Cats I have Knitted

This post is a brief interlude in the description of the progress of the WW1 Memorial Quilt.  A few weeks ago I managed to finish the little cardigan that I was knitting.  This small garment seemed to take ages.  I am not completely happy with the finished result – in places my tension was terrible (I am not showing you that bit!).

The brief for this project was a cardigan with a cat on it – and I decided to base the design on the family cat who is called Cheeky.  I read somewhere that there are over 900 different breeds of dog.  I don’t think there are that many breeds of cat but it seems to me that no two cats look alike.   Unlike dogs they are mostly a similar size and shape but their markings can be totally different.

I have knitted a cat previously – I knitted Bob the famous Street Cat.  The photograph below was taken by Tina Clark who is a fan of Bob and the owner of Cheeky.

As with black and white cats – no two ginger ones seem to look the same either.   I remember when I was choosing yarn for this project – I couldn’t find the right shades of orange.  In that respect a black and white cat is easier.

I am often working on several items or garments at the same time and if I wrote posts about what I was knitting today – they would be very disjointed – well more disjointed than usual – so I try to gather my thoughts on one item at a time.  The downside of this approach is that I forget the problems.  I know when I knitted the black and white cat – I had drawn the face out on graph paper but then I knitted something else!  Graph paper is all very well for a general outline but then I find it easier to design on the needles.  I am trying not to do this with my Memorial Quilt but sometimes I still do.

WW1 Memorial Quilt – Alexander – Cab Driver

As with the previous piece, this piece of my memorial quilt  was designed to remember 2 men whose jobs were not the same – one was a cab driver – which I assume means he drove any early car – and the other was a conductor on the trams.  However both vehicles operated on the streets.

For this design I decided to produce an artistic representation of the vehicles – a car and 2 trams.   I am not sure they are accurate colours – but that does not matter as I have used all sorts of unlikely colours for things in other pieces.  I don’t want to be too accurate.

The piece is 111 sts wide and 66 rows high.  I intend it to be placed immediately above the previous piece.

It is named after cab driver Alexander William John Bridger who was my second cousin, three times removed.  He was a private in the 15^th battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment who died on 26 October 1917 aged 35.

It is also to remember Arthur Frederick Tarry who was the husband of my third cousin three times removed.  He was a conductor on the trams and a gunner in the Royal Horse and Royal Field Artillery who died on 6 April 1918 aged 39.

I should stop working on my family history until this project is complete – but I haven’t and so unfortunately the other day I found I am related to another soldier who died in World War 1.  I don’t know his occupation – so he should be included with the piece called Jack, but I have decided to mention him now as his name was Alec.  He was my fourth cousin, twice removed Alec William Quested.  He was a private in the 7^th Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment who died on 24 September 1918 aged 20.

I now only have 4 pieces left to knit.  I think I know roughly what they are going to look like – but I might change my mind.    The World Snooker tournament starts on Saturday and while that is on I hope to finish the next piece but I am mainly going to be concentrating on knitting a throw for Oxford Yarn Store.

WW1 Memorial Quilt – Bill – Milkman

This piece only took 2 days to knit.  I always knew that I wanted to knit a design which included milk churns.  Originally I had intended to include a bit of black and white cow as well – but in the end I decided to keep it simple.

The design is an echo of the design for an office worker.   For those men I knitted a beige filing cabinet outlined in darker brown with red and green.  For this design I used the same shade of beige and used a different colour for each milk churn.

The piece consists of 161 stitches – it is the widest piece of the quilt – which is suitable for rows of milk churns.  I knitted 66 rows.

This piece is named after my third cousin, twice removed: William Carswell who was actually a cowman.  He may not have had anything to do with milk but I don’t know.  He was a private in the 15^th battalion of the Sherwood Foresters who died on 28 March 1918 aged 20.  It is also to remember my third cousin, three times removed: Frederick Henry Clark who was a milkman.  He was a private in the 8^th battalion of the East Surrey Regiment who died on 1 March 1917 aged 32.