Baby Hats and Christmas Stockings

 Baby hats are great for evening TV knitting, and I finished these a wee while ago. Then they sat  till they were finally sewed up.  At last they are completed and have been donated to the church where I attend a monthly knitting group, for the Nest Collective group.  There is a Columbium refugee family with a new baby the church supports, I was told, and would I mind if the hats get passed on to them instead?  Not at all, whoever needs them.  One of the other knitting ladies had several pairs of knitted booties which will also be gifted to this family.

These little hats were knitted in acrylic I found in the Op Shop, but I'm not very happy with the results.  I'll use wool or wool blend next time, I think they will turn out nicer.   But I rather like the pattern with the little top knot, so will be knitting that again sometime.

Three little hats

I received a bag of Christmas Stockings from Jo (ButterZ) recently, so that was rather exciting.  The stockings and bands  were all cut out,  and the motifs have been fused on.  One stocking was almost complete,  and three others had the motifs partly stitched, using stranded cotton.  So I've done a little work on these four.

I don't have stranded cotton to finish the stitching, so I improvised and used sewing cotton (machine thread) instead.  I just needed to finish stitching around the bottom of the band on this one, and added a button. Doesn't that Christmas Pudding look delicious! I'm so pleased this one came almost complete so I will know how to attach the band and finish all the others now.

Just needed a little stitching on the band to finish.

The Peppermint stick had been started to be stitched down in the next one, so I found some similar red thread and got stitching, then did running stitch around the leaves and berries.

 This is a nice seasonal motif too

And lastly, I found two Gingerbread men who had been partially stitched down.  They are now completed, and I added eyes and mouth to each with my Pigma pen.  Mmm, don't know about those expressions, they look a little manic to me.  Are Gingerbread Men usually naughty or nice?

Two Gingerbread Men

This stitching whiled away a winter  afternoon at home.  I think my alternate threads used blended in well enough.  As my Mother used to say "A blind man will be pleased to see it".

I'll be using Perle No.5 thread from now on to work on the stockings, I've got plenty of different colours in my bag.   Some of the other motifs have already been stitched down, while the others have just been fused.  Guess I'll work on one stocking at a time, wish me luck.  I'm not planning to have them all finished  by this coming Christmas though, they will be done when they are done!