Friday, February 26, 2016

More stitches

Last autumn I happened to come across an episode of Pippi Longstocking, the one with the first snow, and fell in love with Annika's pink ski sweater.

I searched everywhere for a pattern, and might have found one that was close enough, but got distracted along the way. Before I knew it I had a folder full of pictures of ski jumpers from the 50s and 60s.

Now I know that there is no way I'm going to knit all those sweaters, but I didn't want to forget all the lovely patterns, so I charted some of them and ended up with a shortlist of twelve and decided that knitting samples was out - I'd have to buy lots of yarn and I'd end up with samples that couldn't be used for anything.
I do have lots of tapestry wool, though, and found a piece of canvas that could become a small cushion. So I ended up embroidering the patterns instead, leaving a few stitches between each block of pattern.

Now I could have embroidered sashing and a border, but by the time I got to that stage I just wanted to be done with the whole thing, so I blocked it and added some polka dot ribbon as sashing and some fabric borders to make the cushion bigger. I used the same fabric as backing for the cushion, added a zipper, and there you are: my tapestry knitting sampler. The size of the canvas I had dictated that the pattern blocks would have to be small, so you can't see the whole pattern on most of them, but they will serve as a reminder of the patterns I have stored, should the urge to knit another ski sweater ever arise...
I used a stitch that looks like knitting, by the way, so you get an idea what the patterns would look like if I ever were to knit them up.