Karmann Jean: Knitted Frame Trials and Errors (Cactus, Elephant & Mermaids)

Hello Everyone,
    Can you actually believe that I am posting on time; it has been so long since that has happened. Anyway I have changed my mind on what today’s blog is going to be about, today's intended blog has instead been pushed back as I realised that I haven’t done a trial and error/behind the scenes blog post on my latest Etsy items, like always. Hence why the next blog post has been switched for this, I hope that you don’t mind, as I know I said that the next blog post would be a bit different but you’ll have to wait for that, sorry.
    Anyway today’s blog post is all about the trails and errors slash a behind the scenes look at when I first knitted some of my knitted designs. As my last blog was about my mermaid and elephant knitted frames I will talking about them as well as my cacti, as I realised I have only done a behind the scenes blog on my letters (as well as my other items).
    For any people who aren’t keen on my really long (I know I go on a bit) blog posts, then you are in luck. As a lot of my trial and errors are design based and I don’t really have much to say about the errors as it is just better if you see them, so this will be a more picture based blog. As you know I like to take lots of photos and as I had a few errors I didn't think they were suitable for Instagram so they are here instead. I hope you enjoy all the photos and I am sorry that there isn’t really much I can say and that there isn’t more embarrassing errors that I like normally have. But I am sure once my next item comes along you’ll be able to laugh at my mistakes then, as we know I’m prone to that.

Cactus:
    If I am honest I don’t think I had any errors with this design, because since I had recently worked on my initials I was in the swing of drawing out designs that would then be ready to be knitted. Also some of the formulas that I used for them helped me with getting the thickness off the cactus and curves correct. So I’m sorry that there isn’t much I can say about them, but I still wanted to show you the first time I knitted them. When trailing I just used any colours that I had hence why it has a black plant pot, I didn’t have any brown yarn, well yet anyway.
    Actually now that I think about it the issues that I did have with my cactus was working out where to put the added patterns, e.g. the stripes and spots/spikes. I had the shaping down but I had to do a few different drawings to work out where and when the spots/stripes should be as well as their thickness. But I don’t really have any photos to show this sorry.
First time knitting my cactus.

First time knitting my cactus.

First time knitting my cactus.

First time knitting my cactus.

First time knitting my cactus.

First time knitting my cactus.

First time knitting my cactus.

My intarsia knitting set up.

Finished knitted cactus.

Finished knitted cactus.

My three knitted cactus designs including: stripes, plain and spots.

Close up of some of my knitted cacti designs.

Two of my knitted cacti inside my knitted shed/studio.


Elephant:
    Out of the three designs I am talking about this is probably the one that caused me the most trouble. I must had redrawn and knitted it at least 6 times till I was happy. One of the main reasons why I picked to knit my elephants next was because I thought that it was the most ready design. But I didn’t realised how wrong I was.
    After I launched my knitted letters inside frames, I started to think about what design to do next and I did quite a few different drawings which I then knitted to see if my designs/drawings worked. You’ll see this design (elephant) trail below. I have a few other designs that are in waiting as they need some more work and I am also currently working on my Christmas stockings, so you will have to wait for the new designs, but they will be coming. My method of working is to do all the stages together so instead of just focusing on one design I like to work in stages. I could have just chosen the elephant, drawn it and knitted it but instead I drew lots of different designs, knitted/tested all those designs then decided which to take further to be finished product. I hope that makes sense.
    Anyway as I said I thought that this was the most ready design after the first knitting trails. I felt like the shape was ok, I just needed to work on the trunk as in my first trail I messed up and never got to finish it. However what I didn’t realise which you will see below, I had knitted the design portrait when I had drawn and needed it to be landscape. First silly error, when working out the placement of needles I was sat outside enjoying the sun so didn’t fully concentrate. And here was my first mistake, but naively I thought its ok I can just switch the needles around (to make it landscape). How wrong was I? The design came out totally different. I should have expected it really but my initial cute little elephant had now been stretched and lost some weight. So the first issue was to redraw the design so that it looked more like an elephant and not a stretched limo elephant.
    The next issue which I don’t have photos off but co-insides with this was I had to try and work out the size of the knitting which I needed to fit in the frame. As my cactus was portrait like my letters I had no issues with the knitting size as I had already worked it out, whereas since my elephant was landscape I had to work out the number of rows and needles needed to fit inside the frame, which took a few tries.
   The next issues were all design issues which are better if you just look in the photos, but I will bullit point some of the issues I encountered.
 - Curve vs straight trunk - in my first trail I went wrong so didn’t finish off the design which included the trunk and I don’t think I ever knitted a curved trunk. I redrew this part so many times and I was never happy with the outcome so I gave in and just decided it would be easier to have a straight one.
- Fitting the design into the mount - a big issue I had was having to shrink the design so that it would fit into the mount inside the frame. I tried trimming the body, trunk and tail, which was tricky as I wanted to show the tail and trunk but couldn’t have them as defined as I initially wanted to.
- Tail - as you can see I decided to have an outline around my whole elephant (the main reason for this was to define the elephant ear from its head). However having this outline around the tail just didn’t look right especially after I had to shorten it to fit inside the frame mount. Having the outline made it look even shorter and stumpier (like a mini trunk but at the back). So I decided to just get rid of it and just have the outline as the tail, which resulted in it not looking like a mini trunk and also a bit longer. I hope you can see what I mean and agree with the tail changes.
Knitting my first elephant (the wrong way around).

