It all started on Instagram on a cold December evening. As I was going through my feed, I came across one of these ‘one photo a day’-type challenges, something I never take part in, but this one was different. The wonderful Lindsay from Em & Sprout (who I interviewed before, read the post here) came up with a fun challenge to draw one different animal a day throughout the month of January. I LOVE animals, but I can’t draw, so instead I thought this project would be a great way to develop my chart design skills. For those of you who are not familiar with chart design, this is what we knitters use to create a pattern. This was also a great opportunity to discipline myself in a month where I would probably get a bit lazy.

So every day, I ‘doodled’ the animal on graph paper, then knitted it as a square and posted the image on IG. Not only was I amazed at how much people liked them, but I discovered many talented drawers/illustrators. You can see all the photos from the challenge by searching for the hashtag #animaldoodleaday on Instagram.

Here are my animal squares:

This challenge turned into something much bigger than I expected! Due to the huge interest my animals received, I decided to make the patterns available as an ebook so anyone can use them to make their own cute animal squares.

You can buy the the pattern for my 30 animal squares in my Etsy shop, on Ravelry and Craftsy. If you’re only interested in one or a few animals, just contact me by email at julietheknits@gmail.com and we’ll work something out :)

A lot of you have also been asking what will become of my squares. I have sewn them together and framed them. As there were only prototypes I didn’t want to make a blanket as it would be of no use. This framed knit would look lovely in a child’s bedroom, but this one will stay in my knitting room for now :)

Don’t forget to share your pics with me if you have knitted your own animal squares!

Click here to check out my other patterns :)

UPDATE: You can now buy individual patterns of my animal squares on Etsy!

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