Knitted Daffodils for Irish Cancer Society

Each year in Ireland, daffodils are sold in every street corner to help raise money for Irish Cancer Society.

This year I found this blog post on Michelle Made This where you can find instructions on how to knit daffodils and the details on how to forward them to Irish Cancer Society so that they can be sold to help them raise money for their organisation.

So far I have knitted 11 daffodils, and I plan to make some more in the next two weeks which I will bring to the coffee morning in Roscommon on March 14th, unless I can find somewhere closer. I haven't contacted them yet (I have a bit of a phone phobia, and try avoiding making phone calls whenever possible, unless it's for a job that pays me to use the phone or a medical emergency). For more more information on any local events you can contact Irish Cancer Society on 1850 60 60 60.

Here's what I made so far:

Knitted Daffodils for Irish Cancer Society

I used the knitted pattern which can be downloaded for free here with a few changes in order to avoid bits of fiddly sewing:

• To make the trumpet, instead of casting off after the last row of petals where you get 7 stitches, I knit one row with one increase in each stitch: kfb (knit front and back of each stitch), which gives me 14 stitches. I can then knit the 4 rows of the trumpet and cast off before closing the daffodil, which does involve minimal sewing.
• In order to make the stem, I turn the closed daffodil on its back and pick up 5 stitches, trying to get them from around the middle, and evenly spaced to try and include one from each petal, then I use the i-cord method to knit the stem using green yarn - you can do this using 2 double pointed needles or 1 circular needle: once you have knit the first row, slide the stitches to the other side of the needle and knit the new row; you will need to knit the first stitch of each rows quite tight to avoid a gap and after a few rows you will start seeing a small tube shape. When you get to the length you want (I knit until I have an 8cm long stem), no need to cast off, just cut the yarn leaving a 8 cm tail, insert the yarn tail in a tapestry needle and thread through all 5 stitches starting from the stitch furthest to your yarn and make a knot to secure. Hide the tail inside the stem (I try bringing it up all the way to the top of the stem to make the stem a bit stronger).
• Add a safety pin. I'm afraid my safety pin doesn't look as neat as I would like it too, but this will not show once the daffodil is worn:

Back of knitted daffodil

The daffodils may look a bit complicated for beginners but they are actually very easy and I find them almost addictive to knit.

I'll get back to knitting some more next week, as I am busy crocheting a few bits which I can't share yet for my daughter's birthday party (which is coming closer than I thought since I realised there were only 28 days in February!) and I also need to sew the blue cabled cardigan I finished last week and gave myself today's deadline to do (5 pieces of knitted cardigan pieces aren't doing anyone any good when they're left in a shopping bag!).

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