Wallace and Gromit Christmas jumper!

When do you start your Christmas knitting? Do you like to get things on the needles really early and knit something for everyone you know, or do you cast something on at the last minute and end up having to write an IOU? This year I started my Christmas knitting really early (think May!) by designing this Wallace and Gromit jumper for Knit Now magazine.

I've made no secret of the fact that I adore Wallace and Gromit, so I leapt at the chance to design this jumper, which features Wallace and Gromit getting ready to celebrate Christmas, with Wallace in his Santa hat, and Gromit wrapped up warm in a scarf (which he probably knitted for himself!).

The jumper is knitted in Stylecraft Special Aran* (and Stylecraft Special Baby Aran for the pink), which is a great hard-wearing yarn, so if you knit the jumper this year, you'll still be wearing it for many years to come. The yarn comes in lots of colours, so feel free to switch out the scarf colours (you could even make them match a favourite sporting team) if blue and white isn't for you.

The pattern is written in nine sizes, with finished chest sizes of 78 to 160 cm (XS to 5X). I designed the jumper to be worn with approximately 5 cm of positive ease. The Wallace and Gromit jumper is worked flat from the bottom up in pieces that are seamed before picking up stitches for the neckband in the round. The Wallace and Gromit motif is knitted using the intarsia method, and the facial features are added at the end using embroidery.

Want to get your hands on a copy of the pattern? It can be found in the Knitmas supplement of issue 106 of Knit Now magazine, which is available in all good newsagents and supermarkets in the UK. If you live overseas, or can't find a copy locally, you can order a copy from the MoreMags website. Print copies of the magazine also come with a gorgeous little notions tin featuring Gromit sitting in bed knitting. I've already put stitch markers in mine and put it into one of my knitting bags for use on the go!

If you'd like to add the Wallace and Gromit Christmas jumper to your Revelry queue or favourites, you can find the Ravelry pattern page here.

*Affiliate link.

All images copyright Practical Publishing.

New design: Shaun the Sheep jumper

You may recall that when Peter Sallis, the voice of Wallace from Wallace and Gromit, died, I wrote a post about the role Wallace and Gromit had played in my childhood. I adored Wallace and Gromit, and still do as an adult, so imagine my excitement when Kate, the editor for Knit Now Magazine, contacted me to ask if I would like to design a Shaun the Sheep jumper for kids! Of course I leapt at the chance, and the pattern is available now in issue 102 of Knit Now Magazine.

The jumper isn't my usual intarsia, instead it's a really playful appliquéd design, with Shaun's head and ears sewn onto a jumper that is knitted in fluffy yarn. The ear tips are left loose so that the child can play with them while they're wearing the jumper; this is a super-tactile knit!

The basic jumper is knitted flat from the top down in one piece with minimal seaming. Simple short rows are used to create the neckline shaping. Only basic increases and decreases are required to create the face and ear pieces, and Shaun's eyes and nostrils are embroidered at the end. The whole thing is knitted in super chunky weight yarn, making for a really quick knit.

The jumper uses a combination of King Cole Tufty* for the textured sections and King Cole Big Value Super Chunky* for the hems, cuffs, neckline and face details.

The pattern is written for 6 sizes from ages 2 to 12, and covers chest sizes 59 to 84 cm.

I really enjoyed knitting the Shaun the Sheep jumper, and hope that you do too. Both my older kids were fascinated by the fluffy yarn, and have each asked me to knit something init for them, so I may be revisiting King Cole Tufty in the future...

If you haven't worked with fluffy yarn before and are unsure where to begin, I've put together some helpful hints in a blog post that will go live early next week.

Want to knit your own Shaun the Sheep jumper? The pattern can be found in issue 102 of Knit Now Magazine, which is in UK shops now. Alternatively you can get a print copy delivered to your door, or purchase the digital edition.

All images copyright Practical Publishing.

*Affiliate link.

More cheese Gromit?

Yesterday I lost one of my great childhood heroes: Peter Sallis. Peter Sallis was one of the stars of a programme called Last of the Summer Wine, a programme about three pensioners who lived in the Yorkshire Dales and behaved like small boys (think firing each other out of cannons and racing down hills in shopping trolleys), which I watched every Sunday afternoon with my siblings. And while those Sunday afternoons are fond memories for me, had Peter Sallis only been in Last of the Summer Wine, I doubt my heart would have skipped a beat yesterday when I heard of his death.

In 1989 a new animated feature came to the television, featuring Wallace, a nervous inventor from Yorkshire, and his faithful, silent, dog Gromit, whose powers of observation were far greater than those of Wallace's. The programme was called A Grand Day Out and the plot followed Wallace building a rocket in his basement, then blasting to the moon to go and find some cheese for a picnic. I loved that programme and those that followed: The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave and a full-length film called The Curse of the Were Rabbit.* Watching the episodes was always a highlight of bank holiday weekends, when they would be shown mid-afternoon and we would try and get home from days out in time to watch them together as a family. These programmes inspired me to build with plasticine (modelling clay), make animated videos, invent things and draw blueprints. I owned a lot of Wallace and Gromit merchandise - annuals, jigsaws, a t-shirt featuring Gromit sat up in bed knitting, even Christmas crackers than contained models of the all characters. While a lot of my love for these programmes and characters is down to Nick Park and Aardman Animation, it I can also be credited to Peter Sallis, who voiced Wallace, perfect with his nervous Yorkshire accent (which I found out yesterday, after Sallis' death was not in fact Peter Sallis' natural voice but the one he decided would work best for the character), and for that reason will always be fondly remembered by me.

So farewell Peter, and with you Wallace. You shall both be missed.

Image source: http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/films/a-grand-day-out Copyright remains with the copyright holder.

*There is also a fourth half-hour long feature that I totally forgot about when drafting this post - A Matter of Loaf and Death.