Furballs' Flying Cranes

Furballs' Flying Cranes series is a collection of one dishcloth and two beanies.  The flying crane knit patterns come in one size in dishcloth and two sizes in beanies.  The cranes are arranged to fly in an upward right and upward left direction to create a sense of movement.  In time of COVID pandemic when a lot of us are homebounded for various reasons and a feeling of helplessness, I find that the the flying crames bring us the feeling of freedom with control.

This design is originated from Holiday Tree in June (as of today, it is still pending for test knit).  The idea is sea, sky and sunny weather.  From there, I drew my inspiration form an earlier dishcloth piece, My Sprouting Catnips, and modified the stitch pattern adding the head and the tail.  The more I looked at it, the more it reminded me of Asian drawing with cranes soaring in the sky with a pine tree background.  Of course, just to sidetrack a bit, from this pattern, I also made up the Phoenix sttich pattern.  This is really the "original" I thought to use on a beanie, but considering a lot of knitters (or perhaps maybe test knitters only, I don't know) are not keened at relief stitch, I tried out with a more conservative route and here came the cranes.

You can say Furballs' Flying Cranes dishcloth is like a large swatch for the beanie but it looks so good that I decided to test knit and published the pattern.  If you are organizing a Southeast Asian theme dinner party, the dishcloth could be a nice piece of decoration and gift for the attending guests.  I can also see it as a nice gift for the expected mother in the baby shower party.

The Furball's Flying Crane Beanie comes in size M (Medium) and size S (Small).  The beanies are knitted from bottom up and made up of three (3) repeated design panels for the body and they are different in crown construction  ,The design in the panels for the two sizes are slightly different for fitting and with the crown construction different, I decided to publish them as two separate patterns.

This knit pattern is a good alternative to colourwork knitting to draw up this large bird.  It is primarily a k and p pattern so when knitting a hat and choosing a size for fitting, it is better to knit up the hat on the loose side because the wings of the bird will not pop out as much when the piece is stretch out excessively.

Happy knitting and meow meow until we meet again :D