Christmas is fast approaching… Slightly over two weeks to go and I appear to be completely unprepared this year as always. But I’ve decided there is still time to knit myself a bit of Christmas. I won’t knit Christmas presents for my whole family (although I have a few things I completed earlier this year which will be gifted under the tree), but I’m arming myself with knitting needles and bits of yarn and entering the Christmas spirit.
This year, I’ve decided to give a go at knitting Christmas decorations, they will hold to no watering for a couple of weeks much better, when I’m in France spending Christmas with my family, and still be just as fresh when I get back. I’m also hoping this will become a bit of a collection in the long run, to which I will add over time, so that, even if I only have time to knit a few ornaments this year, next year I will have a few more. I’ve never been very good at decorating my house for the festive season.
I started off with these lovely little things to hang in my plants, or a tree if I ever get one, or just around the house. They’re a very quick knit and a brilliant way to use up odd ends of yarn. I immediately fell in love with these little hearts:
Knitted hearts
I took the model here, the blue one is made of fingering weight yarn, the purple one of a laceweight yarn held double, both are knit on 3,5mm needles. I’m off to make plenty more to sprinkle around. I’m also working on a knitted wreath, although there are a few hurdles, and experimenting to make a pattern up for stuffed knitted stars in the same style as the hearts.
If anyone else has any pointers to give me on knitted Christmas, please leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you.
The ways of the whorl 
December 12th, 2010 at 14:41
Hey Cecile, nicely done ! Those little hearts are cute and will look pretty on xmass tree..xx
December 15th, 2010 at 11:49
[…] making so many little hearts, I started wondering about other stuffed shapes I could come up with, and which might be suited to […]
December 19th, 2010 at 17:14
[…] friend Cecile has been having a knitted Christmas. She knitted this heart for me with some of my yarn and I just had to add it to the […]
January 18th, 2011 at 05:21
i love your hearts and am glad you like the pattern so much. Its funny you mentioned attempting to make a star the same way, after i wrote the heart pattern a star was next on my list. My plan was to make 5 points pick up stitches and knit then together in the shapes of a star…life got in the way and i never got around to making a star pattern. If you do I would love to see it.
January 19th, 2011 at 07:33
I did! I started out trying exactly the method you describe, and it worked but didn’t quite look how I wanted it to, and five points to join was a bit too fiddly for my taste. So I ended up starting at the centre with a circle for each side and taking stitches from them both to knit each point in the round. And… voilà!
I’m making some more of your hearts for a Valentines project called A World in Love (there’s a Ravelry group and a Facebook event), set up by Eddie of Historic Crafts: you upload a photo of a crafted heart in a place you love onto this flickr group specifying the location and it’s then geo-tagged, so we can have a world map of all the hearts… We’re only starting, but we’ll be doing that until the 14th of February… Fancy joining us?
February 8th, 2011 at 22:09
[…] is the same knitted heart featured before. I’ve been knitting a deep red one especially for this project, but forgot it… lucky I […]