What I knitted for Christmas... Book 1

As I said I started knitting about two and a half months ago. I taught myself how to knit when I was really young, maybe 10 from a kids book. I am German so I learned the Continental (I belief) style of knitting, which really confused me in reading the patterns I was knitting from. But I figured it out. I started out messy... by now I can achieve a pretty good amount of details, my knits look "clean", and I am pretty sure I can knit every animal, monster, or other being that a child could come up with.

I mainly use three books to knit my stuffies.

I started out with Sarah Keen's Knitted Wild Animals and most of the knitted Christmas Presents I gave this Christmas were patterns from her book:

My husband wanted a koala... so he got this little critter.

The Panda's eyes somehow ended up looking a bit creepy, which I think was my fault. I kind of messed them up a bit when I sew them on....

I think the elephant is really really cute. Unfortunately the kid who received him really wanted his brothers stuffie instead and thus ignored the poor little elephant...

The monkey is one of my favorites from this book.... so I changed the pattern a bit and also made one that is wearing a tie and jacket....

I love the tiger. My graduate schools Mascot was a tiger and so this lovely lady went out to Missouri to make my former roommate happy. I also knitted her the scarf she is wearing since it can get really really cold out in Missouri...





I also knitted the giraffe and another snake like Harry (which is also a pattern out of this book). I enjoyed knitting the patterns from this book. They are really easy to follow and it is a good start if you want to knit stuffed animals. All of the patterns are made up of individual flat pieces that are latter sewn together and stuffed so it is really easy to follow the development of your animal and get familiar with the structural components that a stuffed animal is build with. The animals in this book are also great for smaller children since the animals are fairly big and there are no small parts that can end up as choking hazards, which makes these ideal as presents for the next baby-shower,... not that I have ever been to one...