Yarn Bombing!

I've always found the statue of the girl walking the dog (located in front of Ecole Victoria School on Broadway Avenue in Saskatoon) a tad on the dreary side (no offence to sculptor Bill Epp). This fall I embarked on a month long project to provide a little colour to life of the girl and her dog. I finished everything late last night and got together a dedicated team to help me execute my plan. Here's the before and after pictures!

These are pictures of the items pre-installation.

I knit the dog sweater from this free pattern but the feature insert was taken from a different dog sweater pattern also available for free on the internet.

The sweater pattern is the Adult Surprise Jacket, a variation of Elizabeth Zimmermann's infamous Baby Surprise Jacket. The sweater is knit in such a way that the finishing seams run up both sweater arms making it ideal to sew onto a statue that doesn't have both arms available to slide on a sweater sleeve (the girl is holding the dog's leash in her right hand).  I put the sweater on the statue backwards in order to accommodate the girl's backpack. I used a crochet hook to join the sleeves with a single crochet stitch, making a short chain across the back to connect both sides of the sweater.

The hat was knit from the Slouchy Hat pattern from MelonHead KnitWear. The leg warmers were a simple k1p1 for the ribbing top and bottom, with stockinette stitch in between.

I took this photo of my team doing the installation.

Walk, bike or drive by and enjoy an extra little bit of colour on Broadway!

Knit Clary Fray doll

For this one I really had to embrace my inner young adult fiction geek.  While I was knitting my Arne & Carlos dolls, I was reading the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare.  During that time, my mom gave me a bag of yarn filled with odds and ends she no longer wanted. In the bag was a ball of bright orange yarn that reminded me of the description of the hair of the main character, Clary Fray. That ball of yarn inspired me to knit a Clary Fray doll. In the books she has curly hair, so I decided to knit up the orange ball of yarn, wash it, and then unravel it to see how it turned out. It was perfect.

I knit Clary out of 100% acrylic from collection, changing colours to give her the appearance of black boots, jeans and a pink shirt. I had every intention of knitting her a more complete outfit, but other things came along that grabbed my interest, so she remains as is on my fireplace mantel for now.

Melanie

After acquiring smaller double pointed needles, I decided to try knitting a doll to the scale suggested in pattern.  I also wanted to try doing one of the more complex suggestions for the dolls, in this case, stripped tights. Using 2.5 mm needles, I knit Melanie!

I used blue and green alternately, three rows at a time, to give her striped tights. Unfortunately, I didn't realize how much the colours would blend together, obscuring the striped effect. In the future I will use brighter colours with more contrast to highlight the striped effect. For Melanie's hair, I used a ball of variegated green yarn with a gold metallic stripe running through it. I think it gives her hair a bit of an underwater seaweed look that may inspire me to knit her a mermaid outfit!

Melanie's dress is knit from a left over bit of Kertzer On Your Toes variegated sock yarn in the colour Beach Print (75% superwash wool, 25% Nylon) that I bought here in Saskatoon at the Wool Emporium.

Sasha is the Second

After my success with Nancy, I was eager to knit more dolls. For my next doll, I kept the formula the same. Same size needles, more acrylic yarn, but this time the hair was left over Lion Brand Homespun Yarn in the colour Painted Desert (100% Acrylic).  There wasn't enough left to do a full head of hair, so I attached yarn around the hairline to create a pony tail.  The result was Sasha!

Using the Arne and Carlos Knitted Dolls patterns, I made Sasha a skirt from left over Red Heart Heart & Sole sock yarn in the colour Watercolor Stripe (70% superwash wool, %30 nylon) and a sweater from random acrylic yarn from my collection.