Christmas Sale Thursday

The next group of patterns that I am including in my Christmas sale are a little bit left field. The seaside themed Christmas tree decorations include - Scallop Shell, Sand Dollar, Starfish, Little Minnows, and I have included my Spiral Shell. 

It was 10 years ago that Mary Ann asked me to design a Christmas Sand Dollar pattern, to hang on her sister-in-law's ocean themed Christmas tree. I had a lot of fun with this design, which was helped by the real sand dollars that she sent me, which still decorate my bathroom. 

So while not completely traditional, why not have an ocean-themed tree? Tomorrow I will be showing the last group of Christmas decoration that are included in the 50% off sale, and publishing the discount code. The sale starts on Friday and continues until Christmas Day, and there will be a few more not very traditional decorations. 

Rainbow Spiral Shells

I have been working on a special commission, which for me has been made a bit of a change, and as don't often knit to order. Some of my spiral shells, but in very specific colours. 

These colours were asked for in order to represent various stages in recovery. At first I had thought to knit the shells in pure bands of colour, but so that they still had a natural look, I decided to use the shell shade wool (Sirdar Crofters) together with each of the nine colours that had been asked for. This has made it an extremely firm knit, and I actually for the first time in my life have a knitting blister. But I was delighted with the way they have turned out, still looking very much as if they could be found on a beach.

It is really nice for me return to my own Spiral Shell pattern. But it was also fun to knit the shells in a slightly different way. Four shells delivered, but this is just the first batch, so back to the needles.

This is a really fun quick knit. The pattern is available in my Etsy and ravelry shops, and although I currently don't have any shells in my shop you can Etsy message me if you would like to order some.

Shore Thing - Homespun

I am really thrilled to have my Spiral Shell featured in the current June issue of Homespun Magazine. (Click on their name to go to the web page, and they also have a facebook page here.) Homespun is an Australian Magazine, and as you can see covers all things crafty: sewing, quilting, embroidery, as well as wool crafts. I wish it was on sale in the UK, as it seems to specifically cover all my interests.  

My contributor's copy has just arrived. A lovely selection of projects, with pattern pieces at the back, and all printed on really luscious thick paper. Settling down with a cup of tea for a good read.

I was especially pleased that they were happy to use my own photograph of the shells, which isn't as blurry as it looks above. I also have another project in the pipeline with Homespun, but can't tell you about that yet.

Readers are offered a discount code on my Spiral Shell pattern, which I can also share with you. It my be a bit hard to make out, but the code is GINX28, and will give you 25% off the pattern on ravelry. It will run for 3 months: June, July and August. 

Sea Urchins

I have added a new pattern to my sea creature collection: a Sea Urchin Shell. Do you like my real sea urchins? They were my Christmas present from my husband. I know that is a bit odd, but I really like them. They sit on a shelf in the room where I make things with a few other seaside bits and bobs. I thought they would look good with the knitted ones in my photographs. 

Sea urchins are really fascinating creatures. It took me quite a while to find exactly the right wool. These are knitted with James Brett DK Marble Colour 5, which seemed to have exactly the right mix of grey and pink to give a natural look. This is the same wool that I used for my Our House project.

The knitting is done on two needles, and is not difficult. The dots are then embroidered on down the ridges afterwards. I refer you to my photo tutorial for some help with these french knots. I have tried to be very careful with the number of ridges, and there are five main ones with large bumps, each with two smaller ones inbetween. 

Christmas Hearts and A Winner

Getting ready for Christmas fairs, I have been making some decorations from my own Christmas Heart pattern. I decided to go a bit less traditional, and used my lovely sparkly blue wool, which you may have seen before on this blog.
 

This simple pattern is in my ravelry and Craftsy shops for free, and has instructions for three different sizes of ornament. 

I love embroidering snowflakes on the hearts with wool, but you could let your imagination go wild. There are some embroidery tips in my righthand sidebar. You could also add buttons or beads.  

But my top tip for making tree decorations is to always make the loop twice as long as you think. There is nothing more frustrating than struggling to hang your decoration because you have sewn on a tiny loop.

A few of these decorations are for sale in my Etsy Shop. There are two types of snowflake, but can't quite decide how to distinguish them by name. Spikey and Knotty?

Unusual Uses for Knitting Needles
 
Announcing the winner in my Unusual Uses Competition. After a bit of debate my children decided that the most amusing use was from Mari of MariReads who said:

"Let's see, my 2 year old finds lots of crazy uses for my needles...drumsticks, cat torture device. The hubby has used one for detangling the brush on our Roomba. Yuck."

So a spiral shell is hopefully mid-Atlantic on its way to her!

Thank you do everyone who left a comment. We enjoyed reading them all.