Pandas on knitwear

My love for Pandas inspired designs for knitwear.

A PDF knitting pattern is available from my Ravelry store for a pair of 4ply fingerless mitts with a panda holding a piece of bamboo across his tummy.  The gloves can be hand knitted in any 4ply weight yarn - wool, cotton or cashmere.  Knitting instructions include typed pages for the shaping and graph charts for both left and right mitt.

Panda fingerless mitts

The panda also features on a hand knitted cushion and it is surrounded by a circle of flowers similar to those shown in the graph below.  There are also flowers on the  back of the cushion, with a buttoned fastening in the centre.  A PDF knitting pattern for the cushion is also on Ravelry

The graph below shows a design which was used for the body of a child's cardigan/sweater.  A selection of different sizes were made for stores in the USA.

Graph showing pandas and flower design for child's sweater

Another panda glove pattern in my Ravelry store is for a pair of 4ply mitts with a panda's face on the front.  The palms of the mitts are plain.

Panda Face fingerless mitts

I don't have access to the real thing, so the photo below was taken from a non-copyright internet site. The panda looks quite content while chewing away on the bamboo pieces, or whatever it may be eating.

Peacocks - knit inspiration and noisy birds

One of my ideas for a knitwear design some years ago was based on vases of flowers and peacocks.  Unfortunately, I do not have any photographs of the actual knits, but the designs are still sitting on my computer.  I took a photograph of the screen showing a design for the fronts of a hand knitted 4ply-weight waistcoat.

Peacock and flowers design for the fronts of a hand knitted waistcoat

I am fascinated with peacocks and have seen them wandering around London's Holland Park and Quex Park, which is not far away from London.

I often go to Pendley Manor in Tring for their yearly Shakespeare Festival in August.  This year, for a change, I was there last Friday in order to attend a Murder Mystery dinner with friends, which included an over-night stay in the hotel.  There were, as usual, peacocks wandering around the grounds.  In the garden, I came across this lovely brightly-coloured peacock with a very long set of beautiful tail feathers.

Colourful peacock with very long tail feathers

There was also a dreamy ethereal white one too.

Ethereal white peacock

There are usually signs in the car park to tell people that the peacocks have right of way!

There was one big drawback - however much I love peacocks, I could do with them keeping quiet in the early morning.  One must have been roosting somewhere below my room and it started mewing at 5.30 a.m. and kept on at regular intervals until it was time for me to get up.  I was lying awake thinking about another victim for the Murder Mystery!