Decoration The Halls With Boughs Of Holly

What a lazy day we have had today. Harki and Peri had an early breakfast and then sunbaked upon their Flokati rug. I read lots of blogs and replied to all my comments and tried to access the new Knitty. It appears their new server has not solved all their problems. Ironically, until this issue, I had never experienced any issues!!! I read Agatha Raisin #7 and now I have run out of Agathas until my Library Holds arrive.

Here is The Laminaria, as modelled by The BareNakedLady. She has stopped scaring motorist driving past the front of the house and is now just scaring The Labradors out the back.

 

Late, very late, last night after I had just met my own strict posting deadline, I was reading The Bloglines and I went to visit Lynette Anderson, her Labrador Hugo, cat Felix, and all her gorgeous stitcheries etc. And Lo and Behold I had won a prize. Actually I don't think I have so much won a prize, as Hugo is madly in love with Harki and Peri. He is a true Labrador, helping his mum with all her craft and sitting on the couch when no-one is looking!! I am very excited, and The Labradors are hoping the envelope will be infused with Hugo-ness!! I am embroidering her Noah's Ark BOM, though I haven't added the button (Luddite).

This afternoon I remembered to watch The Choir:Boys Don't Sing. It was their very first performance for a proper audience at a school where singing is pooh-poohed by the cool kids. When the blond boy soloist's mum cried, I cried too. Their choir master looks unnervingly like David Tennant!

Here is today's decoration and it really does only have one seam!! I bought one at a fair and I took it apart to see how it was made!! It has three points so I've called it the Tri-decoration. If I meet my goal and blog tomorrow, I'm making Bark!!

Tri-Decoration

You need:

• Christmas fabric in 2 contrasting colours
• matching thread
• a bead
• paper, a ruler, a pencil, pins and a needle

Make a template from paper: You need an equilateral triangle, one where all the sides are the same length. I made each side 16cm. I did it like this:

 

1. Cut two triangles and sew, right sides together, with a small stitch (2mm on my machine) and a 1cm seam allowance. Make sure to leave an opening to turn away from the corners. Trim the corners as shown in the picture. I'm making two.
2. Turn right sides out, press and hand stitch the opening closed.
3. Sew the three points together securely so they meet in the centre and press flat. So when the fabric facing you is red, then the green fabric backing is visible. And vice versa.
4. Turn the decoration over and mark the centre of each unfolded over edge with a pin. Then catch and sew through each point and slowly pull them together until...
5. You make this shape. It needs to be pressed flat. You may need to fix it with your fingers. The little kite-like origami shapes need to be flat and the point as neat as you can make it.
6. Finally sew a bead, or a sequin and bead, or a button, to hide the sewn together points and add some thread to make a hanger.

If you make a lot of these, you can sew them together in rows to make a triangular tree, with 1 on the first row, then 2, 3, 4 and so on. You can see the different effects of reversing the colours you use.

Comments

[Rose Red]

It's nice to see the Laminaria modelled. Bet the barenakedlady is glad of something to show off!

I haven't been able to look at Knitty either - so I checked out some of the patterns on Ravelry instead.

[AmyP]

It's good to see you've discovered the joys of the 12-year-old choir master as well! I struggled watching it because of his really strong resemblance to Mr. Tennant!

Laminaria turned out really nicely - a goodly amount of variegation in the yarn, without overwhelming the pattern.