Feasel & the Bear

I am not sure when Mark started calling me Feasel* or when I started calling Mark Bear, but time has consolidated the myth of Feasel & the Bear into several drawings, many little stories, and finally, a piece of knitwear.

Exhibit # 1 – a drawing by me

Exhibit # 2 – a drawing by Mark

Exhibit # 3 – an item of knitwear

This is Mark’s Christmas Present from this year – a Feasel & Bear hat – knit according to the excellent Turn a Square pattern by Jared Flood, and fully lined with what is essentially a second hat knit inside the first. Before I digress into my tiny niggles with this project (lining a little small, purl turning row tends to roll back in under itself etc.) let us swiftly move on to a discussion of the lovely brown shades in which it is knit.

The yarn is 100% shetland in DK weight, purchased from my trusty go-to source for UK yarns, Blacker Designs. Originally oatmeal in shade, various experiments in soaking times and dyeing with black walnuts produced these distinctly feaselish and bearlike shades.

I hope this photo shows off the lovely, chocolatey, semi-solid nature of the dark brown; I am so happy with this colour! The mid-brown shade was created by using the same dark brown dyebath, but by leaving the yarn in it for a much shorter time. The almost white colour is the natural, oatmealy colour of the shetland fleece from which this lovely wool originally came.

I would like to develop this colourwork a bit more; the walnuts are abundant enough that I could dye in large batches next year, and I would like to even out the motifs so my Bears are less ‘blocky’ and my Feasels more ‘prancing.’ In the meantime, I think Mark likes his Christmas present, and that is the main thing.

There is more Christmas knitting to blog, as well as the rest of the walk where these FO photos were taken, but today I am preparing for a trip Southwards to meet with Heather of niftyknits to discuss knitted meerkats and editing my first I SPY/I HEAR radio feature for The Hub.

I hope you all have had the most amazing New Year and Christmas; I have been loving reading everyone else’s festive blog-posts and am excited about what 2010 will bring! I hope you are too, and that you have some silliness of your own – like Feasels & Bears – to make you laugh in these very cold days!

*a feasel is a mythical creature which is created by mixing Felix with Weasel.

Specs:

Pattern design: Jared Flood’s Turn a Square hat patten, but with my own fairisle motifs and a double-lining idea, taken from Quanah’s Double-knitted hat tutorial
Yarn: DK in 100% Shetland in Oatmeal colourway and purchased at Blacker Designs
Needles: 4.5mm
Ravelled: here

7 Responses to Feasel & the Bear

  1. Pingback: The Domestic Soundscape » Blog Archive » Putney - Guildford Bestiary

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Copyright statement

You may transmit content found on this website (excluding my knitting patterns which are protected under International copyright law) under the following conditions:

- You always attribute my work to me, Felicity Ford, including a link back to this site
- You do not alter my work
- You do not use my work for commercial purposes

To discuss any other uses of my work, please contact me directly on the telephone number and email address provided at the top of this blog.

Creative Commons License
All the work shown here by Felicity Ford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

From time to time I feature images, sounds or words on this blog which are not my own: in all such cases the original copyright owner is named. International copyright law requires that in order to republish their content, you must seek out their permission.

Thank you for respecting these terms and conditions.

Search Form
Archives