Winter Garden

My new knitting rabbit hole, cacti!

My brother-in-law gave me a funny old knit book for my birthday: Have You Any Wool? The Creative Use of Yarn by Jan Messant. It was written in the 1986. It is full of some crazy ideas. Many of the patterns are just a paragraph of suggestions. I suspect the author assumed you’d figure it out. I was intrigued by her knit cacti. The “pattern” such as it was said, “Most of these cacti are just rectangles.” Huh. Is that so. I took her word for it and made a ribbed piece of green knitting. I seamed the side and darn she was right! It kind of looked like a cactus. Add a little pot and I was in business.

The creative juices started to flow. I looked for stitch patterns that mimicked bumpy cacti: seed stitch, 2 and 1 ribbing, and garter stitch. I played around with embellishments adding “needles” of beads or snips pf yarn. I wanted the little beauties to look like they were in sandy pots. So I found some sanding and scrubbing sponges at the hardware store that looked right. I also bought a dowel, cut it in short lengths, sharpened the end like a pencil and then poked each stuffed cacti. This gave them a little more stability when I put them in their pots. I made it all up as I was going along. There were some missteps and misshaped attempts but with only 15 to 31 stitches on the needles it was just tiny bit of knitting, nothing precious. It’s fun to stretch my knitting wings and play. This was just a bit of silly good fun. And my garden continues to grow. I’m glad they’re succulents and I don’t have to water them! teehee