Bandy Bandy

My latest snake pattern is a Bandy Bandy, Vermicella annulata. (Australia Reptile Online Database) This black and white snake lives on the Eastern side of Australia. It's a nocturnal, burrowing snake. The blunt tail and small head and eyes in combination with the high contrast bands confuse predators. When threatened it assumes an arching posture. It is in the family Elapidae, along with cobras. It has venom but not much is known about envenomation. It is known to cause localized symptoms if a bite occurs. (Queensland Museum)

My knit version is made in 100% cotton worsted weight yarn. I knit with much smaller needles than what is recommended for this yarn to get a dense fabric. The ventral side of the snake is worked in reverse stockinette and the dorsal side is stockinette. It's worked in the round on double pointed needles. I made a spreadsheet and filled the cells with gray and white to picture how it was going to look and wrote the instructions out row by row as a checklist.

After most of the snake is finished, cut a strip of white fleece fabric that rolls up to the right size to fit inside your snake.

If the width of fleece on the bolt is wide enough you only need to buy 1/4 yard.

Cut a rectangle that rolls up to the right size to fit inside the snake.  I cut off triangles to make tapered ends.

Sew a piece of nylon trimmer line inside the rolled up fleece filling.

I tapered the filler piece by cutting triangles off the end so when I sewed the exposed edge I sort of spiraled around. Fleece doesn't unravel so you don't have to turn under the edge. I cut a piece of nylon trimmer line to go inside the fleece filler. Then I pushed it into the body. I finished knitting working around that insert.

When I got almost to the end I cut the fleece and the cable and sewed some black fleece on top and closed up the fleece with needle and thread. 

I finished by grafting the stitches together with black yarn to make the blunt nose.

I worked out where they eyes should go just behind the white band on the nose. Bandy Bandy's have tiny eyes so I used 4 mm glass eyes from CR's Crafts. They're $0.70 for a package of two.  I bought them at the same time as those magnificent amber eyes for the Dugite scarf. These have a little wire loop embedded in the glass for sewing on.

And sewed the eyes on. I used the needle and thread to be sure to secure the fleece filling inside the head so it wouldn't twist around.

I decided to sell this pattern for $3. Here's the link to it on Ravelry. You can search Patterns for Bandy Bandy if you want to check it out later. Click here to Buy Now if you aren't a Ravelry member.