During the last months the clacking of my knitting needles has become the background music of our autumn evenings. Some finished knitting project always lay out for blocking, and the pile of small handmade presents grew. Now, at the beginning of December the last piece has been bound off. A wooly handmade Christmas lays ahead when it comes to my gifts. Already all gifts prepared? For some, this may sound perhaps a bit overambitious. But this year is a special one and December will be mostly filled with renovating and packing moving boxes, and some work 😉
I’m not overly good in coping with stress, so my well approved strategy to escape stress is to be well organised in the first place to avoid stressful situations to occur, you could call this a “pre-stress release”. In this case the effect is even doubled, cause the monotony of knitting itself brings calmness to me.
For all of you who don’t move into a new home in pre-Christmas time there is of course still plenty of time to create some handmade gifts, f. ex. one (or more) of these beanies. I made those for the toddlers and kids around, but they’re easily adjustable to adult size.
The different yarns I used for the beanies are all fingering to sport weigth, knitted with 3-3,5 mm needles (US: 3-4).
For the Cable Lines Hat designed by Leila Raabe for “Making No.4 / LINES” first of all I had to search for my cable needles that I hadn’t used for ages. I got used to it again although cable knitting probably won’t become my favourite technic. But I do like the outcome!
I discovered the cute scallop patterned beanies of Maria via Ravelry. I’m really in love with my multiple scalloped hat for which I used various leftover yarns in natural coordinating colours. Here are Maria’s instructions (scroll down for the English version).
The two-coloured broken seed stitch really got me addicted. What fascinates me with it: It looks so elaborate and sophisticated, yet it isn’t any difficult to knit! No special technical skills needed. Just a well chosen combination of two contrasting colours.
If you knit in rounds, it is basically:
R1 (light colour): knit
R2 (dark colour): k1, p1
R3 (light colour): knit
R4 (dark colour): p1, k1
I didn’t have one single pattern for the broken seed stich beanies. For the sizing and the decreases I went by a mixture of these charts (I like those tutorials that make you understand by showing you the 101 of constructing f.ex. hats and thereby enable you to create your own individual versions) and Maria’s instructions (see link above).
What are your handmade Christmas projects this year?
nadel&gabel 