Speed knitting a dinosaur

Let me introduce you to Fergus, the friendly dinosaur. Isn't he adorable?

 

One of my knitting friends announced that she was three months pregnant just before Christmas, so after all the festivities were out of the way, I emailed her, saying that I would like to knit a present for her new baby, and would she prefer unisex or gender specific, pastels or bright. She responded saying she'd like a bright, gender-neutral present. I then sat on this information for about five months, before finally deciding when she was 38 weeks pregnant that I really ought to order some yarn and cast something on!

From a conversation we'd had one evening at knitting, I knew I wanted to knit her a blanket with a dinosaur on, but hadn't got much further than that. As time disappeared I realised that knitting the blanket in chunky weight yarn was inevitable if the blanket was to be knitted on time, so started looking through lots of online yarn catalogues before eventually plumping for King Cole Big Value Chunky, mostly because it comes in an amazing shade of green that would be perfect for grass. Handily I had some of this yarn in my stash, so managed to get a tension square knitted before the yarn arrived, allowing me to chart the dinosaur. This blanket required a large chart, and as I like to chart on paper, I had to spend an hour or so wrestling with some chart paper and quite a lot of magic tape, but I got there in the end. 

I knew in my head how I wanted the dinosaur to look - nice and plump, with a friendly face, very child-friendly. It didn't take me too long to sketch the dinosaur out and make a rough chart, and as I was running short on time I decided that I'd just work from the enormous heavily taped chart, rather than making a nice chart on the computer.

This blanket was a real joy to knit. The intarsia is simple once you're past the toes, so I sped through him in under a month. I even managed to finish just before the baby arrived (kindly this baby decided to be rather late, thank you!), although slightly annoyingly I did have to start a new ball of blue just for the cast off. It could have been worse, I could have run out of yarn just before the cast off - I am very grateful I over-ordered on this occasion (over-ordered by so much that I have three un-started balls - one each in red, green and blue - and about 550g left on balls that I started, so I used less than half of what I ordered, oops).

 

So here he is, my friendly, chubby dinosaur. Now I want one!

Way(le) behind schedule

So, work (and life in general) is currently getting in the way of blogging. So I'm quite glad to be able to sit down now for five minutes to say hello. The past couple of months have been exciting, with no less than five new babies to coo over! Five! That's more in two months than usually arrive amongst my friends in a year. And there's another due in a few days time. Very exciting.

All these babies arriving does mean I am a little behind on the baby knitting schdule though. The recipient of the whale blanket arrived on Saturday, on his mum's birthday (thank you - just a name to remember and not anohter date!), and this is the current state of play of the blanket: 11 squares complete (including three whales, although they don't have features yet, so technically they're not actually complete, but close enough), 5 squares and a border to go (and some seaming and swiss darning). I have sent chocolates, a card and an IOU - just keeping up with tradition, their wedding present was six months late!

The two babies that arrived last month already have their presents: robot and dinosaur blankets. Neither of which I've written about yet, but I'll get there in the end.

 
My son's nursery worker has had her baby, hope she liked the blue and green Beyond Puerperium.

And the other baby is a co-worker who is not expecting a present, so I don't have to make something if I don't have time, and if I do I can just make something small, possibly some cute baby boots.