Eating That Elephant

I found/modified this loom knitting pattern for my son’s Webkinz, and thought your kids might like to try it!

I modified a base pattern from here:

http://lindasloomroom.blogspot.com/2006/02/knifty-knitter-chihuahua-or-small-dog.html

You’ll need to refer to that pattern for pictures and details.
Materials: Knifty Knitter rectangular or 12-peg flower loom, bulky yarn.

First, I loosely wrapped 12 pegs on the end of the rectangular loom in the “e-wrap” pattern that you use on the round loom. When I got to the end of the first 6 I just went across to the other side. I did NOT use the figure eight pattern that you might usually use – I went around in a circle, with the crosses on the inside and the loops on the outside, like a f lower.

I knitted for 11 rows to make the back-end of the sweater – I found that I needed to knit about 3 rows more than I thought I would need by looking at it, because it tends to snug up when taken off the loom. I knitted the back end first, because it is naturally much looser than the cast on.

Next, using the above pattern as a guide, I picked two pegs for each leghole. Since I wanted the leg holes near the bottom, I left 3 pegs in between the legs, and 5 on top. Here’s an attempt at an illustration, with O for pegs that are knitted normally and X for leg-hole pegs:

O O O O X X

O X X O O O

If you look at this as if it is a circle, you can see there are 5 pegs for the top, and 3 for the bottom. I cast off the two legs and rewrapped them according to the above pattern.

Next, I knitted 9 rows for the neck of the sweater. This gave enough for a small cuff.

Now you are ready to cast off. If your Webkinz has a small head and neck, you can do a regular cast-off; I did this the first time and it worked OK. But it fits better with a loose cast-off. I used this one:

http://yarngear.com/looms/tips.htm – look for “SUPER-STRETCHY BIND-OFF”.

Have fun!! I’ll try to post a picture soon.