Thursday, 17 November 2011

FO Friday: I made a boob!

Friday again *gasp*, and this week there are a couple of Finished Objects to share.
First a quick ta-dah that completely got overlooked last week in all the Pixie Moon excitement! A friend published her first Ravelry pattern last week in time for Remembrance Day - a crochet poppy. A great little pattern - really easy to follow and very quick - this was made within half an hour including finding and sewing a brooch back onto it. It's a bit late for this year, but worth bookmarking.
I mentioned on Wednesday that I'd been reading an appeal from Catherine, who is about to qualify as a breastfeeding peer supporter for East Kent and is hoping that each of her fellow course graduates will be able to have a knitted breast for demonstration purposes. Breastfeeding rates in the UK are very disappointing, with Unicef reporting that only 35% of babies are exclusively breastfed at one week and this is down to 3% at five months.

Having struggled for over a week to get My Boy to feed properly while he was in the Special Care Baby Unit after birth, this is a cause that's close to my heart. Without support - for us in the form of some lovely midwives - it would have been so easy to give up and buckle under the considerable pressure to switch to formula feeding, which was not at all what I wanted to do. Thanks to the help we had, we went on to successfully and happily feed for his first year. 

After reading Catherine's post I couldn't stop thinking about it, and so I started looking for a pattern. There were already several to choose from but none I could find that met my criteria of wanting to knit one-piece, top-down and in the round. So I decided to make up my own "recipe" - here's the sample. 


 
The idea is that it can be customised to make different shapes, sizes and colours - just like real boobs. The recipe is available as a free Ravelry pattern here*. 

If you'd like to make any donations of knitted boobs (from any pattern), please feel free to send them to:
Catherine,
c/o Caterpillars Children's Centre,
Chart Road,
 Folkestone CT19 4PN.

The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted a few little changes to the blog this week, including a new page for my own patterns. Not much there yet, but I'm planning a few things so there should be more soon. There is one more little Finished Object this week, but I'll save that for Sunday's long overdue Year of Projects post. In the meantime, enjoy the other FOs over at Tami's Amis and have a LOVELY Friday! xxxx
*if you're not a member of Ravelry (if you can knit, you should be!) you can also access this recipe in Google Docs


20 comments:

  1. I'm not sure what is most amusing - knitted boobs (which are great) or the fact that you have made a "recipe" for boobs!

    I've seen these knitted for breast cancer purposes before, but breastfeeding support makes sense too.

    And would it be super creepy to say how lovely your boob looks?!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Sarah... what a lovely little boob! It's a great pattern too... I shall look forward to more patterns popping up... :)x

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a fine plump examle your breast is ;) I can't believe those words just left my keyboard but hey!
    I had a similar experience with my son while he was in SCBU for the first 2weeks. Brilliant cause.
    xxxx

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a great cause your supporting :) Thanks for sharing the final product and the story behind it. (I had to retype that sentence twice so it didn't read "thanks for your boob" haha).

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love your knitted boob! Breastfeeding stats in Australia are pretty poor too. I am trying to do my bit though. I am still feeding my 3 year old. Jacinta

    ReplyDelete
  6. Your poppy looks lovely, I saw that pattern on Ravelry but had already made one.
    I love your knitted boob, breastfeeding is so important any thing to help midwife promote and help explain how to do it can only help.
    I'd love to see the face of the person who opens all the posted boobs!!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Great boob, and a great cause! And, with a little color tweaking you could have a pretty awesome Halloween pumpkin. Boobs are so versatile! :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Just added that poppy to my Ravelry favourites, it's darling and I definitely want to make one ASAP.

    I wish I could knit and make a boob of my own, too. The cause is a good one, and fine, I just want to make one for the fun/giggle factor. ;) Yours looks like so much fun!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I can't believe you only started knitting at the beginning of this year! I've been knitting since I was 7yrs and still can't make my own patterns (or even use DPN's with confidence)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Crochet with Raymond18 November 2011 at 19:25

    fabulous! I will definitely make one of your boobs!

    ReplyDelete
  11. I love your boob! Thanks for sharing why the cause is so important to you and including the link to your pattern.

    ReplyDelete
  12. What a lovely boob and a great cause!

    ReplyDelete
  13. I love the poppy, gorgeous! I also think the knitted boob is a great idea and think I will try knitting some, so thanks for the info!

    ReplyDelete
  14. What a great cause. Wow; USA mums breasfeed all over the place here, some even over a year. I did w/both of my girls for 7 months. I wasn't blessed with a lot of milk.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Quite surprised at those low figures; I just about managed 6 months before I ran out of milk :-( I don't know who would choose to miss that, such a special bond ...

    ReplyDelete
  16. the knitted boob looks wonderful! I'm sort of amazed at those figures, though - in the US it's much higher: http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/faq/index.htm (I'm not a mom yet - but I did work at a daycare for 4 years.) I think your cause is definitely a good one!

    ReplyDelete
  17. I hope you enjoy reading your comments this week, because they made me laugh when I scrolled through them. There are plenty of "I love your boob" and "Great boob" Truly, it is a splendid boob, must be a "before" boob. I am behind your cause 100%, I breastfed twins, and my GP tried to tell me I wouldn't be able to do it. I set about proving him wrong, and I'm proud of it. Yay boobs!!

    ReplyDelete
  18. So many lovely comments - thank you all! And yes, Andria - yay for those boobs indeed!!!!

    (To be fair, I didn't want to put off potential breastfeeders by pointing out that after 3or 4 years of feeding it's possible to end up looking like the pre-stuffed version!!!!!)

    ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  19. Your boob is awesome! What a great cause :)

    ReplyDelete
  20. The boob has landed ;) and will be put to very good use. Thank you Sarah.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to comment, and being part of the Crafts from the Cwtch community

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
DISCLAIMER: Crafts from the Cwtch is part of the Deramores, Craftsy, Etsy, Creativebug and Amazon Affiliate programmes and works with a few carefully selected sponsors. Where posts or projects are sponsored, the opinions will always be entirely my own. You can find out more about affiliate links and blog sponsorship here.

Hello and welcome. If it's your first visit you may like to start with my most popular tips & tutorials, or the patterns. You can read more about me on the 'Hello' page and you may also like the CftC pages on Ravelry, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Etsy. I hope you enjoy your visit! Sarah
Follow

Never miss a post

Craftsy
Thank you for visiting these links. Further sponsor opportunities and details on affiliates are here.

................

As seen in...

Knit Now 50 Knit Now Cover 48 Let's Knit issue 80 Simply Knitting issue 115
Feel free to link to this blog, but please do not use any of my images without permission. Powered by Blogger.
Crafty Blogs
(based on today's UK hits only)

Archive