Noah's Ark

Hah! Am supremely chuffed with myself. One of knitting magazines is running a competition this year where they asked you to design and knit an animal for Noah's Ark. Last year they did a knitted garden which I saw at the knitting show and it was pretty awesome- they even had a knitted deckchair. I decided I was going to enter the one this year and after much deliberation over exactly what it was that I should design I decided it had to be an insect (like, dur). I was originally going to do some kind of beetle thing but seeing as how I have knitted very few toys I wasn't sure about how you would construct such a thing. Knitting toys is a real skill and has some technicalities to it that I have yet to explore so I figured something relatively simple yet showy was in order. I also reckoned that there wouldn't be too many other insect entries so I would stand a reasonably good chance of having the pattern published. The top five entries win a knit your own bear kit from a company that supplies alpaca wool. This is a pretty lame top prize in my estimation but anyone who manages to get their pattern published- and this was an undisclosed number of entries, would get £75 which is pretty sweet. And all the glory that comes from having your name in print of course. Also all entries will be shown at this years knitting shows so at the very least I would be able to visit one and see my entry on show to thousands of other people.
Hence the dragonfly picture. I only just got it done in time (there's nothing like pushing a deadline) as the closing date is this coming Friday but its now in the post and winging its way to the people in charge of the final decisions. Am pleased with the way that it turned out though there are of course one or two things that I would like to change with it. But then I figure that the standards aren't going to be super high as the competition is open to the general knitting community as a whole and I imagine that there are going to be some real shockers. I of course tried hard to make mine as life like and morphologically accurate as possible which has to count for something. I reckon there's going to be a few deformed pandas in there along with the inevitable sea dwelling creatures who technically wouldn't be needing too much space on the ark.
So now I just have to sit back and keep all my fingers and toes crossed that it will at least get published which would make me very very happy. You never know, maybe one day I will be a world famous knitwear designer and I will be able to look back on this as my first faltering footsteps into fame. Having said that , the amount of work it took to come up with a simple dragonfly design might be an indication that I'm still in need of a bit of practice when it comes to juggling needles and wool!