Magical Woodland Knits: Knitting patterns for 12 wonderfully lifelike animals

A magical collection of 12 knitting patterns for wonderfully lifelike animals and birds accompanied by the author’s sketches and studies of the natural world.

Choose your favourite animal or bird whether it’s a grey squirrel, barn owl, yellow-necked field mouse, wolf, fox, wild rabbit and even a roe deer fawn.

Nature lover and author Claire Garland has studied animals and birds in the environment around her home in rural Cornwall, and designed this delightful collection of patterns based on the wildlife she sees there.

The patterns are cleverly designed to with the same markings and colours as their real life counterparts, making them irresistible. You can read more about this book here.

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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