So I knitted a butterfly.
Yes, I know. Not that sensible with five weeks worth of packing to sort out, holiday shopping to do and admin to finish up, but definitely a lot more fun. I am seriously good at putting things off.
I think the idea for this random knit started when we joined the Big Butterfly Count - it's not been going that well due to the lack of butterfly weather. Then I read a lovely post on Jennifer's Little World about celebrating Eric Carle's work with lots of creative ideas and stuff to make based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I dug out the book and had a look at his beautiful butterfly.
It really is such a gorgeous butterfly. And that's when I thought I'd have a go at knitting it. Made perfect sense at the time. So the packing went on hold...
I have a rainbow of colours thanks to my wool-buying addiction, so knew I could make the butterfly nice and bright.
In the picture each wing is made up of four individual strips. I knitted each one so they tapered in the middle....
...and then folded them over and sewed them up. It was more fiddly and time consuming than I thought, but by this stage I was on a mission and curious to see how it would turn out.
I mirrored the four I'd done, roughly based on Eric Carle's butterfly and then sewed each wing together. The body was just a small rectangle, mostly brown with red at the top for the head. I stuffed it with dried lentils, to give it some weight - and added a small bell, from my Lindt bunny bell collection for a bit of interest. Then sewed the sparkly pipe-cleaner antenna into the head and a few crocheted rossettes for the circles on the wings, though it probably would have been just as easy to embroider them on.
I'm sure I'll pay for using up my valuable child-free packing time, but I am very happy with my butterfly!
