello everyone

  2. I just found this article ,many thanks for taking the time and say such lovely things to my designs best wishes to you all ????

Have you read?

Knit a Sweet Hood Covered with Flowers

I happen to live in the Northern Hemisphere, but I know we have a lot of Southern Hemisphere friends, too, who are heading into the cooler months as we are warming up. Whichever one of the seasons you’re in, you might want to  stitch up this sweet little hood.

This pattern by saskie&co is called snug hood and it uses two colors of yarn to make a close-fitting pixie style hood (almost a balaclava but it doesn’t cover your face, though there is a neck covering portion to keep you a little warmer). You can use the fingering weight wool and mohair held together that are called for in the pattern, or use a single strand of DK weight yarn.

The neck portion and the edging around the face are worked in ribbing in a single color, while the body of the hat includes an allover colorwork flower pattern. The project is worked both flat and in the round and there is colorwork that is knit flat, which means you’ll have to purl in colorwork (which some people don’t like; also, you can’t see what you’re doing as well on the back of the work).

The pattern comes in one size and the colorwork is charted. Testers noted this is a quick and easy project and a great way to learn some new skills (chart reading, working stranded colorwork flat) if you’ve never tried those things before. They noted the hood is cute, comfortable and warm, and a few said it didn’t take as much yarn as the pattern suggests, so bear that in mind if you’re trying to use stash.

Speaking of the pattern notes, check out all the cute color variations in the projects on Ravelry. From pink and red to blue and white to gray and cream, there are lots of great options to think about.

You can buy this pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: saskie&co]