Spring (semester) is over, and summer (semester) has begun. The season has changed, and so have the textbooks and topics. Being a grad student, my concept of time is wholly related to the semester schedule, due dates, readings, and tests. I had less than a week between my last final and the start of my online classes, and I used my small window of freedom to go to the city for some exploration and relaxation. Naturally, I brought at least 5 knitting projects with me.
On the subway, I worked on the two sweaters that have become permanent fixtures in my bag. They’re both pretty simple, so they make for good mindless knitting. I don’t bring Kniterative Designs projects out on my daily adventures, generally, because (a) I don’t want them to get dirty or lost and (b) I don’t want to get so caught up in the increases and decreases and short rows that I miss my stop!
The main Kniterative Designs project I brought with me (for apartment knitting) was, of course, Banjo!
Knitted Banjo is going to be a gift from mother to daughter/expectant mother, and the baby shower is this Saturday. (Don’t worry, I did manage to finish him in time – but I’ll save the final product photos for Finished Object Friday!)
Last week, I was at a tricky point in the process – the eyes. For more details about my process of “building a better eye,” see this old blog post in which I weigh the pros and cons of embroidered, crocheted, felt, and safety eyes. It was a real turning point when I discovered how to knit the eyes directly into the fabric of the face. I greatly prefer the knitted method, because it’s more efficient and yields more consistent results. Furthermore, it seems to me like the most child-proof – there’s nothing to pull off and potentially choke on.
Banjo has such expressive eyes. But as it happened, the best yarn I could find to match the color of his eyes was not that far off from the color of the yarn I used for the body. So, initially it made for very squinty looking eyes that were not right at all.
He looked a little better when I added the ever-important white highlight spot. That didn’t solve the underlying problem though, which was that there wasn’t enough definition at the boundary between eye and body.
While I pondered this, I knitted the ears and pinned them in place.
I noticed that the real Banjo has a dark line around his eyes – it looks almost like eyeliner! Also, the whites of his eyes are often visible, just a bit, at the edges. So, I ended up doing a little freehand embroidery around the edges of the eyes with black and white pieces of yarn. And with that simple addition, his personality really popped!
Check in on Friday to see the pictures of Banjo all finished and ready to travel to his forever home!
Kniterative Designs 
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