Another knitted critter

This is probably the most complex thing I made over break. (At least complex in terms of my own attitudes towards knitting techniques: doing lace or something like that (the "Yellow stockings, cross-gartered") is easier for me than colorwork, because I tend to run into tensioning problems with colorwork).

This is a pattern from the free "Brit Knits" pamphlet that I got with the issue of "Knit Now" I happened to pick up at Books a Million. (I'm going to go there today, expressly to see if they have the NEXT issue. It's an expensive magazine but based on the proportion of projects I want to knit in the issue, it's a better deal than, say, "Vogue Knits" is for me. And I looked into subscribing but with the cost of flying it across the Atlantic to me, it's actually cheaper for me to buy it on the newsstand. Oh well).

The pattern is called "Intrepid Fox." Designed to be made with sockyarn:



It is fairly complex to knit because it's on a small scale (the entire fox is maybe 8" long) and it's got lots of colorwork - on the legs, on the tail, and especially on the body. I used a Knitpicks "tonal" sock yarn for the main body, and used the scraps of a self-striping yarn (Cherry Tree Hill's self-striping in "Mountain Moss") for the body colorwork.

The eyes are actually vintage buttons from the box that came from my maternal grandmother. That pleases me, too. I like being able to use vintage buttons, ESPECIALLY ones with a family history, on toys.

I decided to name the fox Fitzwilliam. Because it's a British pattern and should have a British name. And also keeping with the history I had as a child of giving wildly complex and exotic names to my toys. And also because it is a truth universally acknowledged that a knitter in possession of sock yarn she is not planning on using for socks must be in want of making a toy out of it.