More Christmas Gifts

First I'd like to say welcome to new followers and thank everyone for their lovely comments. A few have asked for the washcloth pattern so I'll get that done as soon as I can.

 

I wanted to make something a bit special for a special girl so here's what I've done; a tam, a scarf and a rose brooch. The tam is the same as my black one (see here) but is done using Stylecraft's new Alpaca DK yarn which is 80% acrylic and 20% alpaca. I've used the Orchid, a lovely soft pink, for the tam and worked it with the King Cole Cosmos yarn to give it all the sparkle.

 

Aside 1: In Northern Ireland, all females are called girls, regardless of age.

Aside 2: If you looked back at the link above you will also have seen a hat I knit for the husband. Well I wasn't happy with it so I ripped most of it back and did it again. It now looks much better. The husband didn't mention a thing about it because he says he knew I would find it so annoying that I would eventually fix it!

 

 

Ingrid showed us the Queen Anne's lace scarf on her blog a while back. I really liked it so decided to give it a go. The pattern is easy to learn and works up really quickly. With the Stylecraft Alpaca Orchid yarn, I used Stylecraft Alpaca Tweed DK, which is 20% alpaca, 77% acrylic and 3% viscose, in Emperor and Plum. Starting with the Orchid, I worked sections of ten fans in each colour and made a total of ninety fans. This made the scarf quite long so it can be wrapped round several times.

As a little finishing touch I made this rose from my 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet book by Lesley Stanfield. I crocheted a small circle to cover the back, where the rose is coiled up, and added a brooch pin.

For the gifts above I had bought two balls of the Orchid (and I still have more than half a ball left) and a ball each of the Emperor and Plum. So I made two more Queen Anne scarves; one using the Plum and the other using the Emperor. I crocheted until there wasn't enough yarn left to make another fan. Here are the results ...

I think they look really nice and the yarn feels very soft and warm. These will be given along with the washcloths I told you about in my last post. Ah! There were three washcloths in the last post and there are only two scarves. That's because I'm weaving a third scarf on my peg loom. Hopefully it will soon be finished and I can let you see it too.

It's beginning to look a little bit like Christmas now. Just a bit. Even though I've been making gifts and decorations for a while now, I still didn't feel at all Christmassy. I didn't tell you about baking my cakes, did I? Every year I bake two Christmas cakes. One is a standard rich fruit cake and the other is based on the same recipe but using more exotic dried fruits such as pineapple, coconut, mango and whatever else takes my fancy. I'd better stop talking about cake!! It's making me hungry and it's too soon to tuck into Christmas cake just yet.

Hope you are all having fun making for Christmas or out shopping for Christmas. Bye for now.

Small Gifts

Before going any further I want to thank you all for your kind and very thoughtful comments about my experience with the car. I am truly thankful. Just as I am truly thankful that the situation didn't end up being much worse. Thanks, too, for the comments on my hedgehogs. They were fun to make and I can't wait to get at least one owl made. I'm being put off making an owl by the fact that I now only have green tinsel yarn and I just can't imagine a green owl. Maybe I need to pay a visit to the yarn shop and buy some more of the tinsel yarn; white or silver would be nice, methinks.

Anyway, to get back to the post in hand. This is about some little gifts I've made for Christmas. When I was on holiday recently on the Isle of Skye (you can read about it here, here, here and here) I bought some hand crafted soap from the Isle of Skye Soap Company in Portree. I thought it would be nice to make some washcloths to go with the soaps and use as Christmas gifts. The yarn I chose is King Cole Bamboo Cotton DK which is made from 100% natural fibres making it a good choice for delicate skin. For two of the cloths I used the Ice colour.

There are plenty of patterns about for washcloths but, not wanting to actually get off my seat and go to look for my pattern book, I just decided to make it up. I made a chain as wide as I thought was necessary and then worked one row split stitch and one row double crochet until it was long enough to make a square. Then I worked a row of double crochet right round the edge. The split stitch gives it a nice texture. Look, here they are again with one of the leaves I've been making.

Now I had some more of this bamboo cotton yarn in my stash; Green and Dusty Pink (at least, I think those are the colours - I've thrown out the ball bands). Not enough of either colour to do another washcloth so I used both colours and made this ...

The middle is about three quarters the width of the Ice washcloths. I worked until the piece was square and then did a row of double crochet right round. Next I did a row of split stitch and a row of double crochet in the Green, repeated that with the Dusty Pink and then did a final row of Green shells.

Don't forget I'm using UK crochet terminology so read single crochet instead of double crochet if you use US terminology.

Maybe I should write up the pattern for you in another post. What do you think?

That's enough for now, I think. I have some more gifts to show you another time. The snowflakes will have their own post and so will the other Christmas decorations. I'm really enjoying making them all! All the best for now and please feel free to leave me a comment.

Nearly forgot! Before I go, have a look at some of the roses in my garden. Some are starting to look a bit sad, what with all the rain we've been having.

Some are just perfect still!

This one was only planted in the summer.

There's just something special about a perfect rose, isn't there?