Knitting my first elephant.

Knitting my first elephant.

Knitting my first elephant.

Knitting my first elephant.

My first time knitting my elephant and as you can see i went wrong and didn't finish it.

When ever i knit a new design i like put it on my mannequin for inspiration, can you spot the cactus in the corner as well as another upcoming design.

This is my stretched limo elephant, when i first knit my elephant landscape for the first time. Notice how the trunk doesn't fully fit.

Next try at my elephant and it fits a bit better in the frame and isn't so stretched in the body, but do you think the tail looks funny or is it just me?

Finished and final elephant. Do you think it looks better? How about the tail?

Knitted elephant inside a photo frame.

The three colour ways that my knitted elephants are available in.

My knitted elephants inside my knitting shed/studio.

Here's a look at two of my elephants drawings/plans which are full of scribbles and changes that i made. Don't worry your not suppose to understand them, i just wanted to show you some of the changes, there is a lot more of them, but I don't want to give away all my patterns.


Mermaid:
    Similar to the cactus I didn’t have too many issues with this design which shocked me. I think this was one of the last ones that I designed and knitted, as at the start I as I was worried as to how it would work, I just thought there is too many thinks that could go wrong: tail curve, tail fins, hair, arms, face ect... So as you will see below I was so surprised at the outcome and fell in love. I couldn’t believe how it looked after my first try; it actually looked like a mermaid! Something I had drawn from scratch (and if you know me I can’t draw) and calculated had worked! The tail actually looked like tail. (I know that I am going on a bit but I am genuinely so happy/impressed). The only problem that I had was probably that it was faceless. I wasn’t sure whether to stick with a faceless mermaid or put one in when knitting or maybe add it afterwards. I don’t really have much experience with embroidery so I thought the afterwards face wouldn’t work and I tried adding a face whilst knitting. I’m so annoyed but I delete the photos of this trail but I tried to add eyes and a mouth to my mermaid. The mouth was a huge fail, I couldn’t work out how to curve it as I was limited to only a few needles and I did it in black which was possibly a mistake as it looked horrendous. It ended up just being a small black line, hence why I just chose to only have eyes.
Knitting my first mermaid.

Knitting my first mermaid.

Knitting my first mermaid.

Knitting my first mermaid.

Knitting my first mermaid.

Knitting my first mermaid.

Knitting my first mermaid.

Finished first mermaid - faceless.

Here's the mermaid added to the trail mannequin.

This was my first time knitting a face on my mermaid and you might be able to tell that the face lower down looks funny, that's because I removed the black mouth and tried to cover it up. Wish I kept the photos of the mouth so I can show you what it looked like, it wasn't good. 

Here's the first mermaid that i knitted with just the eyes. Do you prefer eyes or no eyes?

Some more of my knitted mermaids.

Knitted mermaids inside photo frames.

Close up of some of my knitted mermaids and the colours available, you can chose its: hair, skin and outfit colours.

knitted mermaids inside my knitting shed/studio.


    Well I think that’s it, it ended up being longer than I expected as I literally thought it would just be pictures but once I started writing I kept remembering things, so I hope you don’t mind. Now I know that this blog post was on time but the next one might not be (sorry). It’s just that the next blog post falls around my birthday and I’m not too sure what our plans are yet, so I’m not defiantly saying that there won’t be a blog post, I’m just warning that there might not be. I hope that you can understand - Sorry.
    Anyway I hope you liked reading and seeing some of my mistakes. I know it’s probably not business like to show my faults but I had to go through this process to get to where I am now. Although it seems like my new items just seems to appear, I like to go back and show you, that they didn’t just happened. I have had to work hard to make them. I mean if you could see how many elephant drawings I have.
    Also I am so happy that the last blog post’s font issue has seems to be fixed, I’m not to sure what happened but I am so glad that this one is fine. If you would like to know more about my knitted frame designs or what else i have in my Etsy shop, you can either look at my other blog posts or click the link below to go straight to my Etsy shop.

Thank you again as always for reading,
Love Karmann Jean


My links/contacts:


These are all of the design available in my knitted frames collection: mermaids, elephants, cacti and initials.

Knitted mermaid with its matching knitted scrunchies. Almost all the colours used in any of my frame designs are also available as knitted scrunchie colours.

Knitted mermaid with its matching knitted scrunchies.

Knitted mermaid with its matching knitted scrunchies.

Knitted mermaid with its matching knitted scrunchies.

Knitted mermaid with its matching knitted scrunchies.

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