Knitted Clanger- 2 weeks to knit, 7 months to construct!

This toy was incredibly hard to photograph well. Normally I ensure my photos are the right way up and make sense when I write my posts. This time it seems to not matter and when I adjusted one photo I ended up returning it to how it started so please bear with the slightly off photos for this blog post. 

This is a Tiny Clanger from the BBC TV series which despite its aimed at very young kids I still love and have been a fan since the original 1970s series. The BBC released this knitting pattern for Tiny Clanger many years ago and its something I have had on my to-do list for absolutely years. So this toy is made using free pattern I downloaded years ago. It's still free though. The pattern uses 4 ply. I used DK hence my upscaling of the clothing is out of scale. I did ok with the feet I think but not the tabard ( if that's what you would call it?). Maybe Armour is better?

Feet are black felt (synthetic from amazon,) on top but brown underneath cos I didn't want to buy any more so used what I had. It's the same stuff I used for the Easter basket last year. It comes in 50 or so coloured squares per pack. I accidentally ended up with it on subscribe and save and didn't realise till the second pack arrived. Anyway according to the pattern both top and bottom of the feet should be black felt. I added a piece of tupperware for strengthening in side each foot to make them more rigid.

The pattern does not do this but many many years ago myself and several friends got into the Rave movement and I made, for lots of people, velvet baseball caps. To make the peaks I used tupperwares so if you fancied doing that its a cheat way to get a harder but washable strengthened area. It works for the Clanger feet anyway.

You can see here the armour is a bit small!!!

Has to be said though it useful to have two sheets of each colour of felt so if you did buy some with the idea of crafting rather than for children then you probably want two packs. Though the colours are slightly different per pack. Though I received them a month appart so maybe if bought together you get the same mix of colours. The tabard is actually 2 slightly different shades of red. The pattern uses pink but the child this was for chose red. It works. 

The clanger us 100% wool except for the hair. That's acrylic because I had some stashed. The wool was cheaper per 100g than acrylic so I went with the environmentally friendly option. It might turn out to be a mistake. It's meant to be washable but the child who now owns it is 2 so it's likely to need washing quite a bit. 

Small person who now owns this Clanger seems not to care a jot its all a bit small but it is not I beleive going to stand up to play well so I reckon I will ask small person if he would like me to alter it. It occurs to me while writing this I could glue these pieces to new felt pieces which would thicken the rather thin felt sheets and in turn make the armour more substantial. Then just use a sewing machine to sew them together nd cut around each piece to make them larger. 

If you look at the CF panel as well I did the embroidery the wrong way round it should lie the other way so the longer side across the Clanger body not down it.


Anyway the pattern is odd in the way it's constructed and the strange increases and decreases to get shaping buy its easy to knit. It's however in loads if bits. Like each ear has 2 knitted bits plus felt. So I spent just over 2 weeks knitting this then 7 months to finish it. 

Armour/ Tabard is far too small!!!

The tabard is embroidered in gold thread. I bought this when experimenting with using odd bits of yarn. The silver skein was used for my blue aran. Though I still gave enough of both gold and silver for several mire garments. I think its easier to sew with than knit with actually but I am not an embroidered. I am truly rubbish at embroidered so this took ages.

So yes the entire project took ages actually and I am so glad Tiny Clanger finally got finished. Its a project that started to really get to me because it was taking so very long to get her finished. When I began I had ideas to make all 5 of the current Clangers but I don't have the heart to repeat this right now so have just stopped with Tiny. This does mean I still have 4 balls of this pink DK and I am not a pink person so now need to find a way to use that. Hopefully something will come to me because its a good quality yarn. I really don't want to just give it away. 

If I really do want to knit more Clangers I can always buy more yarn.

Ah the yarn is the Drops Karisma that I used for a jumper previously and its a very good prive from Wool Warehouse if you wanted some. Its 100% wool. Red is also Karisma left over from the mushroom season jumper. Black is embroidery thread. Yellow is acrylic from Aldi.

Have a lovely week, thanks for visiting,

Bracken