Thursday, November 5, 2009

Ridiculously easy knitted Christmas ornament pattern

Okay, so I haven't got around to making a separate knitting and crochet blog yet. If you don't do either, pretend you didn't see this.

Ridiculously Easy Ornaments
Copyright 2009 BEcky Morgan. Use as you like, give the ornaments away, sell them or hang them from your earlobes, but don't try to sell the pattern or claim it's yours. Otherwise, we're good.

These are more jackets to go around beat-up ornaments than ornaments themselves, but they're "watching paint dry" easy.
You need:
an old, beat-up round ornament, glass, plastic or Styrofoam; this is a great way to save those satin balls that fell off the tree and were cat toys for a while, or the glass ones that shed most of their lining
a wad of sport or baby yarn a little bigger than a golf ball; sparkly, fuzzy, gold-threaded or otherwise blingy is good
a couple of knitting needles; I started out with size 4
a yarn needle or something else that will work to sew the whole thing around the old ornament

I can't post a picture tonight. What you are knitting is a small piece of what will look like strips of garter stitch with a big row of loose lacy stuff between. It will wrap around the ornament and you'll stitch it shut when you're finished.

Row 1: Cast on 15 stitches. Knit across.
Rows 2 and 3: Slip the first stitch (i.e., don't knit it, just slide it to the unfilled needle) and knit the rest of the stitches. Slipping the first stitch makes the finished piece curve a little better.
Row 4: Slip the first stitch. Knit the next two. On the next two stitches, when you are about to knit them, wrap the yarn around the needle twice. (This is called a double yarn over.) On the next five stitches, wrap the yarn THREE times. On the next two, wrap twice. Knit the last three.
Row 5: Knit the first three stitches. When you come to that double wrap on the fourth stitch, just knit through one wrap and let the other one fall off. That's going to make a big, loose stitch. Do the same thing all the way across, and just knit the last three. I haven't lost my mind, promise.
Rows 6 and 7: Slip the first stitch and knit the rest.
Row 8: Repeat Row 4.
Repeat Rows 5-8 until you have six or eight "lace" panels, depending on the roundness of your ornament. Try stretching it around to see if it fits. The "stripes" will run vertically.
When you have enough panels, knit across twice more, bind off and sew the bind-off row to the cast-on, leaving a tail. Streeeeetch the whole thing over your ornament, use the tail to sew the bottom closed, and either sew the top around the neck of the ornament or stuff a piece of ribbon through the row ends and tie a bow. Repeat until you run out of yarn or crummy-looking ornaments.

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