Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Knitted Chicken Egg

I'm knitting up a bunch of eggs for play food for the kids for Christmas and here's the pattern I came up with. I wanted a knit version of the cute Egg Babies (crochet). It's roughly based on the Curly Purly Egg pattern, but I found that that pattern knitted with worsted weight yarn on size 7s or 8s was giving me a goose egg size rather than chicken so I adjusted it slightly.

Cast on 9 stitches over 3 double pointed needles (3 st per needle), use a 4th needle to knit in the round.

Row 1: K
Row 2: K1, M1 (lifted bar increase), K2 (repeat for remaining 2 needles)
Row 3: K
Row 4: K1, M1, K1, M1 (around, will have 6 st per needle)
K in stocking stitch for 9 rows, begin decreases

Decrease Row 1: K1, K2tog*, K1, K2tog* (around)
Row 2-3: K
Row 4: K2tog* (around)
Cut yarn leaving a long tail, thread it onto a large yarn needle, weave through loops on needles, remove needles, stuff egg, pull thread snug and sew up tightly. Hide ends. Shape egg with needle.

* I think I might have invented an "invisible" decrease, or at least slightly less obvious decrease. Slip 1 knitwise, move that stitch back to the left needle (purlwise), knit 2 together thru back loops.