Pink and Grey Knitted Ball

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One of the knitting pattern booklets I've had for a long time is the Patons 'More Bazaar Items'. Many years ago I knitted a couple of the soft toys from it, as well as a tea-cosy cover for one of my grandmothers. It's not one I'd looked at for a while, but I was intrigued by the three different soft balls. I thought they'd be ideal for rolling around a hard floor, so I decided to knit one for my infant granddaughter who will be here in a few weeks.

I studied all three of the ball patterns, and opted for the one called 'diamond motif'. I quickly realised that the diamond shapes shown in the pattern are embroidered on after the knitting. I prefer to keep sewing to a minimum, so I thought I'd try making the ball by itself.  The pattern said that it needed 50g each of two contrasting colours, double knitting. So as I had an unstarted bright pink and an unstarted grey, I chose them. Neither was Patons brand, but I don't suppose that matters.

The pattern turned out to be quite fiddly, not something I could have done while chatting to friends or watching children. It's knitted in six separate panels.  It starts by casting on one stitch, and knitting that, then increasing rapidly at each end: every two rows, then every three rows twice, then after the fourth row... and so on.  I had to keep track carefully of where I was, and if I put it down even for ten minutes, had to check carefully how many stitches I had, and where exactly I had reached.

The middle section of each panel, in the contrasting colour, is straightforward, then the top part involves decreasing at each end, again in a specified manner which works to give a perfect half diamond shape, but which is not intuitive or easily memorable. Even by the time I was knitting the sixth panel I could not remember all the details without checking.

Each panel took me around half an hour to knit, so it wasn't a time-consuming project. Sewing them together was easy, using the ends of yarn at the start and finish. I used my standard foam stuffing, then went over it with a sticky cat fur removing tool to get rid of foam dust. The result, I thought, wasn't too bad at all.


This first photo shows how the six panels work together.  Three used the pink as the main colour, and three used the grey. The circumference, as the pattern states, is a little over 17 inches (44cm).  The pattern booklet is old enough that it only gives inches as measurements.


This photo, at a slightly different angle, shows how the contrasting colours work.  It's not as interesting as the ball shown in the booklet with diamond motifs embroidered on it, but I don't suppose a baby really minds so long as it can be thrown and rolled. 

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