🥕 A perfect orange carrot: one of your 5-a-day 🥕

Long story short: I was staring idly at my stock of 4 ply wool thinking that I should make up a few unusual pieces to bring along to the wonderful WAWS Wool Show. The Tangerine Orange colour-way whispered carrot to me rather than tangerine. And a fun 40 minutes later a funky carrot was born.

Mr B,  who is at heart a very practical sort, wondered vaguely what anyone would do with a knitted carrot; he didn't reckon it would work in a casserole. Emi thought it looked prettier than a flower, which was nice, but still didn't quite answer the question.

I made another carrot, and thought about why anyone would need a knitted carrot ...

I'm using these ones to embellish some wire baskets that will hold balls of wool at the fair. So continuing with that decorative theme, I reckon that, if you slipped a tiny fridge magnet inside the back seam as you sew it up, the force of the magnet would work through the 4 ply fabric and you'd have a pretty nifty fridge magnet. I'm not an Amazon seller, but if you log on you can buy packs of 25 mini-magnets for about a fiver. Or, if you've got a plain tote bag for going to the market, a bunch of carrots would make a lovely embellishment. Heck, you could fix it with a safety pin to your lapel and call it jewellery! Mr B especially liked that explanation as it would cost a great deal less than what I normally call jewellery ...

So now that we've got that all cleared up, just read on for the pattern ...

Carrot body

Using Costa Brava 4 ply pure organic cotton yarn in our Tangerine colourway cast on 6 stitches (sts)  on 2.5 mm needles.

Row 1 (Right Side): Knit into the back and front (KBF) of each stitch (you will finish with 12 sts)
Row 2 and all even rows : purl
Row 3: *[KBF, K1]*. Repeat from * to * to end of row  (you will finish with 18 sts)
Work 5 rows in Stocking Stitch (knit right sides rows and purl wrong side rows)
Row 9: *[K1, K2 tog]*.  Repeat from * to * to end of row  (you will finish with 12 sts).
Work 5 rows in Stocking Stitch (knit right sides rows and purl wrong side rows)
Row 15: *[K2 tog, K1]*. Repeat from * to * to end of row  (you will finish with 8 sts)
Work 7 rows in Stocking Stitch (knit right sides rows and purl wrong side rows)
Row 23: *[K 2 tog]*. Repeat from * to * to end of row  (you will finish with 4 sts).
Work 7 rows in Stocking Stitch (knit right sides rows and purl wrong side rows)
Row 31: *[K 2 tog]*. Repeat from * to * to end of row  (you will finish with 2 sts).
Work the 2 stitches that remain in an i-cord for 4 rows.
Row 35: K 2 tog. Cast off leaving the cast off tail as the trailing, wispy root from the bottom of the carrot.

Sew up, stuffing with toy filler as you go.

Carrot leaves

(Knit 2)

Using Costa Brava 4 ply pure organic cotton yarn in our Green Bean colourway cast on 12 stitches (sts)  on 2.5 mm needles.
Row 1:  Knit into the front, the back and then the front again of each stitch. You will finish this row with 36 stitches.
Row 2: Cast off purl-wise, and sew in your loose end. Your leaf will miraculously cork-screw with very little encouragement given the crazy number of add-ons you've worked on the first row. Use your cast-on tail to sew the curly leaf to the top of your carrot.

All the best for now,

Bonny x