Lizard

After the Space Inavders, which gave me an opportunity to practise casting off and on in the middle of rows, I decided I wanted to develop more techniques. My final view is towards making a dragon toy, with multicolours, scales and ridges, which wiggles along in his body like a Chinesey one. I haven't started on him yet due to time constraints and having a cross-stitching phase, but little creatures are how I taught myself knitting in two colours, moss or seed stitch, and making bobbles, all of which I intend to use for the dragon eventually.

Lizard - Moss Stitch and Two-Colour Knitting

You Will Need: some wool in 2 different lizardy colours, and felt and thread for eyes, tongue and feet! Mine was green (from Clanger-wool) and purple (from Kangaroo-wool); the felt was also acquired for Clanger and there was plenty left over. Lizard is a tube; the whole body is knitted as a piece, decreasing and increasing again to make the division between head and neck, and then rolling him up like a cigar.

The easiest way for me to lay out the pattern for you is as directions as to what to knit and what to purl on each row, using symbols K for knit and P for purl, changing colour when the wool does. It looks complicated, because it's moss stitch, but once you realise that all you're doing is knitting all the knits and purling all the purls in big stripes, it doesn't look so bad. I wanted his tummy to have a different texture to his back, so the sides of the piece are in stocking stitch which comes out smooth on one side and wibbly on the other (the inside when he's all stuffed.)

You'll need to know how to increase and decrease at the ends and beginnings of rows. The easiest way to increase is to have the first or last stitch on your right or left needle respectively. Stretch the knitting apart, and pick up a loop from in between the two stitches with your left needle. Then work that stitch, and carry on as usual. To do it twice at the beginning of a row, just do that twice. On the end of a row, leave two stitches rather than one on your left needle and put an increase between each of them in turn. To decrease, just slip one stitch over the other as though binding off. You'll need to slip two stitches onto the right needle first at the beginning of a row, and the last stitch onto the right needle at the end of a row.

Casting On: This is a bit complicated. Cast on 2 stitches with your main-body colour. Then make a slipknot in your stripe colour and add that. Then cast on another two stitches of body colour, being careful not to get the ends tangled up in each other. You should now have 5 stitches like this: SSSSS. I was greatly helped in my understanding of this pattern by remembering always to 'purl the purple.' I knew that there would always be a knit and then a purl on either side of the purple one, so I could keep track of everything easily. When you're not knitting the stripe-stitches, let go of that coloured yarn and only use the main one. When you need to make a stripe-stitch, drop the main yarn and pick up the other one. If you keep hold of both all the time, you get a weird interlace effect, which I only noticed halfway down the tail. Remember always to pass the yarn you're using to the back or front of the work, depending if you're knitting or purling with it at the time. This is tedious but it stops you getting in a muddle.

Here we go!

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Casting on is fiddly - make two stitches in main colour, then add a slipknot of the stripe colour, then another two main colour. Increase at both ends of rows 15, 22 and 23; then continue for 20 rows; decrease by one at both ends at rows 43 and 44, and 50, 51 and 52. When you need to increase again to make the chin piece, drop the yarn for the stripe and continue in main colour only; cast on a stitch at the beginning of row 53 and increase into that in the usual way.

To make up, fold the chin under the head and sew along the sides. Now roll the body into a tube and sew all along the tummy, from the tail to the neck. Stuff with cotton wool as you go, or lentils if you want him a bit floppier and weightier. Tuck the flaps of stocking-stitch under the chin to attach the neck to the head. Now cut out and sew on tiny circles of felt or beads for eyes, a forky tongue and splayed little legs :D

Fin!