Knitted Pheasant

Knitted Pheasant is admiring some lovely new Sirdar Harrap Tweed yarn - I'm going to make him a friend. This yarn has such lovely autumnal shades! If you fancy knitting a pheasant, the pattern is in my book Knitted Birds.

Blackbird

Knitted blackbird enjoying the autumn sunshine in the park. One of the bonuses of knitting birds is that finally I can take half-decent wildlife photos without having to use one of those massive telephoto lenses or having to worry about the subject flying off.

I'm particularly pleased with how the blackbird turned out - when you're knitting with black you're relying entirely on the shaping to create the sense of the bird and I think I captured the shape and the pose of a blackbird with this one.

(American visitors please note that this is a British blackbird - completely different to your beautiful blackbirds! I will get round to knitting one of the North American blackbirds one day.)

Brown jumpers

Brown autumn jumpers. Here, two 1970s families model a variety of shades of brown, from yellowish to deep russet. Perfect camouflage if you are planning on hiding in a pile of leaves and jumping out and scaring people.

Children always look slightly uneasy in knitting patterns like these. You can tell that those people aren't really mummy and daddy. That little girl on the Templetons pattern is thinking "I'm holding a stranger's hand!" The little boy on the Ladywood pattern is having to pull off the double whammy of putting his hand on a strange girl's shoulder while looking amused that fake daddy is looking at fake mummy. Give him an Oscar!