tiny little bees

I was off sick a couple of weeks ago, and after a day spent lying on the sofa doing nothing at all, I felt a little better, but not quite well enough to go to work.

A little bit of knitting was called for, nothing too huge, nothing too complicated, and these little tiny bees and ladybirds were the very thing.

They were a pattern in a book of knitted toys that a friend sent me a while ago (I can’t remember the name of the book, will add it in later). There’s all kinds in there, some of it far too complicated for the likes of me.

I reckoned I could manage a little insect or two though.

If nothing else, I was entirely taken by the instructions for making up baby bee – ‘Make up as for mother bee, omitting the hat’

The instructions said to sew on the eyes and spots and wings after stuffing and sewing up. I did just that with the first one (I’m generally one for doing as I’m told), but it was just so difficult! I don’t know whether my head was just all befuddled with being ill, but I made an awful mess, and it took ever such a long time.

After that I resorted to a kind of production line, doing all the knitting first of all, then sewing all the eyes, then the spots, then the wings, and then sewing them all up and stuffing them.

I made five ladybirds, and five bees, and hung them vertically with invisible thread, bees on one, ladybirds on another. They twirl and dance about in a nicely gentle way, first one way, then the next, like they’re idly looking around to see what’s what.

(I took ever so many photographs, but what with the dingy weather, the lack of wall space to hang them against and being at work whenever there’s daylight, I didn’t manage to get one of them hanging in a string. I’m sure you can imagine though…)

 

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