Tag Archives: christmas balls

Christmas Balls Are Go!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

What? It’s not Christmas yet? But I’m drinking my morning coffee with egg nog instead of milk, and I may have just eaten a sugar cookie (breakfast of champions!), and my house is festive as all get out! It certainly feels like Christmas around here.

We decorated last weekend. Our front yard is full of twinkling lights (though some of our strands of lights are starting to get a little sad- I think we’re going to need to buy new ones for next year). We’ve hung the stockings by the chimney with care, and we put up out (not quite straight) Christmas tree.

Usually I’m a “let’s use every single ornament we’ve ever come across” kind of tree decorator. It’s usually packed to the gills, with almost every branch holding at least an ornament or two. But this year we switched it up…

And used my Christmas Balls!I managed to finish 24 balls (I still have a handful that haven’t been filled yet), which turned out to be just enough to decorate the front of the tree! I love how bold and cheerful they turned out.They look great, and (bonus!) I don’t have to worry about the dog pulling down the tree and breaking everything.I couldn’t be happier with how they’ve turned out. Now I just have to make the other 30-ish balls, to finish out the book. Maybe by next year, I’ll have them all finished?

(I tried to get a nice picture of Ollie in front of the tree, but he didn’t want to cooperate. So, here’s the best one.)Have you decorated for the holidays yet? What

Tutorial: Closing Up

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As you guys all know, I’ve been going to town on some Christmas Balls. (I think my last count stood above 20, but I could be wrong. There’s so many it’s getting hard to keep track of them all these days.)

Knitting these bad boys is fun and (fairly) easy, though some of the colorwork is a little bit challenging to knit up without making the balls pucker too much. The finishing isn’t too bad, either, just a little bit of a pain when you have to repeat it so many times. You stuff the balls, weave in all the ends, close up the top and the bottom, and add a loop to hang the balls from. Easy, right?

Well, closing up the top of the balls is easy enough- you just pass your tail through the remaining active loops and pull, just like the top of a hat.

But the bottom is a different matter- one that took me a couple tries to figure out how to do neatly.

Because you cast on at the bottom of the ball, you have a big old hole down there, waiting for you. And, there’s no obvious way to get rid of that hole, since you can’t just pull a string and have it disappear (believe me, I tried).

Here’s what I’ve been doing, and I think it works pretty well.

So, you see the long-tail cast-on edge? There are little slanted “stitches” all the way around the edge. I use a yarn needle to carefully pass my needle through those stitches, counter-clockwise, starting right next to the spot where my tail yarn comes out of the ball.And I keep going…Until I get all the way around the hole.Then, I pull the tail snug,And voila! A lovely finished ball bottom that looks just as good as the top! You could use this technique on top-down hats, fingers-to-cuffs mittens, or really any time you need to close up an opening created by a long-tail cast on.

Now, all I’ve got to do is repeat this on the rest of my Christmas Balls. Oof.

Do you have any favorite techniques you’ve been using lately?

Christmas Ball Update

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Lately, I haven’t had much time for “fun” knitting. (“But, Allison!” You protest, “All knitting is fun!”) I’ve been hard at work on a very cool (yet, ironically very cozy) and very top-secret pattern. I have to knit X amount of the pattern every day to stay on track to make my deadline at the beginning of November. It’s not a very relaxing schedule for my knitting, but it’s what works best for me. If I don’t give myself a daily deadline, I try to get the whole darn thing done in one sitting and I go a little crazy.

On the days when I finish my assigned knitting early, I’ve been treating myself with Arne and Carlos’ Christmas Balls.I got the book last year for Christmas, and have since then, I’ve harbored hopes that I could cover our tree with nothing but red-and-white knit bobbles. So far, I have made a bunch (just over a dozen), but unless we get a very small tree, it’s not going to be enough.

Despite being a little disappointed with my progress, I’m still loving making these balls. They’re the perfect in-between project. They’re interesting, and great colorwork practice. They don’t take long to make (one ball takes me about 2 hours to knit- just enough knitting to watch a movie). And, they’re very satisfying. I want to make all the Christmas Balls!

I just have to finish my stupid work knitting first… sigh.

Do you have any favorite “in-between” patterns you keep going back to?

Christmas (in July) Balls

Christmas Balls

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It’s snowing again!

The schools I teach at had a snow day on Monday, and a two-hour late start on Tuesday. I can only imagine what’s going to happen now that it’s snowing again! Maybe I’ll just get the rest of the week off (one can hope, right?). (It’s amazing how much of a Seattleite I’ve become. The first sign of flurries, and I go into full-blown hibernation mode. Growing up in the Midwest, we didn’t change our plans unless there was a good 6″ of snow in an hour, and then we just drove a little slower.)

And what’s better than finishing up some of Arne and Carlos’ Christmas Balls on a snowy morning?

My mom gave me a copy of this adorable book for Christmas (thanks Mom!), and I’ve knit up a couple balls since the holidays. They’re fun, quick, and don’t use too much yarn (though I did manage to run through my stash of red and white DK wool- I’ve got to order some more).These little guys are really fun if you want to practice your colorwork in the round. They have dozens of different designs, and they even include a blank chart in the back of the book if you want to get fancy and design your own patterns!Of course, finishing is a little fiddly (but any small colorwork project is going to be a bit fiddly). I sat down with the newest episode of Victoria and a cup of tea, and I had all three of these balls finished before the episode was over.