First ever knitting pattern!

Funyuns and Mt Dew

By Nikki Haas

This little many-eyed monster was created using 3 sport weight yarns and 1 worsted-weight yarn that contrasts nicely to the Body color. I used light yellow for the Body, cream for the whites of the eyes, black for the pupils, and a dark gold for the tentacles and lips. This is mostly knitted in the round, so use double pointed needles. I used 3.75mm needles for the bulk of the project, and 2.25mm needles for the smaller eyes. If you use different weights or needles, please post a picture on Ravelry so I can see!

Please acquaint yourself with the following knitting methods before working on this project. YouTube has many helpful tutorials:

• Knitting in the Round
• Cable Cast-on (this is a good one)
• Provisional Cast-on
• I-Cord
• Kitchener stitch grafting.
• Picot Bind-off.

For the Body:

Using sport weight yarn, cast on 4 sts, join into round. Continue in round:

Row 1: kfb around. (8 sts)
Row 2: knit
Row 3: kfb around. (16 sts)
Row 4: knit.
Row 5: (kfb, k1) Repeat to end of row. (24 sts)
Row 6: knit.
Row 7: (kfb, k2) Repeat to the end of row. (32 sts)
Row 8: knit.
Row 9: (kfb, k3) Repeat to the end of row. (40 sts)
Row 10: knit.
Row 11: (kfb, k4) Repeat to the end of row. (48 sts)
Rows 12-20: knit
Row 21: (k2tog, k4) Repeat to the end of row (40 sts)
Row 22: knit.
Row 23: (k2tog, k3) Repeat to the end of row. (32 sts)
Row 24: knit.
Row 25: (k2tog, k2) Repeat to the end of row. (24 sts)
Row 26: knit.

****fill with fiberfill and shape to be a sphere; continue:
Row 27: (k2tog, k1) Repeat to the end of row. (16 sts)
Row 28: knit.
Row 29: k2tog around. (8 sts)

Row 30: k2tog around (4 sts)
Break yarn; pull through remaining stitches to close.

Main Eye:

Using light-colored sport weight yarn, cast on 4 sts, join into round. Continue in round:

Row 1: kfb around. (8 sts)
Row 2: knit
Row 3: kfb around. (16 sts)
Row 4: knit.
Row 5: (kfb, k1) Repeat to end of row. (24 sts)
Row 6: knit.
Row 7: (kfb, k2) Repeat to the end of row. (32 sts)
Rows 8-10: knit.

Bind off tightly, leaving a long tail. Fill loosely with fiber fill and using tapestry needle, attach towards the top of Body.

Main Pupil:

Using dark-colored sport weight yarn, cast on 1 st.

Row 1: kfb (2 sts)

Row 2: purl

Row 3: kfb kfb (4 sts)

Row 4: purl

Row 5: kfb, k2, kfb (6 sts)

Row 6: purl.

Row 7: knit.

Row 8: purl.

Row 9: ssk, k2, k2tog (4 sts)

Row 10: purl.

Row 11: ssk, k2tog (2 sts)

Row 12: purl.

Row 13: ssk (1sts)

Bind off, leaving a long tail. Using tapestry needle, sew pupil onto the center of eye.

Mouth:

Lips:

Cast on 4 sts using the provisional cast-on method. Continue in worsted-weight contrasting color.

Knit I-cord that is about 6 and a quarter inches (you want the inside diameter to be 2 inches). When the I-cord is to desired length, pick up cast on sts and graft the two ends using the kitchener stitch, making a ring.

Teeth:

Using light-colored sport weight yarn, cast on 24 sts using the cable cast on method.

Make a picot edge as follows:

K2, (inc by 2, b.o. 5, slip st back onto active needle) 3 times. Repeat.

You should now have chain with a jagged edge a little less than six inches long. Join ends to form a chain. Sew the flat side of the chain onto the inner edge of the lips, making sure the seam is at the corner of one side of the lips.

Using a tapestry needle, attach the moth to the Body, directly under the Eye. Make sure the jagged edge of the chain is protruding to resemble teeth.

Tentacles – make as many as you want, I went with five

Using the contrasting color in worsted weight, cast on 4 sts, Knit as an I-cord as follows:

Rows 1-8: knit

Row 9: k2tog, k2 (3sts)

Rows 10-16: knit

Row 17: k2tog, k1 (2sts)

Rows 19-22: knit

Follow on using light-colored sport weight yarn and using smaller needles to make the mini-eyes

Row 23: kfb around (4 sts)

Row 24: kfb around (8 sts)

Rows 25-26: knit

switch to dark-color sport weight yarn and continue:

Row 27: k2tog around (4 sts)

Row 28: knit

Row 29: k2tog around (2 sts)

Break yarn and pull through sts.

If desired, stick pipe cleaners in the tentacles to make them adjustable.

Attach tentacles to the top of Body above and to either side of main Eye. You can do this any way you want, but I did a star-shape pattern to add depth. Weave in all loose yarn securely.

