Ayo hi guys!
So while I’m in between my current projects (guys I’m working on a bee right now and I’m so so excited for it hahah) I wanted to share some of my old ones!
So these two patterns are both from Knit a Teddy, I found them on Sarah Gasson’s Etsy shop which I have linked here for anyone interested!
Originally, I was drawn to the patterns because my older brother is graduating from University this year and I wanted to make him a gift for when he got home, and I saw that these teddy’s you could make outfits for them too! One of those outfits being a graduation gown – really, once I saw that, it was a no brainer
Knit a Teddy
Koala & Graduation Gown Patterns
I was really pleased with how the koala itself turned out! It was the first animal that I knit that I was genuinely really proud of and I think that a lot of that has to do with the pattern itself. Because it was a bigger toy than the ones that I had previously been making, it meant that I had more room when I was sewing it together and any mistakes that I did make when knitting were less noticeable.
Also the koala (who I have now learnt from my brother has been named Karolina) was my first time experimenting with toy eyes, rather than making attempts at embroidering eyes myself – a huge thank you to Wool Woman for supplying me with toy eyes thanks to our shared hatred of buttons!
There’s just something about the face of the koala that I adore!
However I do think that the gown itself was not as good as I could have made it – it was a much larger knit than previously, with a lot of increasing and decreasing that I wasn’t used to since turning away from clothes making and diving into toy making instead. And then with the ribbon, I wasn’t pleased with how that turned out either.
But, hey ho! For a first attempt at a pattern like this, I was genuinely really happy with how it turned out and my brother was impressed that he could even recognise it as a koala (we love supportive siblings whoop)
Almost immediately after I finished Karolina, though, Norbert started acting up and I endured a week of absolute Hell trying to cope with the seemingly endless anxiety and depression and just overall stress about everything going on. So, the day after I finished Karolina, I woke up with my hands shaking, like, uncontrollably and my mind completely fuzzy and just, yeah, Norbert making me feel like shit.
And so, I started to make a rabbit, having found a pattern for it from the same store and also maybe slightly because I wanted an excuse to make the most adorable pair of sailboat dungarees literally ever in the entire word. So, Norbert basically made me speed run my next project, which was a rabbit.
I loved making this rabbit (Lila), possibly even more than I loved making the koala. Probably because I was used to the way the patterns were written and I also knew what to expect when it came to sewing it up. Also, these patterns were my first attempts at using moss stitch, so I was a lot less cautious when I was making the legs/feet of the rabbit because I knew what the effect of the moss stitch would be compared to how I felt as I was making the koala.
There are definitely a couple of messy areas on Lila and I’m aware of that and a lot of them are due to just Norbert-induced shaky hands, which also effected how strong the stitching was when I was sewing it up.
But I honestly can’t recommend these patterns enough! Though I will say that if you’re just starting out knitting I wouldn’t go straight for these patterns just because they are quite large and there’s a lot of increasing and decreasing and colour changes, especially for the head.
The same goes for the outfits, which I utterly adored – I was obsessed with the sailboat dungarees I made for Lila.
I actually gifted Lila to the daughter of a woman who I’m on a course with (I won’t name her in case she’s uncomfortable with that) but she gave me permission to post the photo of her lovely daughter, Millie, on the day that Lila arrived in the post. I was allowed to post her face as well, but in keeping with the emoji-faces I’ve been doing for myself I decided against it.
I hope that Millie loves Lila as much as I enjoyed making her! And I can’t thank her and her mum enough for agreeing to take her – because my house is currently overflowing with my attempts at knitted animals! And if Lila can be gifted to someone who will appreciate it then that’s the goal, really! So thank you so so much to them!
Also I do apologise for the amount of photos of my dog in this blog post! I took these photos before I thought about making a blog or an instagram page, so these photos are from about a month ago and my dog likes to check up on the knitting I’m doing and I didn’t have the heart to crop her out of the photos.
I hope that you’re all well!
Freddie 🐸
Knitting With Norbert 