Fruit!

If you look at my Wordless WIP Wednesday posts here, you've noticed that they've featured pictures of knitted and crocheted fruit and leaves for the past few weeks. I don't normally make a lot of stuffed toys or botanical motifs, so it's a pretty significant departure from my usual projects.

The Jewish holiday of Sukkot is coming up in early October, and it involves spending a lot of time outside in a structure called a sukkah that's kind of like a gazebo or pergola. Traditionally, that structure is decorated with, among other things, fruit. This is a holiday I especially enjoy sharing with my kids, and I like to involve them in various art and craft projects during that time. This year, I thought it would be fun and whimsical to decorate our sukkah with a garland of toy fruit that I had knitted and crocheted. It's also a decoration I'll be able to use from one year to the next. The fruit and leaves I've been making are for that project.

It just so happens that I made some lengths of crocheted lace edgings many, many years ago. I never did the sewing project those edgings were supposed to be attached to, so I still have them hanging around. I'll be using those as the base for my garlands. I don't have pictures right now, since they are currently in a box underneath another box, at the bottom of a closet. If I didn't have those on hand, I'd probably use one of these patterns instead.

A friend of mine gave me a shopping bag full of embroidery floss a couple years ago, so I've been making all my fruit and leaves out of that. Fortunately, a lot of those hanks of embroidery floss have been fruit colored. The brown hanks I'm using to make maple and oak leaves. Sukkot is an autumn holiday and harvest festival, after all, so dry "leaves" match the theme.

Thus far, I've done all nine of the patterns in the Plushy Produce collection from Jessie Kamphuis, which is free to download on Ravelry. The patterns are easy to make and well-written. If I made them using the intended gauge, they would probably be close to life size, but making them with embroidery floss and a size B (2.25 mm) hook makes all the fruits miniature.

I also knitted two persimmons and four figs from patterns by Tatyana Grigoryan. Both are for sale through Ravelry. These patterns are also well written and also intended for larger yarns. The patterns assume you will work flat and sew a seam, but instructions are provided for adapting the patterns for knitting in the round, which is what I did.

I've crocheted leaves from two maple leaf patterns, both of which are free. This one, by Jennifer Renaud, only has three rounds, so I used it to make leaves to attach to the pumpkin and grapes I crocheted from Plushy Produce. This one, by Kimiko Ami, is four rounds and a little bigger, so I used it to make "dry" leaves to include as their own thing on my garland. Those two patterns are pretty solid, and the larger one takes up precisely one hank of embroidery floss, so I started playing around with making a maple leaf that was a bit more economical with yardage, and that's the free pattern I published last week.

I've also made some dry leaves using this free oak leaf pattern from In the Yarn Garden, which feels a lot like an Irish crochet motif.

Finally, I've started working through this collection of patterns by Julia Park for knitted fruit, starting with an orange. I've also made the pear, apple, cherries, and lemon, and I'm currently working on the grapes. These patterns call for size 2 needles, which are the needles I'm using with the embroidery floss anyway, so I think I'm making them only a little smaller than the size intended.

In addition to these five pattern downloads, I still intend to make and some of Tatyana Grigoryan's knitted pomegranates. I also found a free pattern for a woven star ornament from Frankie Brown, whose work I already know I like. I've enjoyed some of her other patterns in the past, and the construction of these stars is fun. My Bag O' Floss includes some colors that won't work for either fruit or leaves, and I figure some stars will be a good use for them.

I'm really enjoying this project, even though it's far outside my usual preferences. If you're looking for something fun and whimsical to do for harvest-themed decorations, say, for Thanksgiving, maybe a fruit and leaf bunting made in embroidery floss would work for you, too.

This post has been linked to Busy Monday, HIH, Senior Salon, Inspire Me Monday, WITS, Wonderful Wednesday, The Stitchin' Mommy, Create-It, and Thursday Favorite Things.