Mutant Lettuce

I never expected that one day after months of dutiful watering and fertilizing, I'd notice that 4 tomato plants are as tall as I am. Or that the lettuce is crowding each other and are each larger than the heads I find in the grocery store. Of that I'd have thousands of nasturtiums blooming along my drive.

The beds, which once looked so empty are now overflowing with squash leaves and parsley. The chives are dwarfed by everything else. The red onions are as tall as my knee. I was wondering why I didn't need to weed, and looking up in shock, I notice it's because everything else is shading the ground.

The radishes bolted the second they could, but I've replaced them with turnips, which seem to have no aspirations to bolt. I've had zucchini's and crooknecks every other day for the past week and you wouldn't know by looking at their parent plants.

Josh and I have had salads twice now and we've got plenty more lettuce where that came from. Soon, the carrots will grace those bowls :)

Not much to tell

I haven't updated in a while because there's not much to tell. June was so wet and cold that nothing grew. July's had a few warm days but mostly it's just low 70's. Today I don't even think I'll take my sweater off. The chill seems to be stunting the growth of all my plants, well except the tomatillos.

The greenbeans have wound about 3 feet high up their posts now, and they've all got flowers on them. One of the tomatoes gave up the ghost, an early girl, 3rd one I've killed this year. The full size tomato plants haven't make tomatoes yet, but the grapes and cherries all have little green fruits and one of them has an almost orange fruit. Most of the squashes died except for 2 crooknecks and a zuchinni, who just opened his first flower yesterday. The crooknecks are making squashes, but most of the squashes have died, except one which is getting bigger every day. All except two of the radishes bolted and made such yucky leaves that I didn't even get the greens. The two radishes were very nice and radishy. Carrots are working their way into being carrots.

Tomatillos are going gangbuster, so I'll definitely do them again next year. I must have a hundred little paper lanterns started, and the plants are getting taller every day. Hope everyone I know likes salsa verde. The jalepeno just opened it's flowers. Here's hoping September's warm, or else many of my veggies won't get to harvest. The neighbor gave me 12 red onions, and about half of them are doing well. The others are just kinda seeing how small they can be.

I wonder if the colder weather has anything to do with all the ash put up by that Icelandic volcano last spring. I've read in geology books that volcanos can make summers colder if enough particles block the sun. Much as I'd like to blame my current climatic woes on BP....

My friend at work gave me 4 dahila bulbs, and one of them is already a foot high. The others are looking good too ^.^

Weekend update

We discovered a nursery in shoreline called Sky Nursery, and it had really pretty plants at better prices than the one closer to my house. They ever had composting worms, so if my current batch goes tits up I can get more there. Not that it's likely; they're doing great. I've got lots of big fat ones and a swarm of tiny littles ones. I put some watermelon rinds in there a few days ago, and worms have integrated themselves into the rinds. I think I'll stop fussing with them for now and give them some time to breed and eat undisturbed. Don't want my rummaging to inadvertently kill the next generation of worms.

We did get out of the nursery without spending crazy amounts of money, only 24$ for two lupines that Josh fell in love with, 4 marigolds, and a bag of compost. I think I like this compost better than the cedar grove compost I've been buying, so if I need more I'll get that stuff.

The marigolds will hopefully do a good job as companion plants for the south wall veggies. I saw a honey bee getting dinner there a half hour after placing them. I'm optimistic he'll frequent the nearby tomatillos with the same gusto. Speaking of bees, I found this local woodworker who makes mason bee nests out of reclaimed wood, and I think I'll get a box from him next spring. The internet says mason bees in our area are already done for the year, so it's too late to get one now. But since I want to get a plum tree next year, mason bees are high on my list of desireables. Good thing I did a stitch of research; our native mason looks almost exactly like a house fly.

The lupines are along the front of the house along with a geranium I got for free and some chicks and hens that I had in a pot. It looked like some roly polies had been eating the rotting leaves off the bottom of the chicks and hens, so I put lots of leaves near it when I planted it to give them something useful to much on. Apparently roly polies (woodlice) are good at returning nutrients to the soil but will munch on living plants if dead ones aren't available. It's a good argument to mulch the beds with dead leaves this winter.

One of my coworkers was nice enough to give me dahilas, so I've planted the bulbs between the honeysuckle and azaela. We'll see what comes up.

Slacking off

Here I was with all these rainy days where I could have updated this journal but didn't. The weather's been rainy and icky and I haven't had much of a chance to to much other than looking pleadingly at my tomato plants and pray for their little leaves. A few things seem to be happy. The summer squashes aren't growing much, but you can tell they're putting in deep roots; they look stronger by the day.

The nasturtiums are getting bigger every time I look at them. I'm convinced that they'll bloom by Josh's birthday on the 20th. They're now sharing their beds with the radishes and lettuce, which I just planted in the garden. The radishes are alarming; almost all of them added an extra leaf since I moved them from their egg cartons to the garden on Monday. I'm worried that the lettuce is too bunched together because it's not adding leaves, althought the leaves they do have are getting bigger. It's not a head sort of lettuce like iceberg, but more leafy. The packet said it's a mesclun mix or something of that sort. Either way I left the package outside in the rain so I threw it away.

