Red Admiral Butterfly Giveaway

Photographing some real butterflies on my holiday got me to looking at my two butterfly patterns: Red Admiral Butterfly and Monarch Butterfly. I am thinking about designing a new butterfly, but in the meanwhile I decided to knit and rephotograph the Red Admiral. This was one of my first patterns, and photos were taken before I got my present camera. The camera helps, but I also think I have learned a few tricks about getting the lighting and setting right.
 

This Red Admiral was much easier to photograph than those on Dartmoor. I have also retyped and published the pattern, as I have changed my method of writing colourcharts.  

While looking at real and photographs of Red Admiral Butterflies, I also realized that a they have a brown underside on their lower wings, so in my aim to be really, really accurate have added instructions to make the butterfly this way. In the original pattern I knitted them with coloured wings underneath, and if you were making it for a mobile, where it would be viewed from below, you might still like to do it this way.

I have had a number of trips to my local park to photograph the new butterflies, and as the summer flowers start to fade have felt under a bit of time pressure.

If you want to enter my Giveaway you need to tell me what is wrong with the Red Admiral Butterfly in the first three photos. I would love to say that I had made some deliberate errors, but alas I just didn't look at pattern carefully enough. There are two mistakes, which you might notice I put right in the butterflies further down the page! Could you also tell me your favourite species of butterfly, or if you are a knitter the one you would most like to make? The winners will be drawn at random from all the correct entries. 

There will be two prizes, my knitted butterflies, so let me know if you have a preference for the one with brown underwings or the other. Winners will be contacted on 2nd October. There are no restrictions on where you live. You can enter either in the comment section of this blog, or by leaving a comment on my Ginx Craft facebook page. Also there are no conditions about following my blog or Ginx Craft on facebook, but of course I would love it if you did. 

Don't you hate those quizes where the answer is really obvious! I do, although I am not going to be too strict about the knitting errors question, so why not have a go? I especially would like to know your favourites butterflies. To make the competition a little bit harder I will not publish any comments with answers to the question until the result is announced. 

Beach Crop Top

Sometimes as a mum you feel that you just can't win. I really wanted to knit something for my daughter, but a nice poloneck or cardigan just wouldn't do (her words). So something young and funky (my words not hers, apparently young people don't say funky). I decided to make a crop top that she could wear on the beach. (We did actually have one day at the beach on our holiday, and all swam in the sea, even me!) 

I was really quite pleased with this little halter neck top, which I have made up as I went along. I can't quite decide whether to type it up as a pattern. As soon as you get into clothing there is the problem of offering various sizes. At the moment it is just notes on a scrappy bit of paper, which is cut to the same shape as the top. Perhaps I will leave this for some winter evenings, as it is not really the time of year for folk to start to knit a beach top (except in Australia).

But her verdict is it is far too small!!! This from the girl that it has taken me half a year to persuade that she needed some longer school skirts. (Ha, ha - I have just won on that argument.) I can't quite understand it, as it is much more discrete than any bikini top. I think the real problem may be that it is woollie. 

So my reluctant model may not even give me permission for this post. I keep telling her that hardly anyone looks at my blog. We will have to see ....