Knitted Bee

Now the pirate festival is over it is back to normal - well as normal as life gets round here. The pirate puppets where a great success, and a friend then asked if I could knit a large bee for her granddaughter. Not at all sure I said to let me think about it. Now my knitting machine is accessible, and back in use, I decided to see what I could come up with.

This what I came up with. Knitted in a fine dk on my Silver Reed standard gauge machine it is about the size of a rugby ball. I am now going to redo this in a larger size.  The little bee purse was from Machine Knitting News Toy Collection from 1990.






This is how I knitted him/her.

CO 40 sts
Knit 100 rows in stripes of 20 rows yellow and 20 rows black
Take stitches off on piece of yarn and pull up.

I then knitted a face. CO 10 sts. inc every alt row till 30 sts. Then dec every alt row till 10 stitches.

The wings were cast on 20 sts and knit 15 rows. Take off on yarn and pull up.
Embroider face before attaching and then I ran some chain stitch around the face to neaten it up.

This morning another friend sent me this picture. Now I know what my next project is. I am pretty sure it has been hand knitting in garter st. and can only guess at the size. But I think this is going to keep my hands and brain active for some time.