This time of the year, when the days are short of daylight, there is no chance of pottering in the garden either before or after work. There is also the strange phenomenon that good gardening weather happens during the week when I am at work, and invariably it is raining or just too darn cold to be out there at weekends. Beside, with Christmas just around the corner there are lots of other things to be done, such as knitting.
I like simple items that don’t take too long to knit or make up, otherwise they may languish in the knitting bag under the label “I’ll finish that later” and goodness me, I have enough of those already!
Christmas gifts are always a lot more personal if they are handmade and with that in mind, a few weeks ago, I looked for Christmas Novelty patterns and found a book called “We Knit You a Merry Christmas” by Debbie Harrold and published by Collins & Brown.
Before deciding what to knit, I dug out my wool bag, which is packed with odd bits of wool – I never throw any away. Delighted to find, red, black and white, I chose the Father Christmas for my Mum.
Whilst Mum doesn’t have dementia, she is 93 and has reverted back to childhood when it comes to cuddly toys and has a large collection of teddies in her room at the Care Home. Rather than wait for Christmas Day, I gave it to her last week and she was just delighted with it, holding him to her chest all afternoon. This photo was taken on my mobile phone so the quality is not so good.
My next novelty knit was a penguin for my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter, which I will give to her at Christmas when I see her. What I love about little toys is that they can be completed within a few days. I finished this one off last night, although sewing black is not the easiest thing under artificial lighting.
Now, I have just a week to deliberate as to whether my 6 year old grandson would like a novelty knit, but unless it is something to do with Star Wars I doubt very much he would be interested. I’ve got the knitting bug now so I will have to knit something else from the book. At work we have a gift collection box for deprived children so maybe a knitted snowman might be next.
