I seem to have been absent from my blog for rather a long time. Oh dear. It's all the fault of the Long Covid which is living up to its name, getting on for five years now.
Anyway, I am still here and still working on new patterns, albeit rather slowly. Lately I've been concentrating on this one ...
Having designed bunting for Spring and Autumn, I was tempted to do a special one for Christmas too. I haven't forgotten about Summer and Winter; I shall do those at some point. All my bunting designs have a row of letter flags spelling out the season and another row of flags decorated with appropriate knitted motifs.
Can you spot the problem here? All the other seasons have six letters (unless you're American of course) but Christmas is nine letters long. That means an awful lot more knitting and designing. I couldn't bring myself to design Xmas Bunting though; it's really not the same.
Another problem was choosing my colour palette. For the other designs I've used two shades of three different colours. This time I decided I needed three shades of three colours which, of course, all had to go together nicely and preferably look at least a little bit festive. After much worry and confusion I finally came up with three shades of red, green and gold and then this happened ...
Stylecraft only went and brought out twenty new colours of my favourite range of yarn. I use their Stylecraft Special DK a lot, especially for this sort of pattern where you need little bits of lots of good colours. I keep some of every colour in stock and buy new shades as they come out. But twenty? All at once? So I decided to order ten to start with and then get the rest next time. I went for the brightest colours, partly because I was starting to wonder if there might be a better red and green in there for my bunting (which I was already half way through knitting but never mind).
From left to right and top to bottom, these ones are:
Poppy, Leaf, Nigella, Cinder Rose, Jade.
Aquamarine, Milky Tea, Pink Rhubarb, Mistletoe and Periwinkle.
There are some great names in there, aren't there? I think I might have to make something with Cinder Rose or Pink Rhubarb, just for the names.
Back to business though. The two that I had my eye on for my bunting were these two.
Leaf is a soft shade of green which fills in a gap in the range of greens in the range and as for Poppy ... I have been waiting for a paler red for years. After Lipstick, the next reds are really quite violently bright. I've tended to use Pomegranate instead which, although it's a pink, goes well with the Lipstick.
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See what I mean?
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These were my original colour choices for the Christmas Bunting ...
... and here they are with Poppy replacing Pomegranate and Leaf instead of the bright Grass Green ...
I thought the second one was better so, ignoring the bright green flags I'd already knitted, I knitted some more.
It was plain sailing after that for a bit as knitting the letters is quite straightforward and new ones don't take long to design.
The decorations for the plain flags weren't quite so easy. I made myself design and make one a day and, believe it or not, every single one took three to four hours to do. Yes, even the little presents which are just folded squares of knitting!
I tried just to use my set of nine original colours for the decorations with a few exceptions, notably black for faces and an orange for the snowman's carrot nose. By the way, it turns out that a carrot nose has to be positioned just so or it doesn't look right. Guess how I know that?
I also made an effort not to use too many extra things that people might not have like beads and buttons which means that there are a lot of french knots used, mostly for the baubles on the Christmas Tree. I like french knots.
As you can see though, I did use a sequin for the star on the top of the tree - one failed attempt at embroidering a tiny star sent me straight to the sequin box.
The decoration I was dreading most was the mini stocking (or three mini stockings as it turned out). I can knit stockings in the round easily enough but making a flat one was a bit daunting. In the end it wasn't too bad. I tend to try lots of complicated methods before finally realising that something simple is what's wanted and that's what happened here. Four short rows for the heel with no wraps and turns and it was sorted.
Once all the knitting was finally done, I just had to find long thin dowels to hang the bunting from. Did I say 'just'? For the seasonal ones, you only need 90 cm lengths of dowel so that's easy enough; for this one I needed lengths of over a metre and the next length I could buy was 2.4 metres! There was no way I was going to be able to carry two 2.4 dowels home without poking someone's eye out or breaking them - not to mention the fact that I can't breathe properly if I carry anything difficult or heavy. Luckily, my brother came to the rescue and went to the shop for me (B & Q, in case you're wondering).
With the writing on the top dowel and the pictures on the bottom, the whole thing is about 140 cm wide which still fits on a chimney breast (or it would if I could be bothered to hang it up). The dowels are tied together on the back of the bunting to keep everything in place. You may or may not be able to see the ties in this picture.
I've spent the last couple of weeks writing, proofreading, proofreading again ... and I've just managed to get the pattern ready to publish before Christmas. As normal, you can download it for free from my
ravelry shop. Something to put on your list for next Christmas perhaps?
Now that's done I can turn my attention to some of my long-neglected projects. I'm getting on with a garter stitch lace scarf that I started months ago and the last of my Ten Stitch Rectangle samples is on the blocking board so that pattern will be done next month I hope.
I've also been working on some other Christmas crafts but, for obvious reasons, I can't show you those yet. This year I decided it was time to make my own crackers which it took me ages to work out how to do; it'll be easier next year though.
I'll tell you what's in them after Christmas. I also made some Christmas hats to go with them (they're too bulky to fit in the crackers). The paper ones you normally get are too small and they tear; these ones should last.
The pattern is a free one from
Waves and Wild and it comes in sizes ranging from baby up to large adult. I adapted the method after the first one to make it easier to sew. The two key secrets to success are a good interfacing - I used Vilene H250 - and sewing the zigzag seam twice to strengthen those points when it comes to turning the hats right side out. This was a revelation to me and definitely a trick I shall remember for the future.
I also made my Christmas cards, this year using scraps of fabric and the Crumb quilting method.
I shall definitely be using this technique again. Such pretty fabric made up of strips pulled out of my scrap basket (okay, baskets - who's counting?). Then there was the afternoon I made a ridiculous number of gift tags from card, felt and stickers.
In case you're wondering just how many people I give Christmas presents to, I often give several small presents, rather than one big one. Since having my craft stuff organised, it's so much easier to find things for little projects like this.
It is starting to look festive here now, no thanks to me though. My daughter came to my rescue and put up my decorations for me (and has promised to take them down again afterwards too). I really couldn't manage it this year.
I think I told you about our relatively recent family tradition of making advent jigsaws for each other so that you have a section of it to put together every day. Mine is such a lovely picture this year and it's also got all sorts of unusual shaped pieces which makes it fun to do. It's really coming together now.
I hope I'll be back here again before Christmas but who knows? If not, I wish you all a very happy and peaceful Christmas with lots of knitting / crochet / sewing time.
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