Funny Videos and More About Knitting

It must be winter coming on, because it seems like I’ve been hearing about a lot of new humorous videos and websites with knitting as a theme. In case you’ve missed some, here’s a roundup of some of my favorites.

FedEx has a new commercial about its One Rate shipping, featuring a stitchy grandma (who seems to both knit and crochet, and of course the terms are confused in the commercial) who has made a cozy for everything in her daughter’s house.

I hope you have already seen the awesomeness that is swants (aka sweater pants), devised by the great Stephen West. If you want to make your own, there’s a tutorial on his website.

If you’re thinking about holiday knitting again, you might want to check out Holiday Knitting Explained in Gifs from Knit York City. Pretty much sums up what we knitters go through. Every. Year.

And finally, clearly these are not all handknit, but you’ve got to love a gallery of photos of animals wearing sweaters. Really. You have to.

Hope this brightens your day! Have any knitting humor to pass along? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via West Knits.]

Generally I like knitting patterns where I feel like you can use whatever yarn you have (because my stash is big enough and I want to use it, thanks) and make a successful project. This is one of those times when a special yarn makes the process that much easier.

The Floral Bouquet Shawl from Xandy Peters uses a specific extended color pooling yarn from Feisty Fibers, which allows you to place the bobble flowers with increasing frequency as you knit the project.

It starts with a solid color yarn, then the two color yarn is added in, and you make a bobble whenever you encounter the color pops. This would be hard to replicate with other yarn that doesn’t have the extended color pooling built in.

The background of the shawl is ribbed, making the project reversible.

The shawl uses fingering/sock yarn and comes out to be an asymmetrical triangle that’s 54 inches/137 cm long and 36 inches/ 90 cm deep and 60 inches/150 cm across the top edge.

Xandy says the pattern is for intermediate to advanced knitters. Knowing how to work traditional bobbles would probably help, but there’s a great video tutorial for how to work the floral bobbles so you can practice on other yarn or even incorporate the bobbles into other projects.

The bobbles are five-petaled flowers but they also kind of look like starfish to me, which could be fun on a child’s cardigan or other pattern. They’d also be fun on the leg of a sock or around the brim of a hat for extra whimsy.

The pattern includes photo and video tutorials, and written and charted instructions. It also includes tips on what to look for if you choose to use different yarn for the project, and instructions on how to dye your own yarn to use in the project.

If you want to give it a try, you can find the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Xandy Peters]

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