Meet Elijah. He was supposed to be made for the baby shower of my junior high/high school basketball coach and her little girl way back in April. Unfortunately, that coincided with the final revisions of my honors paper and finals, so knitting took a back seat and poor Elijah was only a head for many months. I really wanted to make something awesome for her. Not to get sappy, but she was one of the most influential people for me growing up and was basically my at-school mom. She took us to Europe twice to play ball and, despite the fact that we sucked, always had faith in us on and off the court. After all that, the least I could do is make something cool for her baby, right?
The pattern is Elijah from the ever-wonderful Ysolda Teague. The pattern was a bit fiddly, and by fiddly, I mean it sat for over a month untouched while an arm-bud was happening, but was really clear and easy to understand. The only thing I really changed was doing the eyes at the beginning once the head was finished rather than at the very end. That allowed me to pull the eyes in a bit and anchor it to the bottom of the chin and have all the dark-coloured ends buried in stuffing. I love that the construction is all knitted together rather than sewn, so I'm pretty confident it will stand up to the wear and tear of (hopefully) being played with by a little one. If anyone reading this is planning on making one of these, make sure you don't over-stuff the body. Since the arms get knitted on they pull some of the fabric and stretch the stitches which you can see a bit in my picture. Also, I suck at grafting. Just thought I'd let you know.
So, now that I've cleared Elijah off my plate, I can get going on my Ravellenic projects! More on that tomorrow.
Do you have any tips for knitted toys? Do you think they're worth it?
-H
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