Porohita, Tapawhā, Pīwakawaka square
This year I've again been asked to design for the Friends Around the World Crochet Along. This year they are celebrating 5 years of the Facebook group so the CAL has been named "FATW5".
For this square I was inspired by a book my children love reading at the moment called “circle, square, moose” by Kelly Bingham. Since the moose is not found in New Zealand, I thought I’d take my idea and add a New Zealand spin on it. In the Māori language (Te Reo Māori), there are several words that can mean circle, square and fantail – presumably regional dialects. I chose porohita (circle), tapawhā (square) and pīwakawaka (fantail) as those are the three definitions that I first learned for the words. The pīwakawaka is a native bird with a tail that has fans out when it opens, hence the English name “fantail”. I have tried to photograph a fantail with its tail fully extended but they flit about so much it is tricky to do. The last week we have had a fantail visiting our garden and even with it flitting around close to my face I have not had much luck in getting good photos. The photos below are some of my attempts, note the motion blur on the photo with the tail fanning out, I think I need to try again with a higher shutter speed if it comes back to visit us again. The cheeky little fantail was very happy to sit on the clothesline about a metre away from me so I was pleased to be able to get one photo that was at least in focus even if you can't see the lovely tail feathers all spread out.
Although you can choose as many or few colours as you like when you make this square, I would recommend that you use at least 2 colours when making the tail for your pīwakawaka as it will look more effective. My original design was made with 2 colours as I played around with creating shapes.
Please note that when you download the pattern it will tell you that you can add it to your Ravelry library. I have not added this particular pattern to Ravelry so the button will not work. Some of my other patterns do link to Ravelry. The links to download the pattern can be found here:
Tania Leis has created videos for my square and you can find the links to her videos below: