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Knitting - Gardens
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DRAWING & PAINTING:
On this page I am describing the progress of my knitted gardens. Further down are my Garden Inspiration photos.
I have made some storage out of a cereal box cut in half, to make two shallow ones, and covered with wrapping paper, to store work in progress.
The gardens sit inside these small cardboard apple punnets with handles. The soil and grass is in garter stitch, which always stays flat. It is easiest to knit diagonally, so you don't have to guess stitches or count rows to fit the box. Start with one stitch and increase at the beginning of every row, until the triangle is wide enough.
For the longer straight middle part, increase one side but decrease the other on every other row, until the long side reaches the far end of the box. Then decrease at the beginning of every row, to take the final triangle down to a point.
It does not want to be too snug in the box or it will ruck up.
When you change colour, that will become the right side, as the colour change will be smooth and not spotty like the back. The next colour change should be with the same side facing.
The garden walls are a grey random yarn, in Moss Stitch or Double Moss Stitch, which mixes up the colours to look like a stone wall. Make four strips for the walls. When the wall is tall enough cast off, then pick up all the stitches again and continue either in Moss or Stocking Stitch. This method will give the wall a firm top.
Sew the Moss Stitch part to the base, fold over then sew the outer side to the base as well. Leave vertical openings outside the corners.
The walls may need stiffening with card, especially if you want the garden to be free standing and not in a punnet. A strip of cereal box card folded over is strong enough. Make them slightly too long, then mark and trim to size once they are in. Don't sew up the corners, as you might want to carefully wash the garden one day.
If the garden is to be free standing, you could add a gate by making one of the sides in sections, two wall pieces and one piece in a ribbed gate pattern, so that the garden can connect with other gardens. Sew the gate loosely only on the hinge side, so that it can be opened and shut.
This fishpond garden has no beds, so I will add climbers up the walls and little bits growing in the paving.
The water is a spiral of plain single crochet that gives a chain effect, and with increases every few stitches. Someone very carefully steamed it flat for me using hot water on a cloth, on the wrong side. After that, the low wall can be added in a few rows of double crochet.
The iris are plain lengths of yarn with some hairy mauve strands sewn in tightly at the top. The green and yellow creeping plant is Creeping Jenny which likes to grow in water as well as soil. The goldfish are two stitches in a single hairy strand.
For a rectangular pond, it might be easier to just do a big circle and cut it down, so that it keeps the circular ripple effect. The perimeter wall or paving will cover up the cut edge.
My real pond looks greeny black but it sometimes reflects the blue sky. My goldfish are all different colours plus a few black. Your knitted pond will not need this net to keep them safe!
Goldfish like to investigate amongst the marginal plants. On a sunny day, they like to bask with their heads under a water lily leaf.
Here is another punnet garden. This pond has some variegated red/white koi, using reddish marly yarn.
Here is the ideal gift for a garden loving friend. Brown Teddy is admiring the covered box and wondering what is inside. There is a crochet button on the lid and a loop for it on the lower front. The lid and front open up to reveal a garden with a background landscape fixed inside the lid - we printed this from an internet picture but you could cut one out of a magazine.
The grass is attached to the base and front flap of the box, at the corners, with a single stitch of green yarn.
The drop down front makes the garden bigger. If you made a long roll of green lawn, that could be rolled out to make an even bigger play space for the Teddies.
The Itty Bitty Teddies pattern is available from this website:
https://littlecottonrabbits.typepad.co.uk/free_knitting_patterns/
They are the Christmas Tree Bears made without the hanging ribbon. There is loads of stuff on that website for knitting other animal characters, and their clothing and accessories. These Teddies are basically a tube in clothing/head colours, drawn in with thread at the neck, and I-Cords for limbs. They are the perfect size for a miniature garden.
This Long Pop-Up Garden is attached to a long piece of drawer lining plastic sheeting underneath, which gives it some rigidity, but it is still flexible. There is a handle each end for carrying about.
The conifer trees and yellow rose arch in the centre are able to lie flat down for storage. They are secured with a single stitch, but also have a loop of yarn underneath which goes into the tree/arch, through about half an inch and out again. When the loop is pulled, the tree rises upright, and then can be laid down again for storage. The rose arch is attached to a little strip of the same plastic, and has a pulling loop at both ends. The loops have tassels to make them easier to get hold of. It was possible to post this to someone in a very flat flower delivery box.
The rose arch lies down away from the fish pond.
Later on we added a wooden garden gate at the end. You can just see the drawer lining plastic underneath.
Embroidered delphiniums are growing up the rose arch. At the other end is a stone bowl of water for the birds. Just like my own garden in summer, there are three bees getting water at the very edge. On very hot days, the bees are not drinking but taking drops back to cool down their hive or nest.
This is going to be Fishpond Garden with mainly green borders and sitting areas, so visitors can watch the fish swimming around, or lounge on the lawn.
I have drawn out a plan of 11 by 9 squares, and marked out side beds, grass and fishpond in the middle with path and seating area by the pond. You can enter and leave the garden in three places. I am not sure yet what the real size will be, but it will be made of squares, so they can be done separately. The fishpond will be all one piece though. The whole garden will keep its shape and not curl up, because all the seams help it stay flat and firm.
