A Cat Cardigan

I offered to make a cardigan with a cat on for the 4 year-old niece of a friend of mine.  I thought it would be appropriate to use her cat as inspiration, so I asked for some photos.  This is Cheeky sitting on the draining board.

As you can see this cat has very distinctive facial markings.  I hope I can do something similar in yarn.  So far I have knitted the front which has very little cat on it.

The cat is on one front and its tail goes around the neck and the end appears on the other front.  My friend had trouble getting the cat to sit still and some of the more blurred photos show him in almost the correct position –so that I can see how the white and black appears on his back.  The design is loosely based on an old pattern that I have got with a cat in the pocket of a cardigan, but that only includes the head, paws and tail of the cat – and looks a bit odd.  I have decided to include more of the cat.

I haven’t got much knitting done over Christmas but I have knitted quite a lot of one of the sleeves because that was fairly easy to do.  I need to be fresh and alert when I tackle the cat so I probably won’t get on to that until next week.

WW1 Memorial Quilt – Bob

I have sorted out my piece of knitting which represents the tailors and drapers in my family who died in World War 1.

In the end I had to make it 24 rows shorter.  This seems a lot but it is now roughly the right size.

This piece is for Robert Henry Chant who was the husband of my third cousin twice removed.  He was a gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery who died in Salonika on 19 Dec 1917 – exactly 100 years ago today.  It is also for my fourth cousin, twice removed Harold Farley Carver who was a private in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry and who died on 3 Mar 1916 aged 26.  Harold was a tailor in civilian life and Robert was a Drapery warehouseman.

Originally I had thought about doing a design which showed some “fans” of fabric – like those you used to see in shop windows, but I couldn’t make them look right – so I thought about actually knitting some fabric – and decided on dogs-tooth check.  The red bits are supposed to represent stitches.

I cast on 79sts and repeated the 4 row pattern 12 times.  I then knit 12 rows including the red “stitches”, and then repeated the 4 row pattern a further 12 times.  I used Rowan Felted Tweed DK Shade 153 (A) and  Shade 157 (B).  The red is Shade 150.

The 4 Row pattern is:

Row 1:* K1A, K1B, K2A; repeat from *  to last 3 sts, K1A, K1B, K1A.
Row 2:* P2B, P1A, P1B; repeat from *  to last 3 sts, P2B, P1A.
Row 3:* K3B, K1A; repeat from *  to last 3 sts, K3B.
Row 4:* P1B, P3A; repeat from *  to last 3 sts, P1B, P2A.

I hope that is right – basically on each row you knit or purl one stitch in one colour and then 3 in the other.

I am now going to make a cardigan with a cat on for the niece/grand-daughter of some friends of mine, but I have an idea for the next piece of the memorial quilt and I will get back to it in the new year.

WW1 Memorial Quilt - Charlie

This piece of my WW1 memorial quilt represents the occupation of a butcher.

It has turned out quite well – just as I envisioned it in my head.  I am not sure that butchers wore blue striped aprons in the early part of the twentieth century  –  the stripes may have been red.  I have looked at lots of old photographs but of course – they are in black and white. 

When I was thinking about what to knit for a butcher – I thought of lots of gruesome things which seemed inappropriate.  A clean apron seemed a bit odd – but I resisted the temptation to add blood stains and included a poppy instead!

This particular poppy is similar to one that adorns the front cover of a book I own called Banbury During the Great War by Kevin Northover.  Normally my knitted poppies are one shade of red and have a black centre but the one on this book cover has a green centre and the petals appear to be different colours due to the reflection of the light.

For this piece of knitting I cast on 95sts and worked 66 rows.  It is exactly the same size a the piece I did for the postmen.  I mainly used Shade 178 of Rowan Felted Tweed. 

Although many members of my family were butchers – at the moment – I only know of one soldier who died during World War 1 who was a butcher and that is my second cousin twice removed: Charles Richard Carswell who was a private in the 17^th Welsh battalion.  He died on 31 December 1916 aged 25.  He is remembered on the war memorial of his home village of Elham in Kent and on the Thiepval memorial.

I am now trying to fix “Bob” - my piece of knitting which represents tailors and drapers.  I have checked and it needs to be the same size as Tom – the piece for glass fitters – so I have unravelled some of it and am reknitting it shorter.

WW1 Memorial Quilt

As I said at the end of my last post – I have started knitting a piece to remember the tailors and other textile workers in my family. 

When I say I have started it – I had hoped I had finished it – but something has gone wrong and it is too long – so I will probably need to unravel some of it and make some adjustments.

When I started this project and drew out a plan of how many pieces I was going to knit and how many rows and stitches each one needed.  I was a bit worried that this piece would be too narrow if I pulled the threads too tight across the back – but the width is OK – it is the length.  This piece which will be known as Bob should be the same size as Tom and it isn’t!  Never mind – I can fix it!

Before I make adjustments to this piece – I am going to knit the next piece.  Because that will confirm how long it needs to be.  So I will come back to Bob.  I have made a start on Charlie – the piece for a butcher.

On Saturday I went to Oxford for the monthly Knitting and Crochet Guild meeting.  It was a Show and Tell session – so I took the pieces of quilt that I have done so far.  I have told several people about the project but I don’t think they understood it until they actually saw what I was doing.  I am now going to do a talk about it in June next year.  As a member of the Birmingham group was present – I am also going to talk about it in Birmingham next August. 

Before I went to the meeting, I visited Oxford Yarn Store to buy some more yarn – and everyone there seemed to like the pieces of quilt and were interested in the idea behind it.  With all this interest I had better get on with it.  However, I think I may have to fit in a last minute Christmas present before I can concentrate all my attention on it.