All That Glitters

   As that dark, damp and cold time of year approaches, many of us are preparing for the festivals of spiritual light  that precede and include the solstice. These must tide us over through the slower moving, more meditative days until the sun begins to reopen the span between our waking and our relinquishing to sleep.

    In my knit and crochet class, we're preparing for our pre-Christmas session by sharing patterns we think others might enjoy making. I've worked up several pretties to offer as possibilities and they're all done in time for some advertising to go out. The snowflake and the bauble with beads are both available to print out at attic24. Thanks so much to Lucy who takes simple crochet skills and turns them into folky, colorful goodies. She also posts lots of photos as tutorials. I have made both of Lucy's designs in perle cotton instead of yarn. I love the shine of the mercerized cotton! The red circle was made by crocheting a ball of Brown Sheep sport weight wool yarn into a square and then melting it down by putting it through my front loader twice on hot. I then cut a circle from the resulting fabric and had fun embellishing it. I used perle cotton for this also because it shows up better than embroidery floss. 


  All three of these decorations were fun to make and there will likely be more in my future. Thanks to Richard for the pics. He does the photography better than I.