howto

It’s a recent development that I now make sock monkey sweaters for reasons beyond learning the basic construction of the knitted sweater. Now that I know more of the fundamentals, I can move on to the finer details of a knitted garment!

A recent client asked me to make a custom monkey wearing a hooded sweater with a dinosaur! The most I had ever done before were stars and hearts, which are much simpler designs, but this called for something more intricate and asymmetrical so I had to do more planning and designing. This is the process I went through to create the “Dino” sweater.

I began by creating a drawing of the dinosaur in Illustrator. I had to think about how it would look since the toy would be for a 2 year old baby so I didn’t want it to look too scary. I was thinking of something simple, fun and with a cute look. The baby was also a boy so I worked with colors like blue, yellow, green and red. Nothing girly here! Kawai, yes! :)

Then, using the original drawing as a guide, I placed it on top of a grid as a transparency and added Xs to the boxes which showed any piece of the dinosaur (using layers, also in Illustrator). If you’re familiar with pixel art, then this is exactly what I did. I created a “pixel” by pixel dinosaur on a grid! Of course, the image above is round and fine and the grid is square and jagged so for some of these pixels (or Xs) I had to consider whether that X really belonged there or not. It was really more of a personal call. I later converted the required Xs into colored ones to tell where I would switch from one yarn of color to another (see fair isle knitting).

“Dino” knitting pattern

Now the knitting part begins! This is where it gets tricky. Every box within the grid indicates a knit stitch. Remember that the piece is done in stockinette stitch so all stitches on every row will face in the same direction, unlike garter stitch where every other row alternates. The white and grey rows represent the right and reverse sides of the fabric. The boxes with the Xs show where the dinosaur will appear. The black Xs show the outline of the dinosaur I included in the design and the colored ones represent the actual dinosaur and the color of yarn I’ll be knitting with in that particular stitch.

Symmetrical designs are much easier to make. Something asymmetrical like this requires more attention to which side of the fabric you’re facing because if you’re facing the right side you’d start knitting the row as the pattern calls from the right, but if you’re facing the back or reverse you’d begin from the left. This is something that took me a while to comprehend, but once I understood it, it made a whole lot of sense! Keeping track of color changes, paying attention to where you are in the row and knowing which side of the fabric you’re facing are probably the most important things to know when knitting a colored, asymmetrical design. Just understanding some of the basics makes the rest so much easier. ;)

Final “Dino” sweater front piece

Jed’s short sleeve “Dino” hooded sweater front and back