FO Pumpkins

I love these pumpkins! They are too cute. And....you get to felt! I am sooo addicted to felting things! Okay, sure the pattern requires seaming (gasp) and lots of it. Maybe you could knit these in the round and no one would be the wiser, but hey - it's going to be felted! You don't have to make the seams all pretty. Just leave a long tail and whipstitch those panels together. Easy peasy. The end result is so worth it. I went a little pumpkin crazy and made lots of these. I gave three away and I still have some that I need to felt. Now get ready - cute pictures follow! (and many more on my flickr site - here's the link to my pumpkin set)

Pattern: Pumpkins from Knitty.com
Yarn: Orange, Lion Brand Wool Color 133 (which is named pumpkin, appropriately)
Brown, Lion Brand Wool Color 125 (named Cocoa)

The bigger pumpkins are the small sixe in the pattern. The smaller pumpkin I made by only increasing to 11 stitches, then decreasing. I also left off the last five rows. (So I decreased to seven stitches and then bound off.)

Cute!


One of the bigger pumpkins.


Tiny palm-sized pumpkin!

Boring - but helpful - notes:
I felted these for two short cycles on my washing machine. (about 15 minutes) I marked all of the seams with cotton twine before felting by tying a loop at the top of each seam. I let them spin dry in the washer. Go spin cycle, go! Barely stuffed with plactic bags and tied cotton twine to make the grooves.

Sewing on the cap:
This project has such detailed instructions then leaves you to figure out the final finishing all on your own! So, here's how I handled it. I put a little bit of fiberfill inside. Then, I used brown thread and sewed through all of the grooves around and pulled tight. I attached a curly vine if I wanted one in a groove. To attach the top I sewed through the top of the panel, then right by the stem in the cap, then back to the middle of the next panel, then to the cap....and so on, all the way around. Voila! Pumpkin! (If this is not so clear, please let me know and I can try to explain better - maybe with photos or something.)

These are soo adorable. I gave two to my sister when she moved and she wouldn't even stuff them in a bag! She left them sitting out on top of all of her stuff during her drive! I gave another to my Grandma (who used to knit). She said that it was soo cute and better than a real one! (She also kept showing it to my Grandpa: "Look at my pumpkin, isn't it cute?") My brother even thought they were cool. Sooo cute. Cuteness rating - high. Very high. (Rated by all who see them.) If you have the slightest inkling to make these - do!