Tiger cowl & Ron Ron Tiger top

The inspiration for these two knitted pieces was a design for a coaster by my sister for the dearest little tiger, made with heat melt beads.

He was so cute that I decided I needed him on some garments – so I looked about for the right yarn (fortunately, this all coincided with the 2023 Australian Sheep & Wool Show, where all the best Australian yarn sellers come to show their wares). The ‘Spinifex’ range by Dyed by Hand Yarns included the most delicious green (Samphire), with slight colour variations, which I thought would lend itself well to the tiger. I chose a grey (Nevermore) as a contrast – this ended up as a contrast stripe in the Ron Ron Tiger top, while the cowl is made in Samphire alone. Julie also had the perfect mini skeins in a ‘Tough Stocking’ sock yarn in the requisite variegated orange (Gorgon’s Head), black (Nevermore) and undyed colourways.

The next step was to decide upon a base cloth stitch. Leafing through my stitch resources, I came across the linen stitch, which I promptly fell in love with when swatched up in the Spinifex yarn – so soft, drapey and with an intriguing texture reminiscent of a woven fabric. The other virtue of this stitch is that it will not curl at the edges at all.

I realised that, owing to the bars of yarn running across each knitted stitch, this stitch would not lend itself well to intarsia (knitting the tiger motif in using the different colours) – so I decided to turn my sister’s design into a cross stitch pattern, to be stitched on top of the knitting, with a tear-away stabiliser keeping it all in place as it was stitched. The results worked out as well as I had envisioned – and it was extremely satisfying to stitch – a win! Initially, I made the top as a sleeveless vest, but then found that it wasn’t something I was wanting to wear. I added a waistband, a neckband and little flutter sleeves, which did the trick – I started wearing mine constantly.

Later I made the cowl, as a way of using up the leftover yarn (although I did end up ordering one more skein of the green when adding the sleeves and waistband to the top – fortunately, a year later, it was still a perfect colour match).