Carrots and Broccoli

Some artists paint a series of pictures.  I’m working on a series of knit food.  It’s…almost art.  Kinda.  Right?

Ok, so no.  But it’s fun!

I decided to tackle broccoli after the carrots.  I’d seen versions where the crown of the broccoli were knit balls.  But the crown of broccoli isn’t smooth, it’s bushy.  How else to get that look but pom-poms?  (Plus, pom-poms allowed me to add another yarn color for some variety.)

Before I got there, however, I had to figure out how to knit the stem and the branches to which I’d attach the pom-poms.  The stem wasn’t hard–just a knit tube.  The bottom was a challenge.  I wanted it to be as flat as possible to avoid any possible…unfortunate comparisons once I started attaching the pom-poms.

At the halfway point, it didn’t look promising.

However, I persevered–and I think the final product makes for some acceptable broccoli:

I thought the hardest part would be figuring out all of the stems, but they actually came together quite nicely.  Designing them was easier than knitting them, but only because I ended up with very small circles in a tight space.  I did shift to I-cord at the end, which worked beautifully.

Just attach pom poms, and you’re ready to go!  Of course, I’ve never made a pom-pom before, so I needed a good tutorial.  I found just what I needed here, on TECHknitting(TM). I’ve seen TECHknitter‘s highly educational posts on Ravelry, so as soon as I saw that blog come up in the search results, I knew it was the way to go.  That said, I didn’t actually use her helpful tutorial (this time–I’ll definitely keep it in mind for the future); I used one of the tips from the comments sections.  I needed relatively small pom-poms, and they were going to be difficult to obtain using cardboard forms (the cardboard circles were going to need to be rather small), so I just wrapped the yarn around my fingers or the tip of an interchangeable needle (DPNs would have worked too, but I didn’t have any of those handy in the size I needed).

Just a note:  the pom-poms make this pattern inappropriate for very young children, because the strands of yarn in the pom-pom are loose and can be pulled out.  It would be perfect for an older child who won’t eat the yarn…and if the pom-poms do accidentally get a little thin, you can always cut the old one off and make and attach a new one!

If you feel the need for a little yarny broccoli in your life you can download the pattern here or ravel it!

And here’s a special bonus: more carrots!

I’ve now worked out the pattern for 3 different sizes and put them into a .pdf file. Get your carrots here or ravel it!