Farmyard Friends

Since having a bit of spare time in the evenings, I've had the chance to go through a few of my old designs in my notebooks. I've been wanting to knit another chicken for months now, and it was good to find that my handwriting was still legible and the instructions still made sense - in fact, on knitting this after so long, I can hardly believe that I came up with such canny shaping!

This hen has the secret hatch in her bottom, revealing...

...an egg waiting to be laid.

I've knitted this is some rather coarse yarn that I got at the Unravelled knitting show earlier this year - it's made the chicken slightly larger than usual but given it a nice texture.  Instead of the wire legs used for the animation, this chicken has simple crochet feet - just as effective. I quite fancy making a small flock of them...

However, there are other things to be done first.  I designed this cow pattern over two years ago for a friend to give to a baby, so it is soft and very child friendly.  I had an enquiry about the pattern for it recently (OK, months ago now...) and have been meaning to transcribe my scrawl into a workable pattern for sale in my Etsy shop.  I actually began it this week - it might take a few more days to complete, but the pattern will be for sale soon.

We visited the Festival of Crafts at Farnham Maltings over the weekend.  Sometimes craft fairs can be a little disappointing, with the same old items being sold from table to table, nothing new or exciting.  However, we were pleasantly surprised this time - there was a lot of very original jewellery, some beautiful ceramics, interesting knitting and needlefelting work, lots of lovely cards and prints, and some things that defy description!  I bought this pair of gorgeous screen prints for the ridiculous price of £3 as I just love the scruffy crows.  I framed them straight away and now have to find a space on the walls to hang them.  The lady who made these, Jule Mallett, also had some very weird but truly captivating soft sculptures - see her work here.

On the easel : that double dog portrait...sigh...
On the needles: some unexpected bits for the animation!

Something To Crow About!

While at the seaside the other day, the lady we visited gave me a fascinating book full of patterns to make fabric birds.  Whilst many of them weren't really my 'thing', I was very taken with the crow and decided to have a go.

The patterns were a little intimidating, with instructions such as 'enlarge by 117%' - huh? - and as it is an American book, some of the products used were unfamiliar to me, but I soldiered on and luckily had an old skirt of my daughter's in the charity shop pile which was perfect for this project.

Ultimately, once I'd started to make the bird, I discovered it wasn't as hard as I had originally thought, just a little fiddly when it came to sewing the many, many fabric loops for the feathers.  My sewing machine and I have a bit of a love/hate relationship, especially when it comes to re-winding the bobbins and re-inserting them....but after a Basil Fawlty moment (without beating it with a tree branch!) we got there.

The feet were tricky - the only suitable wire I had in the house was very hard to bend and I couldn't quite get the shape of the toes that I wanted.  Then it said to wrap the feet with florist's tape, which I had never heard of, let alone had in the house.  Instead, I used insulation tape, which gave him great big ostrich feet....so this morning I visited the florists and picked up some tape and did it properly.  Wow, that's good stuff and it takes acrylic paint beautifully!

I've threaded a long strand of fishing filament through the wings in order to hang him up as if in flight, but the pattern also could be made with folded wings and the bird standing.

I wish I had the time at the moment to make a few more of the birds from this book - there is a flamingo pattern I quite fancy!  One day, definitely.