I’m continuing to work on a blog series about developing knitted motifs from an illustration. the last post about choosing the owl illustration here. Let’s make some exuberant beauty!
Once I’d transformed the colored outline of the owl in Stitchmastery into twist stitches, I knit my first sample. In dk yarn, it came out nearly as large as the 8.5×11” paper I’d printed the pattern on.
It’s a little bit tricky to figure out which changes need to be made. I need to triangulate between the illustration, the swatch, and the chart. I usually point to the spot on the swatch a better spot would be for a line to fall, then count how many stitches different that would be, then note the change on the chart.
Looking at the first draft swatch, there is a lot to be happy about: it does look like an owl. It doesn’t exactly look like a Northern Saw Whet Owl though, especially not the one I was referring too. Part of the inaccuracy is from my first chart following the overlay. Part of it was my choice to use a square grid, not a knitter’s grid.
- The tail needs to be 5 stitches deeper.
- I’m going to try the perch as garter stitch instead of 1,1 rib.
- The eyes need to be closer together.
- The beak should be more pronounced.
- The right side of the wings should be about 5 stitches narrower.
- The left transition from the wing to the breast is too sharp.
- The head is a bit too short.
- The curve is too heart shaped above the eyebrow.
Time for iteration 2!