Knit (or Crochet) a Pokeball

Are people still playing Pokemon Go? I never downloaded it, but I know I read the peak of downloads came on the day it was released, and the most users ever was a week after that, so I’m not sure how many people have stuck with this trendy game.

Whether you’re playing or know someone who is, crafting Pokeballs and other Pokemon-inspired objects is a lot of fun.

Studio Knit has a great tutorial for how to knit a Pokeball, which uses a clever bit of duplicate stitch to make it look more authentic without having to do any fancy colorwork.

If you’d rather crochet your Pokeballs — sometimes crochet is faster and better for certain things, even I will admit — I stitched up some crocheted Pokeballs over at Craft Bits. They were so fun to make I don’t even care that I have no idea what they are for!

Have you knit or crocheted any Pokemon-related items? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Studio Knit.] Looking for more Pokemon patterns? Check these out on Etsy.

Lots of craft designers are understandably frustrated about the proliferation of AI “designed” patterns and photos of projects that have no basis in reality. People who don’t know how to tell if a project is AI are often also frustrated when they see a picture for something but there’s no pattern because it’s not real, or they buy a pattern that doesn’t actually explain how to make the thing or ends up looking totally different from the picture.

Some designers have taken it upon themselves to try to make some of those AI patterns that we see online, often with hilarious results.

Katherine Foster was inspired by a famous AI elephant to make what she calls “AIlephant,” which is now a free knitting pattern on Ravelry.

Her prototype uses worsted weight yarn, but you can use whatever yarn you like to make different sizes of elephants.

The elephant features a cable running down the trunk and a different cable pattern on the back. It’s worked in pieces that are joined and stuffed as you go. It uses German short row shaping on the body and includes written instructions as well as a chart for the cable patterns.

Reading through the pattern, it sounds a little fiddly, which makes sense because it was designed to look like a pattern that isn’t real. But it’s doable, as evidenced by the handful of projects you can find on Ravelry. The ears on her version aren’t quite as big and round or maybe don’t sit in quite the same place as the AI version (which if you haven’t seen it there’s a photo of that on the projects page, too). But it’s a pretty honest replica of a dishonest photo, and a really cute elephant in its own right.

If you make this one I would love to hear about it!

You can grab the free pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Katherine Foster]

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