New designs: Mr. Happy and Little Miss Sunshine Christmas stockings

Do you remember that heatwave we had in the summer? Well, when all the sensible people had put down their knitting and were heading to the beach, I was hiding indoors (it was unbearably hot for most of the third trimester of my pregnancy) and knitting these beauties: Mr. Happy and Little Miss Sunshine stockings.

Image copyright Practical Publishing

The Mr. Men and Little Miss characters have long been favourites of mine, so I was delighted when I was asked to design these stockings – their bright colours and bold lines translate perfectly to intarsia. To make them extra special, I included a couple of three-dimensional finishing touches: Little Miss Sunshine's pigtails are made from plaits, and Mr. Happy's hat is finished with a mini pom pom (top tip here: make a bigger pom pom and trim it down; this approach is much less fiddly than making a tiny pom pom!). If you love both characters, or can't decide which one to knit, why not knit Mr. Happy on one face of the stocking and Little Miss Sunshine on the other?

The stockings are knitted flat from the top down and combine stranded and intarsia colourwork: the snowflake panels are knitted using stranded colourwork and the characters knitted using the intarsia technique. The heel is knitted using short rows. Once the knitting is complete, the name is added using duplicate stitch and the stocking is seamed.

The patterns for the stockings are included with print copies of the current issue of Knit Now magazine (Issue 94),* and the patterns include full alphabets for you to personalise your stockings. I would love to see your finished stockings, so why not post them on Instagram and tag me (@vikkibirddesigns), or add a Ravelry project page and link it to the pattern page?**

The stockings are knitted in Hayfield Bonus DK,** a cheap and cheerful 100% acrylic yarn that comes in a myriad of colours.

*Note that for licensing reasons, the patterns are not included with international or digital copies of the magazine. This issue goes off sale tomorrow (Wednesday 31st October 2018), but you can order a copy via MoreMags.

**Mr. Happy stocking Ravelry page; Little Miss Sunshine stocking Ravelry page

***Affiliate link.

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.

Yarning Along: Best get the fire on

Hello! How have you been? With all my Gift-A-Long posts, I missed Yarning Along last week, and I missed not writing it. Today it is freezing, so I'm trying my hardest to get away with being snuggled up indoors away from the sleet.

The past week has been *so* busy. I spent 36 hours in London at the end of last week for an event with Love Crafts (which deserves its own post at a later date), and managed to sneak in a trip to the Tower of London, which has been on my to do list for a very long time. I loved it and was so glad it occured to me to go. I joined one of the Yeoman (beefeater) tours, which was very informative and entertaining. I learnt lots of facts to pass on to my Tudor-obsessed six year old, and found my dream home (the old hospital building). I felt a bit like a kid in a sweet shop as there were so many amazing things to look at.

Of course I got a lot of knitting done on the train (especially as the first train was running an hour behind schedule), and my Christmas socks are finally looking like they might be done in time for Christmas (but not the end of November, which was the original plan). The other project I am trying my hardest to get finished is the Christmas stocking I'm knitting for a friend's daughter. The outside is, as of last night, done, but I need to knit a lining as well, which is less interesting, but perfect for knitting while watching TV.

I am still reading Into The Water, mostly from lack of reading time (the lack of daylight at this time of year always makes me sleepy), and am finding it very interesting and well written. I am considering reading something Christmassy over advent. Any recommendations? Otherwise I'll be reading Cheer Up Love: Adventures in Depression with the Crab of Hate by Susan Calman next as it was a Kindle bargain last week.

This week's elephant in the room is my kid's advent calendars. I bought two kits from Button Box in the January sales, with the intention of making them with the kids in time for advent this year. But I totally misjudged the difficulty level. These are definitely kits for adults to make for their children, unless the kids are over about 10. There is a lot of sewing involved, lots of cutting out fiddly shapes and frankly they're on the tricky side. I'm going to dig out the ones from the cupboard (the Paintbox Yarns calendar from last year has an excellent box, and we have a felt one with pockets from M&S that I had pre-children) and hope they're not too disapppointed. The other option is to sew a pocket a day and by the end of December we'll have an advent calendar. No, I don't see that happening either!

Linking up with Rachel for Yarning Along. What are you crafting on and reading this week?

Yarning Along: Christmas craft excitement

This weekend I took a bit of a break from knitting (I had a sore shoulder and elbow, so decided that knitting might not be the best plan. Turns out it was a trapped nerve, which fixed itself pretty quickly), so got started with a couple of festive activities. You may remember that last year I made my own yarn advent calendar. Well this year I am making a yarn advent calendar, but it's not for me: I am taking part in a yarn advent calendar swap organised by layfamilyyarn on Instagram. So I spent the weekend stamping number stitckers, winding minis and wrapping tiny parcels, which was all a lot of fun. I also took a walk to a local Christmas craft fair, which is always lovely and very festive. I didn't actually buy very much, just a Christmas present for a Secret Santa that I'm involved with this year, but I always enjoy browsing craft fairs.

Another thing I worked on this weekend was the cross stitch wreath I have been sewing. I'm sure that when I bought the kit I thought I could do it in an evening. How wrong I was! Last week I realised I has misaligned one side of the wreath by a couple of stitches, so did a huge amount of unpicking. I was finding the chart that came with the kit too small to follow easily, so I decided to take a photo of the chart and print it out much larger. This was an excellent plan as not only can I now see the stitches to work from, I can also colour them in as I go, which makes the chart much easier to follow! Why didn't I think of that before? I am a little concerned that I have a whole length of thread that is a slightly different shade of green to all the others, but that I have assigned yarn to each of the symbols already, so may have done something wrong. I'm pretty certain it doesn't matter...

Back on knitting, I am making good progress with my Christmas socks, and love how the stripes are developing. Other than those I am currently between projects, which can only mean one thing: tonight I get to cast on the Christmas stocking! I'm quite excited about this project, and finally got round to writing the pattern up this morning, so should be able to publish the pattern in time for next Christmas if not this.

I'm still reading Into the Water and enjoying it, even though I'm not that far in. The story revolves around the drowning pool, which, as the name suggests, is where many people have drowned, and the unexpected death of a local author who was writing about the pool. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character, and the narrative jumps around in time. I'm finding the writing style really engaging.

Stocking yarn and the current read. And fairy lights. I bought them a couple of weeks ago, and now they're out of the box, expect them to appear in far too many of my photos!

What are you crafting on and reading this week?