Tweet tweet tweed

I've been doing a lot of pattern-writing lately, because it doesn't feel quite right to me to be knitting from another person's pattern. It doesn't quite feel like my own work. Beyond this though, it's just so exciting to me to create my own patterns, solve the problems I encounter, and end up with something unique.

That being said, sometimes I run across a pattern that I just sort of fall in love with, and last week I decided to knit one of them.

CRAZY KIWI!!!!!!!!

I found this pattern a few months ago on Ravelry and saved it in my favorites. After finishing the Gravitational Lensing Mittens, I decided to take a break and knit something quick and, more importantly, cute!

Knitting the kiwi-bird was really fun! It was simple, though I did do some learning about short rows for the neck, and on size six needles it went quite quickly. In two days a tweedy kiwi had popped right out of my hands! Obviously, I named him Tweedwi.

In truth, two days was just too fast for me. I decided to knit a friend for Tweedwi. I used some old wool from my Ireland sweater as well as some of the last of the first wool yarn I ever bought years ago. I rounded off the beak and feet with the birthday cotton I got at my birthday party last fall. I wanted to stripe him every-other round with cream Donegal tweed and the light brown first-wool-yarn. But the cream yarn was a very small ball - I probably wouldn't have had enough to knit a whole kiwi.

So I made things more difficult for myself and charted out a color-transition into the dark brown Donegal tweed to round him out. I must confess, Tweedwi's Friend is a little bit cuter than Tweedwi himself...

They're both very sweet. : )

love, Jimmy