Kabocha (かぼちゃ)

I'm in the midst of gathering my Christmas gift for a friend of mine.  She lives in Japan and loves Halloween items.  Unfortunately, many of the Halloween items we have here in the US are large, (more importantly) heavy, and unwieldy (and/or fragile) to ship from here to Japan.  Plus, it's not that cute.   I've made my friend some practical knitted items in Christmas pasts but she refuses to use it outside her home so I got to thinking: "Hmmmm .... what if I made some pumpkins (aka kabochas (かぼちゃ)) for her instead of trying to find nice, small (light & non-fragile) ones?"  Hence, a portion of her Christmas gift was born! 

I scoured what I had as well as through the internet and found two (2) contenders:
Contender #1: Knitted Pumpkins by Anne Potter:
When I first saw this pattern, I saw how Anne had made a small/tiny pumpkin into a candy holder and I thought: "OMG!!! This is perfect!  She l-o-v-e-s tiny things!"  So, I began to make it (using my mystery cream yarn), only to realize, that it was too tiny for me to put the food item I intended to put in there (short bread cookies).  It really was suited for small items like candy corn or regular milk M&Ms (which she doesn't care for).  So, I ripped it out (don't worry - it was only a few rows) and started again - this time making the medium size.  It was perfect - it fits the cookies I was planning on (also) giving her.😄  I finished it in three (3) days.

Contender #2: Spicy Knit Pumpkins by Red Heart:
I found this pattern and saw that it was 1) knit in the round and 2) used the chevron stitch - #2 won me over.  I've been thinking about using this stitch pattern on something else I wanted to make in the house and here was my chance to try it out!  (Plus, it was knit in the round - how could I go wrong?).  Initially, I was going to make it in one (1) (solid) colour but then, I was "suddenly" gifted with a butt-load(!) of black yarn.  As I was starting this pattern, I thought: "Hey!  I have all this black yarn and it seems that this season black and white pumpkins are all the rage so ... Hmmmm ...." So ... I (tried to) follow the instructions and ... my pumpkin came out more as a horror than a cute pumpkin! 😒  I ripped it out, went onto the web to see if there was an errata for this pattern but found Contender#3 instead.

Contender #3: Marly Bird's Knit Pumpkin:When first looking at the pattern, it seemed easy enough but what really caught me was the cute little vine and that it came in an extra small size!  I pulled out my leftover Malabrigo Rios Yarn Fresco Y Seco and just went to town with it.  I casted on and finished it in an hour (ok, possibly an hour and a half).  I was so shocked at how quick it was (well, not really - knitting with Malabrigo Rios is a dream; I L-O-V-E this yarn and almost feel tempted to own every single damn colour of it!😉).  I stuffed it with the black "gifted" yarn and took out my camo sock yarn for the leaf portion and voilà! it was done.  It came out so well, that I was very tempted to make a whole pumpkin patch worth! 😮🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

Here's what the kabochas look like:

I hope she enjoys them! 😊