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Friday, November 11, 2011

Winter is coming!

I've been wearing blazers to work and there was frost on the grass and dog toys when I went outside this morning so I was in sort of a wintery mood and thought I'd show you guys these snowflakes I've been madly crocheting in the evenings. I'm pretty picky about no-Christmas-before-Thanksgiving at home, but if you don't start crafting early, it seems like there's never enough time! Anyway, I made these from the same fabulous old pattern leaflet I talked about here, and am going to give them to my extended family at Christmas.

After crocheting them you have to starch them. I did one batch using sugar starch which is the nastiest stickiest mess you've ever seen, but gave a very nice stiff ornament. The second batch I used old-fashioned liquid starch which was still messy, but not quite so bad. It didn't make as firm an ornament, but it was still plenty stiff for the snowflakes to hold their shapes.

Here they are pinned up to dry after starching:


Incidentally, I ruined a bunch of pins doing this- I tried to wash off the sugar starch but then the pins just rusted so I've kept the second set of pins separate just to use for this kind of project.


And here they are finished.  They're each a little different and there are three more that I haven't done yet.

This is one of my favorites- it's actually the same one I made the other day with the bigger yarn.  When I made it with the bigger yarn it came out very trivet-like but with this thread I think it looks very snowflake-like.





This one wasn't actually from the snowflake book- it was supposed to be part of a gerber daisy doily I was going to crochet.  I crocheted three of these, two blue and one white before deciding I wasn't terribly fond of the pattern and didn't really have the desire to make bunches more.  I think it passes ok as a snowflake-type ornament, but secretly I think it looks like some sort of squidish sea monster!




This is my other favorite (below).



Are you guys working on Christmas crafts yet?  Going to be giving any as gifts this year?
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3 comments:

  1. PossumNovember 11, 2011 at 9:26 AM

    Love the snowflakes, Shannon. I did a ton of these back a few years ago and used them on all my gifts in place of bows. I used the patterns from a Martha Stewart magazine (here: http://www.marthastewart.com/270488/crocheted-snowflakes) and from the book 99 Snowflakes.

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  2. KendasCraftsNovember 14, 2011 at 9:23 AM

    Those are pretty neat! I totally agree with you about no Christmas before Thanksgiving. Which is probably why December is always such a scramble for me. I should probably consider breaking my rule and allow crafting before Thanksgiving. :-)

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  3. amyNovember 14, 2011 at 2:20 PM

    Pretty! My grandma loves to crochet ornaments too, but she always just uses white. I really like the effect of the red...especially since my decorations are all a red, silver, and pink theme! I'd be thrilled if you'd share them here!

    http://oneartmama.blogspot.com/2011/11/shine-on-fridays-1.html

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