When I was in Melbourne recently I bought some baker’s twine to knit some Christmas trees. I have since discovered similar twine in Spotlight and there’s also quite a lot on ebay.

I have included the pattern in PDF form, with the choice of knitting it flat and sewing it up, or knitting it in the round, the pattern is linked here: knitted Christmas tree

I have fiddled endlessly with this pattern. I really wanted to use a textured pattern such as crocodile stitch, but it defeated me! Having said that, I am pretty happy with the garter stitch as it really does lend itself to decorating. I was originally going to put decorated pins in these trees to emulate baubles, but I had visions of friends’ grandchildren stabbing themselves, so settled on the sparkly ribbons and strings of “pearls”. The trees also look really sweet undecorated, but perhaps not as festive.

This is a really simple pattern to knit, and I can knit one or more per night just watching TV. The trees make lovely gifts when you have to take a Santa surprise to a gathering, although I have struggled to part with mine!

I really like the green and white twine as it puts me in mind of snow dusted trees.  I did knit a couple from plain green wool, but my favourites are the variegated ones.

The trees could be stuffed with fibrefill or even shredded fabric and threads from your overlocker bin. I wasn’t keen on the slightly lumpy effect I got, so played around with old knitting cones filled with plaster. The plaster made them fairly heavy and it was a bit of a faff to do,  then I found a couple of polystyrene cones in a box belonging to my Mum and thought this was the answer. I found more cones in Spotlight and painted everything green so that I didn’t have white showing through. I cut a couple of the cones down to fit my smaller trees which was easy with the polystyrene.

Wooden cotton reels would be an ideal base, but Mark chopped up an old rake handle and drilled a hole in them into which we glued a bit of dowel, which was then pushed into the polystyrene (or set into the plaster). Pieces of small diameter tree branch would also be lovely and quite authentic too. I did consider painting or decorating my bases, but I’m not very crafty so decided to leave them alone.

The tree at the front right hand side is mounted on an old wooden bobbin I found in a shop in Tasmania. I have a couple more to use as well.  Aren’t they gorgeous?

I have so enjoyed having these trees sitting on my coffee table, but the time has come to part with a few, so they have been put into bags ready for distribution by Santa!

I’ve also been making little bags to hold soap or lavender to put in drawers or loop onto coat hangers in an attempt to keep the moths at bay. I saw something similar years ago in a craft shop and have held it in my mind ever since. This is a really simple make but it took me a while to sort out the order of construction and proportions. I have a few duds in my drawers!  I made all the felt for the heads, and used scraps of ribbon and lace, and a few beads for the faces. I am going to make a few more and may change the colour of the beads for the eyes as they are not showing up too well, and I need to re-arrange the whiskers a bit. You can see how the face design is evolving and every one seems to be a different size. As I looked at this photo I realised that the bag on the right looks more finished than the other two, thanks to the bow, so I quickly added a bow to each bag, practically sewing them on as I walked to the coffee shop to deliver them to a pair of unfortunate friends!