Knitted bow ring

Remember my knitted bow I did a while ago? Meet its young sibling, the knitted bow ring – gifted this xmas to my BFF, Amy (who is also modelling it above). Nice huh? It's basically a long thin (I think I cast on four or five stitches) strip of stocking stitch, folded over and with the yarn wound around the middle as usual. Then hot glue gun (or tie) onto a ring back and you're done. Cute huh?

Tweed bow necklace

Super excited about this latest project for Gathered by Mollie Makes (out 21/12 - what a good date!). I've always wanted to do a tweed bow necklace but a combination of not having enough confidence (and not getting my Singer skills on) meant it had been sitting in my head for a while, crying like a puppy left outside a shop. Nice image…

Anyway, it's (again) an easy make. Took me all of ten minutes more or less. You can sew it if you like, but I made mine from hemming tape. Check it out coming to an iPad near you this Friday

Red velvet and gold Christmas wreath

[caption id="attachment_181" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Trad wreath[/caption]

My first ever wreath and it was easy peasy. Small wreath, velvet and gold ribbon from good old Hobbycraft. Bit of hot glue to get me going, and done! Bit trad, but we all like a bit of trad at Christmas.

Knitted bow take two: moss stitch

So I think we'll all agree that my first attempt at a knitted bow was a little… floppy? Yuh. OK, let's pretend we never saw that (and we'll quietly fume and blame the evil crochet anyway). While I'm a crocheter-in-training, let's continue with another knitted bow, this time modified a little and in moss stitch, for extra sturdiness. Much better… Also, apologies for my chipped nails. Promise to be fully mani'd next time. Ahem.

[caption id="attachment_97" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Knit, purl, knit, purl… etc[/caption]

I used aran yarn and size 6mm (UK 4, US 10) needles
Cast on 37 stitches (more if you want your bow to be wider, but this may make it floppier).
Row 1: Moss stitch (k1, p1) to end.
Row 2: Moss stitch (k1, p1) to end.
Continue for eight rows (again more if you want a bigger bow) then cast off, and sew in your ends. You should be left with a rectangle of moss stitch.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Moss stitched rectangle[/caption]

Create a loop and sew.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Looped…[/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="230"] Looped. Again…[/caption]

Now wind some yarn around the middle, pulling tightly to cinch in the bow. Knot at the back.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225"] Yay, done! Easiest knitted bow ever[/caption]

Attach a hair clip (or brooch pin) and you're done :D

Gathered by Mollie Makes

It's technically off-sale now – but then when is a digital magazine not on sale, huh? – but I totally should mention that one of my projects features in issue 4 of our sister magazine for iPad, Gathered by Mollie Makes. Utterly proud to be in there, as it's my first ever published project. Having worked on crafting magazines (on and off) since 2005, I've been dabbling, doing my own thang for a bit (as you'll see). All very slap dash and not really what you'd call conventional.

I've never been asked to do anything as far as freelancing goes – I'm not massively confident for one thing, and so I was rather thrilled to be asked to see if I could do some bow clips. Looked pretty simple to me, so I gave it a go and – tah dah! They're uber-simple and really effective.

As you can imagine, I'm a much more confident crafter now, so much so that you'll see a couple of my other projects coming up in Gathered soon.

Very proud to have this little tag: