Something new for our 2024 decorations

Well, it's that time of year!  Time to work on our annual, hand made Christmas decorations.

This is something I've been trying to do every year for quite some time, missing only a few years due to personal circumstances.

This year has been a bit different, in that my challenges are more physical in nature.  Osteoarthritis has set into all the joints of my fingers, making finer motor control more painful.  I'm losing my grip strength, and drop things far more often.

I can still do big stuff, though.  Manual labour, which is something I enjoy doing, is still an option for me.  Mostly, that involves gardening, but also all sorts of other outdoor chores and activities.  Most recently, my big project has been building an isolation shelter for our more feral yard cats that we will have to trap to get spayed.  They will need two weeks of monitoring as they recover.  Using what scrap pieces of lumber and salvaged material we could find around the property, with a few items that needed to be purchased, we now have a two level cat shelter on wheels that we will be able to use to isolate any cats from the colony we are caring for.  It even has a heat lamp, food bowl and heated water bowl set up in it, and the cats are already using in and getting used to it.

The down side of all this is that my hands have become very rough.  I don't crochet much anymore, as most yarns get snagged on my fingers and pull off the hook, or fray.  Some yarns are okay, but few yarns I'd like to use for most of the projects I'd like to be working on.

All of these factors had to be considered as I decided on this year's Christmas decorations.

In the end, it was a Pinterest suggestion that lead me to a new craft I decided to try this year.  Making Singlade balls.

 

This project has a lot of similarities to the temari I've made in the past.

Of course, I use the materials I have on hand, so for this project, I cheated a little.

I had a 6 pack of Styrofoam balls handy, so those are the core of the balls I am making this year.  I had some white yarn left over from another project, and that's what I used to wrap around the foam core, then secure the strands, the same way I wrapped sewing thread around the core of a temari project.

Here, you can see how things are going so far.  Once the cores were wrapped, I found some cotton yarn that I used to divide the balls into 8 sections.  This is also similar to temari, without the need to be so precise.

From there, the sections just needed to be filled using buttonhole stitch (also called blanket stitch).

With these intended for Christmas decorations, I like to include sparkling or reflective elements. I was able to include both.  I had some red yarn with a silver metallic strand in it, plus a bag full of leftover bits of reflective yarn.  

I've finished stitching up two balls so far.  I started one in red and green, but didn't have enough this green yarn to do both halves, so the other half was done in blue.  

I still haven't decided on how I will attach hangers yet.  I also have some miniature Christmas decorations I might use to jazz them up a bit.  For now, I'm just focusing on stitching them up.

This yarn is a lot bulkier than what is used in the video tutorial, so these do work up fairly quickly.  Working with a needle and thread has proven to be easier on my hands, and the yarn doesn't have as much opportunity to snag, compared to crochet.  

I do miss crocheting, though!

I'm happy with how these are turning out so far.  In the future, I can see making some of these using actual scrap bits, like in the video, but with something like a bell and maybe a bit of catnip, inside.  They would make great cat toys!

So that is what we are doing for our Christmas decorations this year! 

How about you?  Are you doing any special crafting for the season?

 

Old tools

I haven't been doing much crafting lately - unless you consider rebuilding garden beds and planting, crafting!  We have had so much rain this spring, everything it set back by it.

Yesterday, my mother gave me some storage bins of stuff.  Mostly fabric odds and ends, and other stuff she hasn't touched in years.  There were some treasures tucked among them, though, including a lacy thread crochet tablecloth my mother made herself.  I believe she finishes it before I was even born, which would make it more than 50 years old!

There were also old crafting tools and sewing supplies that had belonged to her laye aunt, and a few of those may well be even older!  Here are some of them.

I tried to get legible photos of both sides of the hooks.

The thread crochet hooks are some of the smallest I've ever seen!  I will be looking up the brands for some of them.  Only the Boye brand is familiar to me.  At least, when it comes to crochet hooks.

My late great-aunt was an amazingly skilled woman, and I have a few of her fine crochet lace and embroidery pieces.  Some of the embroidery is on sugar and flour sack fabric.  It's amazing what beauty she could create, with so few resources available!

As for the hook with a point at one end, I can't quite remember what that is for!  I'll have to look that up, too.  I have seen similar before, but the more I try to remember, the more it escapes me! 😂

A quick incense burner

I have some incense sticks I really like, but they are ever so slightly too wide for the burners I have.  I have to carefully scrape one end of the sticks to get them to fit, and even then, they easily break when I try to set them in the burners, or fall out.  Not a good thing to happen with a lit incense stick!

So I picked up some cheap dollar store, oven bake, no name, modeling clay and made a new burner.

It's not the greatest, but not bad, considering I've never done anything like this before, and have no modeling tools.

Of course, as soon as it was cooled down from being baked, I had to test it out!

For the "bowl", I used the inside of a small dipping sauce bowl as a mold to get the shape I wanted.  Then I rolled out a small amount of dark brown to create the decorative lip around to top edge.  After that, I just made various shapes to decorate the middle out of the light and dark brown clay, while building it up to a depth that would hold an incense stick securely.  

Last of all, I used an incense stick to create the hole in the middle.  The hole goes all the way through so that, if the last, unburned nub of incense were difficult to get out, I could use something to push it out from below.

My makeshift tools were a straight sided water bottle to roll out the clay, a repurposed can to cut the circle, and a bamboo skewer to help position things, then gently tamp them into place, so the layers of clay would stick to each other.

I'm sure all those nooks and crannies will collect ashes, but that's okay.  The main thing is, I finally have a burner to hold my favorite incense sticks!

Crochet Christmas ornaments

For this year's Christmas ornaments, I went back to an old standby: crochet!

I saw some patterns on Pinterest that I liked, and used that as inspiration, but in the end, each one I made was different. 

I had some unexpected challenges.  Funding Christmas yarns was one.  I wasn't able to get to a Michael's, the only craft store option, during my trips to the city.  The best option I had was Walmart, and their Christmas craft supplies were almost non-existent.  I couldn't even find the miniature decorations I used to be able to fund easily. 

Then, after my first few, I started running out of stuffing, but when I tried to buy more, I couldn't find any!

I even had a hard time finding Styrofoam balls, which I used to see everywhere.  I did finally find some at a dollar store, along with some miniature decorations. 

So I made do with what I had, with white and sparkly red yarn as the main connecting theme.

This is all that I've made, and I think I'm done for this year.  We aren't even putting up our usual tree, so we don't have space for them on the mini tree on the piano, in the cat free tool!

This is the first one I made.  Just diagonal lines in back loop single crochet, sewn together.  One end was closed up, the stuffing added, then the other end sewn closed.  When I finally found some mini decorations, I added the little present on top.

The next one I tried was straight rows of back loop double crochet.  Otherwise, it was assembled the same way.

I didn't like the sewing, so the next one was done in simple rounds.

I found some wooded beads and the little bow to dress it up a bit.

At this point, I was almost out of stuffing, and switched to the foam balls.

This variation is really just a tawashi dish cloth pattern I'd made in the past, except stuffed.  The rows are done in the back loop, starting with sc, then hdc, then dc, then hdc again, and ending with sc. The end result was bigger than the balls, so it is quite loose around it.  A miniature bauble got it's hanging cord removed, than added on with the excess yarn used to sew the sides together, and close off the end.

Again, I didn't want to sew things together, so I did this one in rounds.  Once the foam ball was added, though, it was pretty awkward to stitch around it.  Especially when doing decrease rounds.

Time for something different. 

This one was done as two circles.  Those were crocheted together, with the ball added inside when they were half joined.  This fit more snuggly, so those last stitches were harder to work, but I liked the end result. 

Then a friend gifted me with some craft supplies, including miniature decorations!  I used a tiny garland in this last one.

