Just Pootling

♥ December already ? ♥

Oh my goodness ! How did that happen ?

Just like that we are already in to the first week of December !

At home the decorations are up and there is Christmas Crochet everywhere,

  and at work glitter is twinkling wherever you look and 

we are full steam ahead for our Nursery Nativity next week !

♥

This year I have loved all the neutral coloured decorations that are around 

and they were definitely my inspiration for my Trio of Sparkly Star Christmas accessories

 that I recently designed for lovecrochet.com

You can find the free patterns for these here at blog.lovecrochet.com

♥

I have also been having a lot of fun putting together a design 

for some Christmassy Polar Bears.

Over the past few months I have really enjoyed making lots of small

 amigurumi animals from patterns that I have bought online

 and last month I finally plucked up the courage to have a go myself !

And here they are .......

Each bear stands approx. 13 cm tall and the pattern includes all the

 instructions you need to make the bears, the scarf, the balloon, 

the holly sprig and the gold star.

  

You can find the pattern here lovecrochet.com

♥

I enjoyed making the bears so much that last night I spent a lovely couple of hours 

working on a completely unnecessary project that just had to be done .....

...... and here it is .... One bear in a Christmas Pudding Suit !

If you fancy having a go at the Bears and decide, like me, that you absolutely have to have one dressed as a Pudd here is the bonus pattern for you !

♥

For the pudding: Using brown DK yarn and a 3mm hook chain 20. work 24 rows of DC, 

chaining 1 and turning at the end of each row.

To make the first armhole: In the next row DC 3, Chain 6, 

skip 6 stitches and rejoin back to the row. DC 10.

Work 18 more rows of DC. Finish off.

To join the seam and make the second armhole: Place the 2 short edges together 

and Sl St 10 DC together. Finish off. 

Leave a gap of 6 stitches. Rejoin your yarn and Sl St the last 3 stitches together. Finish off.

Turn inside out and place on the bear. 

Run a gathering thread around the top and bottom and pull up. 

Before finishing off add the stuffing to make the shape of the pudding.

For the topping: Using white DK yarn and a 3mm hook chain 26.

Row 1: *DC 3, increase in the next stitch.* Repeat from * to * to the end of the row, finishing with 1 DC.

Rows 2 and 3: DC 31.

Row 4: *Increase in the first stitch, DC 4* Repeat from * to * to the end of the row.

Row 5: To make the drip effect around the bottom of the topping I worked a random combination of the following cluster stitches to the end of the row. 

Begin by DC 4, then skip a stitch and work all of the following in to the next stitch: Drip 1: HTR + TR + TR + HTR, skip a stitch and Sl St back in to the next stitch. The two differnet sized drips are worked in exactly the same way by skipping a stitch then working all of the stitches in the next stitch, skipping a stitch and then a Sl St back in the next stitch.

Drip 2: TR + TR + DTR + TR + TR

Drip 3: DTR + DTR + TTR + DTR + DTR

Finish off.

Run a gathering thread around the top and place the topping around the bears neck and stitch at the back.

I worked two extra holly leaves from the pattern and stitched these in to place.

♥

Sadly, there just aren't enough hours in the day for me to get to my little blog space

 as much as I would like these days but I am now going to spend

 the rest of the morning updating all my designs in the right hand side bar of this page,

 and if you fancy having a go at any of them, 

just click on the photo and it will take you straight to the free pattern !

 Wishing you all lots of fun in the run up to Christmas 

and may you have lots of time to crochet !

♥