The March

The simple part of it is that there is a pattern for you to knit your own knitted marcher who can march for a cause of your choice.
After mainly hanging around in my front garden.....

The Marchers went off into the metropolis of Northwich to march along Whitton Street as part of national Yarn Shop day. The flags they all bore started off blank but but the end of the day people had added their ideas about thinks they would bother to march for.

The marchers have become slightly distracted from marching by a new commission. 4 of them are being employed to make up the numbers on a project called Knit A Year. With a little assistance they will be knitting their moods and blogging about it on www.knitayear.ning.com . You can witness their exploits and if you want to talk to them you can sign up to become a members of the knit a year site. Usually flexible in their personal traits and views they will be taking on characters inspired by the Knitting project for the next few weeks. They will then be appearing as part of the Inspired By Knit a Year exhibition at The Brindley Arts Centre in Runcorn in November.

What a motley crew!!

 The Marches time with the Knit a Year Project is coming to an end. They have knitted, blogged, staged a mini exhibition and now they are all set to feature in The Brindley Arts Centre Exhbition running from the 29th November to 10th January.

After hanging around in their undies eating cheesy wootsits for a while the marchers gained a new purpose when they attended a demo against Fracking in Frodsham. From a facebook post 42 people said that they would like a knitted person to represent them and say NO to fracking. Unfortunatlely the numbers took me by suprise and I could only locate 7 marchers. It would be great to have one person per request so if you fancy knitting a person to donate to this cause the pattern is below.

Marcher Pattern

Equipment

Whatever needles you can spare. (You will use them to support your finished marcher)

Neutral colour yarn of any kind

Big eyed needles to sew it together

Head

Cast on 10 stitches

Knit each row

Knit 27 rows

Cast off

To make the head shape

Sew together the cast off and cast on edges

Choose an end of the tube to sew up first

Using running stitch sew up and pull tight to gather it into the top of a head shape

Turn inside out

Stuff the head

Sew the bottom of the head up in the same way as the top. Leave a tail of wool to attach it to the body.

Body

Cast on 20 stitches

Knit Each Row

Knit 35 rows

Cast off

To make the body shape

Sew together the cast off and cast on edges

Choose an end of the tube to sew up first

Using running stitch sew up and pull tight to gather it into the top of a body shape

Turn inside out

Stuff the body

Sew a stitch in bottom of the body where the groin will be which pulls the front and back bottom together. This should leave two holes for the legs to go in like you get with a Barbie doll.

Arms

Cast on 5 stitches

Knit each row

Knit 40 rows

Pull thread through stitches on needles and tie off tight to create a pointed hand

To make the Arm shapes

Start at the hand end

Fold the arm in half and sew together close to the edge

The arms are too thin to turn inside out so they stay this way around

Legs

Cast on 7 stitches

Knit each row

Knit 40 rows

Cast off

To make the leg shapes

Start at the foot end

Fold the arm in half and sew together

Turn inside out

Stuff

To make the foot turn up the end of the leg and sew it to rest of leg with a few stitches (tip. if you sow through what will be the bottom of the foot and go back to here with your last stitch you can hide the cut thread ends under the foot)

To Sew it all together

Sew head on first (try to get the seams all at the back)

Sew Right arm on to body so that it hangs down

Sew left arm on to body so that it is raised in the air

Push each leg into the holes in the body and sew all around.

Push one needle through mans head, down back and out of well …his bum

Sew left hand around the other needle and then push the end of the needle into his leg …EKKKK.

Use his banner stick to feature a banner for anything you think he should march for, world peace, fluffy bunnies, more cake and less homework …..