At last all the squares have been knitted, and there were enough to make two gardens, the Fountain Garden on the left, and Pond Garden on the right. They are diagonal garter stitch squares where you start with one stitch, increase one at the beginning of every row, then decrease again back down to one stitch. That way you can make any size without counting stitches or rows. We sewed up the squares into a lawn garden with the brown soil border, and large square fishpond. This is entirely different from the paper plan I made!
Here they are pinned to boards of thick corrugated cardboard with some bin liner over it to keep the card dry. We wetted everything with a fine spray of warm water, and then left them on the table with a fan blowing on them, as there is no warm sunshine in October! I can't wait to start putting on the hedges round the edges and the shrubs and flowers in the brown part. Brown Teddy is looking forward to seeing plants and goldfish in the pond.
To store them, we cut a large cardboard storage box (that the computer screen came in) in half to make two shallow trays, and the blocking cardboard above will make good lids to them, so the gardens stay flat and dust free.
We have started on the perimeter hedges. They are rectangles of moss stitch folded over and lightly filled with polyester filling, to make a rounded hedge. The yarn is a green-grey-pink marl yarn, making the hedge look like lots of different mixed-in flowering shrubs. I like the summer cloud that has landed near the pond!
I had to make tiny end pieces for the corner ends. The second hedge at the corner doesn't need an end piece, as it goes against the first hedge.
Here it is in its big box. I have left a gap at each short side of the garden, and I will have little gates, so it can join with other gardens. The hedges are helping the garden stay flat and have straightened all the edges. It's beginning to look like a garden now and not just a floppy piece of knitting.
Here is the Fountain Garden, which lives in another big box under the bed. It is mainly a flower garden, and a blue-tiled pool that does not have fish or plants it. It is for cooling the visitors, who sit by it on a hot summer day.
I have been saving all the short ends of yarn for the flowersand I have made them into bundles. They are tied very tightly round the middle, folded in half and then sewn through with the long ends to make sure nothing can be pulled out, then trimmed down to little blobs. I have arranged them temporarily, while I think where they might look best.
My next job is to make lots of shrubs as well, so I can decide where everything goes before attaching them all. Then I will take the long threads to the underside and just knot them. I am going to use some sparkly white yarn to make a fountain in the blue pool. I saw a blue-tiled pool like this in a park and I just had to have one! I will surround it with some planters and some low walls for visitors to sit on. You can make a knitted circle by using the centre part of a beret or tammie pattern, and the shapings make the water look swirly.
We now have lots of shrubs around the central fountain part. There are two stone benches for sitting, but they might need little blankets for when the weather is not so warm.
The low hedge is lengths of Reverse Stocking Stitch, which naturally curls under, they do not need stuffing. The bedding is lots of loops sewn in with needle. The fountain is two cup shapes, filled with a circle of white, and six loops of yarn for the spray. The white has a metallic thread to make the sparkle.
The conifers at the back are Moss Stitch wide triangles folded round into cones. The two-colour shrub balls are meant to be two Variegated Euonymus and one Red Robin (Photinia).
The ball shrubs are different size blobs of reverse stocking stitch. They don't need a pattern, they are just squares or almost squares folded up with the corners pushed to the inside, plus a bit of stuffing.
Small Royal Gala apple tree with Forget-Me-Nots, and white Iberis round my pond. Iberis makes a neat very low hedge, as it is can be clipped to shape after the flowers are gone.
These low hedges are Golden Euonymus on the left, and more tightly clipped plain Euonymus on the right. This grass maze is at Hall Place Gardens, with the maze walls being just circles of longer grass, with crocus in the spring.
These are my old concrete birdbath stands with blue pot of sedum, and a shallow pot with big saucer of water on top for the birds.
The walled gardens at Stockwood Park, Luton
Stockwood Park, Luton
Stockwood Park, Luton
Stockwood Park, Luton. Maybe crochet long green double chains and sew down onto a grey base in patterns like these.
Stockwood Park, Luton and Well Hall Pleasaunce, London
Mossy rocks in Well Hall Pleasaunce, London, and Hall Place Gardens, Bexley. A random piece of knitting scrunched up and stitched to a rock shape, with extra surface stitches in random patches to make mossy bumps and lichens.
Golders Hill Park, North London
Azaleas round the circular pond at Richmond Park, London
Hampton Court Palace, just about the best garden you could knit for yourself. When we arrived, it was a free open day for the private royal gardens, what a great surprise! A challenge to knit the fountain, maybe a cone of eyelash yarn, or fur stitch with the loops cut open. It would need a cardboard cone inside. You might need a splashing soundtrack to play when you show it to your friends!
Hampton Court Palace
Hampton Court Palace - you can only go in here on special open days, but it can be admired at any time through the "window" openings in the boundary hedges. The grass is very fine because there are no visitors walking on it all the time. If you knitted this, it would take years, but then you could go in it every day.
You can use the space on your 404 page to help find missing people by embedding info from notfound.org See Yellow Teddy's 404 page
Where to report a lost or found teddy or
toy in
the UK:
https://www.facebook.com/LostboxTeddyBears
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