Instant Knitification: Summer Starfish

Echinoderms for Everyone

Sea stars, or starfish as they are more commonly called, come in many colors and configurations. The ones we see in the Pacific Northwest where I live are beautiful but unadorned. They are usually some variant of orange, purple, or red. Other places in the world produce sea stars that are multihued and opulently decorated. Did you know starfish are related to sea urchins, darling little creatures, and sea cucumbers,which look and feel disgusting?

My knitted starfish remind me of the ones I've seen on summer vacations as a child. Even now, finding starfish on the rocks at the beach gives me a little thrill. Although today on the west coast, I grew up primarily in Illinois, smack dab in the middle of the U.S. and quite a distance to salt water. My family used to visit Maine in the summer; a trip of 1200 highway miles unless traveling by station wagon with 6 brothers and sisters, then it's about 12,000 miles.

The pattern for these starfish comes from Amigurumi Knits by Hansi Singh. It looked like the easiest of her sea creatures to knit. The rest look like they require an amount of patience, persistence and skill that I do not currently possess. Mainly the patience part.

Underside showing ridges along each arm

First you knit the 5 arms, each in the main color and the contrast color for the underside. Then the arms are knit together and the top of the body finished in the main color. Finally the bottom of the starfish is knit together. There is an error in the directions on row 5 of the underside of the starfish arm. Instead of K10 it should say K9 in both places for a total of 20 stitches, not 22. At least that's how I fixed it so the number of stitches matched. Also, when finishing the underside of the body, it seems to me that the decreases are too drastic and I would add rows of knitting around in between the decrease rows.

One arm? Finger? Toe?

From storrick.cnc.net

I "researched" what real starfish look like by Googling starfish images. Yup, five arms on every one of them. I love the little bumps on some of them, and the color possibilities. After knitting my three starfish one right after another I need a break, but next time I may add embellishments and use some unexpected colors.

From Wikopedia

Extreme Knits

This section of my blog is dedicated to sharing examples of extreme knitting that make me wonder about the designer's sanity, beautiful and elegant as the work may be.

My niece is getting married this summer, so I thought I would post some pictures of what she will NOT be getting from me as a wedding gift.