Dressing up your Elf on the Shelf this Christmas

Unfortunately the patterns for these items are no longer available. I have kept this post up for Elf on the Shelf knitting inspiration.

A few years ago we started the Elf on the Shelf tradition in our household - a small Elf that joins our family in the run up to Christmas and has fun around the house overnight. Last year our original Elf was joined by a lady Elf friend, and the two children delighted in running downstairs every morning to see what they had been up to!

Our Elf is always very well dressed, thanks to my Mum. She has been creating knitting patterns for her knitted Elf sweaters for a couple of years now. She made three different designs and they are all lovely.

I think that her designs are so lovely that I thought I would share them! Below is the ballerina outfit, complete with a wrap around sweater and legwarmers! It would be fantastic to impress any little ballerinas that you have in your house.

This little knitted bag is really sweet, and you could use it for the Elf to carry a small treat or letter for your child if they've been particularly good. Or perhaps you could give it to your child to leave out for their Elf with a small gift inside, and see if they bring something back.

Below you can see the knitted bag, swimming costume and skirt. I'm planning on having our Elf appear in the morning in her swimming costume on the day that my children have their swimming lessons, I think they'll love that!

Finally I quite fancy one of these cosy onesies myself! And the little doll is really sweet, you could customise it to match a doll that your child has.

Here are some of the other outfits that she has designed. I think it would be lovely to knit the soccer outfit in your team's colours!

The sweater and trousers look really comfy and you could make them in all different colours, perhaps making an outfit to match with one of your child's!

You may also enjoy my previous posts where I share some other ways that you can dress up your Elf this Christmas:

How to Customise your Elf on the Shelf
Knitted Sweaters for your Elf on the Shelf

A knitted scarf with pom poms

I was recently contacted by Love Crochet and asked if I'd like to receive some yarn in exchange for sharing a craft tutorial on my blog. Of course I said yes, I find it very difficult to turn down craft supplies! So here's how I used the yarn to make a little knitted scarf for Mia, complete with pom poms on each end.

I was sent four 100g balls of Painbox Yarns in pastel colours. The four colours are 146 Dusty Lilac, 152 Ballet Pink, 138 Sky Blue and 131 Seafoam Blue. They all co-ordinate beautifully together.

To make the scarf I decided to use two strands of yarn at a time and I knitted with 5 mm needles (UK size 6). I cast on with 16 stitches which made a scarf with a width of about 10cm. It makes quite a narrow scarf, but Mia is only little so it fits her perfectly!

The scarf is knitted entirely in garter stitch, knitting every row. Each stripe is 12 rows which makes them about 4 cm wide. The entire scarf measures about 115 cm - I read that the length of a scarf should be the same as the height of the person that it is intended for and that seemed pretty accurate. I made sure to try it out on Mia before I cast off!

Then I used the yarn to make a coloured pom pom for each corner of the scarf. I used a pom pom maker which was brilliant, it made the pom poms really quickly and easily, quite a revelation after I've always faffed about with cardboard rings!

Make sure to leave long tails on the pom poms when you tie them off so that they can be sewn firmly to the ends of the scarf. I suspect that they are going to be fiddled with!

I'm really pleased with this scarf and Mia is too!

I received the yarn for this project and a pom pom maker set in exchange for a review.

Knit some sweaters for your Elf on the Shelf this Christmas!

I've written over the last couple of years about our Elf on the Shelf - the little scout Elf that joins us in the run up to Christmas and entertains the children by moving about the house and getting up to mischief. It's a lot of fun for the children (and me!) and I'm really pleased that we started this holiday tradition.

This year, our Elf is going to be looking super stylish, thanks to my Mum and her fabulous designing and knitting skills! She has knitted him a selection of gorgeous little jumpers to wear. He's going to come back from the North Pole wearing one, and appear in a different one from time to time during the build up to Christmas. I think that the sweaters are wonderful, and so I wanted to share them with you!

There's the cabled aran design:

A sweater with a colourful patterned yoke:

And finally a classic red and white snowflake design. All the sweaters are knitted using DK/8 ply yarn (12g for each sweater) using a US3 3.25mm needle and will fit the standard 12" Elf.

Unfortunately the patterns for these sweaters are no longer available to purchase, but I hope that these photographs will provide some knitted Elf jumper inspiration. 

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A knitted hot water bottle cover...

...and the further perils of cheap craft kits.

I should have learned my lesson when it comes to skimping on craft supplies (like cheap Hama beads) but I was tempted early this year in the after Christmas sales, and I picked up a knitted hot water bottle cover craft kit in The Works. Harry always sleeps with his mini hot water bottle, even through the summer, and Mia had started wondering why she didn't have one. The main reason that I picked up the kit was because it contained the hot water bottle as well as the pattern and yarns to knit a cover for it.

As you can see from the picture, I ventured off plan a little bit. The original colours in the kit were red and green, but I decided to use some of my own purple yarn instead with the red, as I didn't really like the red/green contrast.

