Friday 12 January 2018

FO Friday: The December round-up

December got rather busy and I missed out of writing several FO Fridays, so here is a round-up of all the things I finished in late-November and December!


Merry Christmas hooped embroidery
First up we have a Merry Christmas hooped embroidery. I bought the kit for this at the end of 2016, thinking it would be a nice quick project. One Sunday afternoon I sat down to work on it and very quickly realised that it might not be quick as quick as I had hoped!

Firstly, I had to sort the thread colours myself, and the lack of light in November made it quite difficult to distinguish five shades of green. I suspect that I didn't quite get it right as I ended up with one spare shade...

The next problem was following the chart: the chart had both symbols and colours, which should have been fine, but the regions of green were very scattered and I found it really hard to keep track of what went where. I had done about half the kit when I realised that the first half didn't line up with the second, at which point I took a photo of the chart and printed it out in greyscale as large as I could. I then coloured each square as I checked that it was correct. A little bit time consuming, but it did mean I only had to unpick a few stitches rather than the whole lot.

And when I finally got onto the outlining I discovered that the photo on the front and the chart didn't actually match! And I ran out of black thread... So I improvised a merge of the two and I think it turned out pretty cute! The final hoop was sent to my advent calendar secret Santa swapee. I am hoping to do some more cross stitch this year, but I'm going to be a bit more careful on choosing the kit!

 
 
 
 

Alice's Christmas stocking
A few years ago I made a stocking for a friend's daughter, and last year she had a second daughter and requested a matching stocking. It took me a little hunting to find my original notes, but once I had this was a lovely project. I knitted it in Drops Alaska, which is fabulously woolly, and the yarn comes in perfectly festive shades of red and green. There will eventually be a pattern for this, but I want to make a few modifications so keep your eyes peeled.



Nordic gnome
This was one of my favourite projects of last year, and definitely not one I was planning to make. During the Giftalong, these little gnomes kept popping up in the finished object thread and I fell totally in love with them. The pattern is Never Not Gnoming by Sarah Schira, and it's a super-quick knit - I finished this one in a couple of evenings using the leftovers from the stocking.

 

Advent calendar socks
Last year I took part in a secret Santa advent calendar swap, and over the course of December I knitted this pair of scrappy socks. I am not necessarily a fan of scrappy socks, so I decided to stripe the calendar yarn with a neutral (West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4 ply in Milk Bottle), but this did mean that I had quite a lot of knitting to do each day, and got several days behind, hence there being only one pair of socks, featuring rather fewer than 24 colours! I did enjoy making these though, so might make another pair in the future.


1 comment:

  1. Love the gnome. I could knit a huge one and it could keep the animal heads company...

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