Post Early For Xmas

 In normal times Friday morning would find me at Learning Disabilities North East’s Knit & Natter group for older ladies.  Due to circumstances far beyond my control I haven’t been to Knit & Natter since the start of February. 

One of our ladies, Mrs Gish, knits lots of squares: it helps her cope with anxiety.

The day before lockdown I managed to get into LDNE’s building and picked up the bin bag full of knitted squares intending to make things out of them.  I’ve made 3 baby blankets (12 squares each), and a single blanket (36).  

When I took them into the office I picked up yet more squares of varying colours including a couple of dozen white squares and four red squares.  Last year I made little snowmen and a santa from white and red squares some of which sold at Christmas events.

Which led me to thinking …

Mrs Gish casts on very loosely and casts off really tight, so the squares are sort of trapezoid.

If I run the tail of yarn left over after casting off through the stitches and pull them tight I get a very gathered triangle effect.           Do that with two squares and sew the sides together and you get a tight skirt shape like a tea cosy.  Do that with two pairs of squares one inside the other, leaving appropriate gaps, and you have the makings of a double skinned tea cosy, and you can sew up the loosely cast on bottom.  Then if you do a similar thing with one square, turn it inside itself, stuff and draw a thread around the other end you get a ball for a head.  Crochet hat, scarf and embroidered lumps-of-coat buttons, face and carrot nose and maybe … I had a go and made the first snowman tea-cosy.  

 My cousin-once-removed FifiD visited and was so enamoured she insisted on making a donation for him and took him home for her mother.

Since then I’ve made two more snowmen and two Santa tea-cosies and have run out of suitable squares.

Now I’m wondering whether tea-cosies with less character would be worth making, or whether I should go back to blankets.

 I wondered aloud in a Zoom whether it seems a bit much to be making Xmas decorations in May/July/August.

But as the Interim CEO commented “It might be Christmas before we’re all out of this.”

I fear she was being optimistic.