Work on the Whale Continues

With my other projects (mostly) complete and my final critique behind me, I can now return to work on the whale. My wool has arrived, so I'll be working on starting to dye that hopefully over the next few days.

In terms of the actual knitting that remains, like I've mentioned, I have about one third of the whale knit.  I had to knit the front half of the belly seperately from the back half in order to make the throat grooves, but the sides and top of the whale don't have any specific texture requirements like that. That means that  I should just be able to knit the panels in 28 foot lengths that will span from one end of the whale to the other. Each of these panels can be up to 30 inches wide, so I'll have to knit four of them. They'll each be the full 30 inches at their widest point in the middle of the panel, and then taper on either end.

I'm aiming to get two of these panels knit over the course of the next several days, as I'll be heading out of town on Saturday for a week!

Aaaand another reminder to take a peek at the blog for my graduating class and see what everyone else has been up to! Our graduation events are comprised of a fashion show on May 28th at the LSPU Hall in St. John's, and an exhibition that opens on May 31st at the Anna Templeton Centre and runs for two weeks, where my whale and my other work will be on display!

Whale Belly on the Whale

Sewing on the second half of the whale belly with Sarah:

The Other Half of the Whale Belly

It's the last week of the semester before my final critique, and things are pretty crazy here at school, so blog posts this week will have to be short and sweet. Like me.

Anyway,

I knit the rest of the whale belly! Here's some math:

Basically it was knit in two triangular-ish panels which were then sewn together.

Unfortunately, while I was knitting these pieces, I got to the point where I ran out of the light grey wool, so I couldn't knit them to the full length they were supposed to be. I'll have to wait until my new wool arrives and I can get it dyed before I'll be able to fully complete the underside of the whale.

So, then I blocked it:

I did get this piece sewn onto the skeleton today, but haven't gotten all my pictures uploaded and sorted through yet, so I should have those up within the next couple of days!

Knitting Goes on the Whale

Well, I got the throat grooves sewn onto the skeleton today! I had some help from my super knitting instructor, and it went pretty quickly.

It's just basically sewn on with big stitches that go through the garbage bags and around bits of the snow fencing. Once the side pieces that will go above it are knit, they will overlap the edge of the throat piece and be sewn on with nicer stitches that will be a bit more hidden.

The big puckers that run down the middle of the throat are basically anchor points used to center the knitting on the belly. Once more knitting is on the whale, they'll be cut out and the throat should have a nice curved shape underneath the whale.

Next up: knitting the rest of the belly!

Garbage Bags on the Skeleton

Quick little picture update on the skeleton, which is about half covered in garbage bags at the moment!

And the skeleton just looks really cool on the inside:

Flippers!

Today I knit and blocked the whale's pectoral fins, or flippers. Minke whale flippers can be up to about 1/8 of the total body length, so my whale's are 3 and a half feet long, and 14 inches wide at their widest point. Minke pectoral fins are also generally dark on either end, with a light strip in the middle, which is how I knit mine.

I knit a rectangular piece for each flipper that, once it's blocked, I'll cut into the correct shape. I think that once the flipper shape is cut out, I should have enough of the dark knitting left over to make the dorsal fin.

I had done a tension swatch for the light grey wool when I was knitting the throat pieces, and just worked off of that information to knit the flippers without doing a separate swatch for the dark wool. Mistake. The dark stuff ended up knitting at a tighter tension than the light grey, and the flippers turned out a few inches shorter on either end than they were supposed to... 

Fortunately, with a bit of semi-aggressive blocking, they ended up the right size!

Outline of flipper shapes on the blocking table

Blocking the flippers

Making a Whale Throat

9054 rows of knitting later, I finished knitting the throat grooves.

Thank god for row counters...

All eleven throat pieces

I used 16 skeins of wool to knit these pieces, which probably cover about one seventh of the total whale surface area, so at this point I'm quite certain that I currently do not have enough wool to complete the project. So, unfortunately, I'm going to have to order more wool and more dye.  This was definitely a frustrating realization to have to come to so late in the term. But, that's that, I guess. Whales. They're big.

Anyhow, back to the throat grooves.

Once I had them all knit, it was time to sew them together.

The sewing took about three hours. I didn't want to block the throat until after it had all been sewn together, so I had to really hold down the edges to keep them flat while I was sewing, meaning I could only really sew a few inches at a time.

By the end, the whole thing had gotten pretty heavy, and also, incredibly warm while it was lying in my lap.

So here it is, all sewn together, before I blocked it:

And the biggest table for blocking was luckily exactly twelve feet long, so the knitting fit on it perfectly:

I only wanted to lightly block it, so I pinned it out while it was dry, and then sprayed it with water to just get the knitting slightly damp.

I let it dry overnight before taking the pins out this morning. It turned out great!