The mini garland was worked into the last round on one circle, only.  I tried sewing the circles together at first, but they turned out to be juuuust too small. So I did a different crochet join that added the equivalent of another round in the middle.  I'm quite happy with how this one turned out!

With the Styrofoam balls, making two halves and joining them together was much easier than working in the rounds, but takes longer.  With the stuffed ones, working in the round was easiest and fastest.  

I'm rather pleased with how they turned out.  Even considering they turned out to all be experiments!

A variation

I had a chance to work on a variation of the ball cap ear warmer designs.  This time, I also added a reflective strand to the edge rows.

I am not as happy with this version.

The reflective strand just sort of disappears in the yarn.

I used front and back post double crochet stitches for the ear warmer portion, and also reduced to row lengths to create a more curved shape.  I think I should have done a couple of rows without decreasing first, to make it wider.  It dies cover the ears well enough, though, and curls more snuggly around them, which would reduce drafts.

I think I will play around with other stitch patterns, too.  The goal is to make the portion over the ears dense and well insulating.

An experiment

It's been ages since I've been able to sit down and crochet!  

This is an experimental pattern I've finally finished.  With the work I do outside these days, I'm always wearing a ball cap to shade my eyes, and protect my hair from tree branches and the occasional grasping cat!

Winter is coming, though, and my usual ear warmers don't work together with my hat.  I looked at various ball cap ear warmer designs and came up with one I wasn't happy with.  This version turned out much better.

I plan to make some other versions in this grey, adding in reflective thread, as well as some in high viz orange to use during hunting season.

The challenge will be finding the time for it.  I'm not getting much crafting done at all, lately!

Ponytail hat with reflective accents

 I was able to do some actual crafting, today!  I decided to crochet a ponytail hat, using the reflective thread my husband found for me, as an accent.

The yarn is Accent Brights from "Knit and Purl: Purveyors of Fine Yarn".  It's a 100% acrylic yarn produce in Turkey for Aldi.  My husband bought a case of it, each package containing 2 of 4 colours, to knit with, not noticing that it was a light weight yarn, when he wanted a medium weight yarn.  So I've been using it more than he has!

This hat was worked with two strands of yarn, plus the reflective thread, using a 6mm, or J/10, hook.  The design is about as basic as it gets.  I started with 8sc around a magic ring, then alternated rounds of double crochet and single crochet for the crown and body of the hat.  The reflective yard was used only in the single crochet rounds.  The body of the hat is 68 stitches around.

In this shot, you can see the hole for the pony tail to be pulled through.  It was made in a single crochet round by chaining 5 and skipping 5 stitches.  The next double crochet round was worked into, rather than around, the chain stitches.

The brim of the hat is just 4 rounds of single crochet.

I then wasted a bunch of yarn trying to make a pom pom, which I almost never do with my hats, on a pom pom maker, using templates from the card that each package of yarn came with.  The templates are basically circles, with a chunk missing.  The instructions said to wrap the yarn around the two, back to back templates, until the card could no longer be seen.  Then the wrapped yarn would be cut by sliding the scissors between the templates.  Yarn could then be wrapped around the middle to tie it off, and the templates removed.

Except that as soon as I started cutting the wrapped yarn, it basically started falling apart.  I even tried to thread the yarn to tie it off with, in between the templates and try and salvage the uncut wraps, but ended up cutting the tying yarn by accident.  So I ended up just using a rectangle of light cardboard, folded in half, with the tying yarn tucked across in the fold.  Once I was done wrapping, using up the last of the yarn, I tied it off, removed the cardboard, secured the tying yarn some more, then cut the loops.  It's looser and floppier than I originally wanted, but it works.  After trimming the cut ends to make them neat and even, I used a crochet hook to draw the two lengths of tying yarn through the top of the hat, then just tied it off on the inside with a shoelace knot.  This way, the pom pom can be easily removed for washing.  I'm pretty sure it would fall apart completely if it went through the wash!

The finished hat has a cozy stretch to it, and is comfortable to wear.  I plan to give it as a gift.  I hope the planned recipient likes it!