Halloween's coming

Amazingly enough despite my post title, it seems the supermarkets have skipped Halloween and gone straight to Christmas! I went to look for Cadbury's screme eggs and couldn't find any yet, but could find Christmas chocolates! So I settled for a Kinder egg.
Anyway, in preparation for Halloween, and after the success of the glow in the dark ghost, I have made him some friends to keep him company.

Happy Halloweeeeeeen!

We have a pumpkin with twirly tendrils and a bat - all ready for some screme eggs (or Kinder eggs).
The basic body is the same for both the bat and pumpkin.
You need double knit yarn and 4mm needles.
With the yarn double - knitting two strands at the same time - cast on 25 stitches.
Keeping the two strands garter stitch 15 rows and then cast off.
For the tendrils I used 3mm needles and one strand of yarn (as normal).
Now, there are two versions of the tendrils as I experimented for the best twirl. One is very simple, the other more complicated. I actually tried about five different versions, including knitting two stitches together and purling, but these two were the best.

easy tendrils

For the easy tendrils cast on between 10 to 20 stitches - I knitted mine in various lengths to add to the effect. Then cast off, leaving the last stitch on the needle. Use this stitch to cast on some more stitches and then cast off again, leaving the last stitch to cast on some more. You can do this as many times as you like, depending on how 'hairy' you want your pumpkin to be!
For the trickier version, this is the one on my pumpkin and is far curlier.
Again cast on some stitches as with the easy version. Then, knit into the front and back of the first stitch, so that there are now two stitches on your needle, cast off one of these, leaving you with one stitch on your needle.
Knit into the front and back of the next stitch, three stitches on your needle. Cast off two of these, leaving one stitch on your needle ( take the middle stitch over the stitch closest to the tip, then the end stitch over, as in a normal cast off). Continue to the end, keeping the last stitch as your new casting on stitch. This gives a lovely curl!
To make up - fold the body in half and sew down either side. Sew on two googly eyes and the curls on the top.
For the bat, I did the same but in black yarn. No tricky knitting here at all, for the wings I cut a piece of black felt into a bat wing shape and sewed it onto the back of the body.
Pickle-Lily is making rude comments about how weedy the ghost looks as I type, but I only bought one egg!