The herbs all seem happy, but apparently in a fit of crazy I put nasturtim seeds down practically underneath the chives. I was going to move them, but most of the chives are far enough away, and if the chives that are right on top of the growing nasturtium can handle the cramped conditions, it'll look really pretty. I've put down some organic fertilizer and hoped for the best.

Not sure if the pots on the south yard were the brightest idea; they don't seem to be growing much and the tomatillos are getting muched on. I'll move some marigolds over there to tempt away the muncher. Or maybe the excess rain is making it vulnerable. Maybe the potting mix is too rich... Will have to google it.

And the tomatoes... oh, the tomatoes. This el Nino year is just beating them up. In the 20 days or so since I've planted them in the garden we've had 3 days without rain. And most days last week, the weather man said it rained over an inch. One of the tomato plants I think I'm just going to have to dig up and give up. His leaves are half yellow and the two lowest branches have turned black near the stalk of the plant. A few others look fair, and two of them are actually looking great. The best looking one is the Brandywine that gets the least amount of sun, and the other one is planted just north of a large granite rock; I think the rock is keeping it warm. I think it's a cherry but I don't remember.

Well this weekend's supposed to be sunny, so I'll probably start staking what's surviving.

Stakes

Went out looking for stakes yesterday with Josh, in the optimist/foolish hope that the rain will stop long enough for my plants to actually grow. Weather man says we're starting June with a pretty big storm, so I guess not. This close to potting everything up, bringing them inside and putting grow lights over them.

But anyways, back to the stakes. They're hazelnut shoots we found on craigslist. I didn't want to pay 10-15$ a piece for tomato cages, and these sticks were 0.50$ a piece. Got 26 10 foot long sticks for 15$ (I didn't have 13$, and the guy was so nice I thought he deserved the extra 2$). The sellers are this adorable little old couple, Bob and June that had been working this acre for 30 years in Everett. Their garden had an orchard, a rose garden, veggie garden, green house, worm bin, everything you'd want. And it was a bit overgrown, so it had that sort of magical feeling. There were birds nesting right in the middle of the property, and that was just adorable. I think they were thrushes but not robyns. Their garden sorta helped me put to rest any questions I had about comfrey. Ok, the purple blossoms were beautiful. They wasn't too tall, and looked very handsom in the shade under the orchard trees. But it was EVERYWHERE. They told me these were the decendants of one plant June bought 30 years ago. They'd tried an eradication technique a few years ago where they put down lots of black plastic to kill them off. Instead, they sent roots out until they found the light. Kinda thinking comfrey is not worth it...

Worm Bins and Unwise shopping

We were debating on what sort of food digester to have for our scraps. We don't have a garbage disposal at the new house since we're on septic, and anyway now that we have a garden it'd be nice to put that waste to good use. We were thinking of either a homemade green cone or a worm bin. In the end, after looking at online instructions and asking people on the Alternative Kitchen Garden's facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=6726001735) we decided to keep our compost pile for grass clippings and whatnot and have a worm bin. We're picking up the little wigglies today from a lady on craigslist and we've got the bedding shredded, all we need to do it wet it down. Some banana peels and coffee grounds are lying in wait for their first meal too. Josh can't wait for the little guys, it's like I gave him permission for 500 new pets.

While I went about searching for worms yesterday, it appears that I forgot that was the whole point of running to the nursury. I told myself that I had as many plants as I could maintain in my first year garden, but apparently I forgot all about that the second I walked into Molbak's. There were tomatillos, jalapenos, artichokes, and hostas all for very reasonable prices. So now, the four very large pots that had contained my ash tree and rhododendrons at my apartment are now lined up along the south wall of my house with their new charges. The hosta's under the cedar tree, as he'd probably keel over on the south wall.

Molbak's had this potting soil that has bat guano and is advertised to contain no less than 15% chicken manure, so I'd better get the biggest tomatillos in the world out of this experiment. I love tomatillos, I love any sort of green Mexican sauce made from tomatillos, so in my own defense I couldn't resist. When we got back and came to our senses, we realized we didn't have red worms for the bin Josh was constructing, so I went out in search. There are two pretty massive gardens within walking distance of my house, so I grabbed some fancy terracotta pots for barter and went out. The first garden is attached to a house that was just sold, and they didn't have any worms. The second house didn't keep worms either, but somehow I was gifted a cherry tomato plant and a purple heirloom tomato plant. Now I already have 5 tomato plants, but who could resist a purple heirloom tomato?! If anything, its seeds will give me good leverage in a seed swap next year. And I love tomato sauce, tomato salsa, etc. and I know how to can, so they won't go to waste.

In the end I came back worm free, but craigslist had a couple of people selling composting worms. One of them is nearby, and now we're back where I started.