I do have trouble with knitting patterns so it's probably unfair to blame the kit completely, but I was very careful about following the pattern for the first few rows at least, so I'm not sure why the direction of stitches reversed a few rows in. I do quite like the contrasting stripe across the bottom of the cover though, I think it adds a bit of interest. After knitting the main body of the cover the rest of the pattern didn't make a great deal of sense to me, so I kind of made it up as I went along. My version of the hot water bottle cover knitting pattern goes something like - knit in stocking stitch (if you can) for the height of the hot water bottle, decrease for a few rows, then do ribbing for a bit, making the ribbing twice as high as the funnel bit on the hot water bottle so that you can fold it over on itself. Sew it all up, leaving the top open so that you can insert the hot water bottle.

The red wool ran out about two thirds of the way up the back of the cover so I just finished it off in the purple. That meant that I didn't have enough red wool to sew up the edges so I used purple, but luckily that doesn't seem to be noticeable. The kit then called for a white crochet snowflake motif to decorate the front. The crochet instructions made no sense to me whatsoever, so instead I cut out a pink heart from felt and sewed it to the front, much nicer anyway for a year round accessory.

It isn't the most accomplished piece of knitting but I think that it looks quite sweet, and Mia was very happy with it! That's another project ticked off my list of unfinished craft projects.

And despite my limitations when it comes to crochet I'm planning on beginning a new crochet project soon in association with Coats Crafts. I'll be sharing my progress across social media over the next few months, so keep an eye out so that you can follow along with my progress!

Review - Stitch markers from Charmed Knitting

Today I'm sharing some gorgeous stitch markers that I was sent to review by Charmed Knitting. Charmed Knitting is a small, family business, aiming to provide unique and beautiful collections to knitters and crocheters across the globe. They sell stitch markers in different sizes to cater to different styles and sizes of knitting, ranging from simple inexpensive charms to luxury charms, as well as seasonal and limited edition sets.

My stitch markers arrived beautifully packaged in tissue paper, wrapped with ribbon and secured with a little heart charm. Each set of stitch markers also comes with a little drawstring bag for storage. I received a set of gorgeous enamel Blue Daisies (£4.99), which are a good size and have a clip so you can clip them over the needles without moving the stitches about.

Here is one marking the beginning of the round in my current sock knitting project, it's just the right size!

I also received a set of Owl Family (£3.99) bronze stitch markers which are really lovely, and I really like the matching large safety pin to keep them all together when not in use!

Charmed Knitting are currently offering a free gift with all orders - a sweet The Happy Knitter set with five stitch markers. You can find more information here and the voucher code here -

Free Gift.

I was sent a bundle of stitch markers in exchange for this review.

A collaborative crafting project with #CraftTheParcel

I was recently contacted and asked if I would like to take part in the #CraftTheParcel blogger challenge. Working with InPost, the idea was for a group of bloggers to come together to create a bespoke patchwork blanket or quilt, each blogger contributing a 12" square to the blanket. Using the InPost service, each blogger worked in turn on their square, collecting the blanket as completed so far, adding their square, and then posting the whole thing on to the next blogger.

I was very eager to take part. I love collaborative projects, crafting, and the chance to try something new. I thought about various ways of making my square, and in the end I went with knitting. I'm not a great knitter but I knew that I could manage to produce a simple patchwork style design using a few complementary colours. I chose blue yarn in three colours, darker for the centre and lighter for the sides.

I began by making the centre square. Although I was aiming for a size of 4" it did turn out a little larger, but all I needed to do was adjust the sizes of my rectangles accordingly.

Having worked out the shapes and sizes that I then needed, I set to work with some furious knitting. I'm pretty slow at knitting, and if I make a mistake I need to unpick it all and start again, so I gave myself plenty of time to get it done. Fortunately I managed to not drop a single stitch, and it all knitted up a lot quicker than I was expecting.

Sewing together the pieces went pretty easily as well, I made sure that I left long ends of yarn when I cast on and off and so it all sewed up neatly.

I finished off the design by sewing a blue felt heart in the centre of the darker square. I'm really pleased with how the square turned out, it's the first time that I've attempted any kind of knitted blanket and I'm really chuffed with it. I found it quite encouraging that I was able to knit the square so successfully!

I'm looking forward to seeing the completed blanket, which will be donated to charity!

You can see a picture of the finished quilt at the link in the tweet below!

Our #crafttheparcel blogger challenge with @InPostUK is over! A gorgeous quilt, and £1000 raised for @RainbowTrustCC pic.twitter.com/daQGzqnOyE

— Jennifer Jain (@JenniferJain) February 10, 2015

I received compensation towards materials, postage costs and my time.

Review - Wool and the Gang Knit Kit

I was recently contacted by Wool and the Gang, and asked if I would like to review one of their Knit Kits. Wool and the Gang is a diy fashion brand making knitting cool and fun again. You can buy yarn to make your own projects, try a Knit Kit which has everything that you need to complete a project, or buy the items ready made by a member of the team.

I'm not the most confident knitter, but I had a browse of the website and decided that I could easily manage a simple scarf. I chose the Lil' Foxy Roxy Scarf Knit Kit. You can choose the colour scarf you'd like to knit from a huge range of colours, both brighter and more subdued. I chose Shacklewell Grey, a black/grey striped mix of yarn. The kits come with everything that you need apart from the knitting needles, which you can easily add to your order.

My order arrived in a couple of days in a personalised box, what a lovely touch!

I was very relieved to see that the pattern was indeed very simple, and I was easily able to manage it. The scarf is knitted on 15mm needles, so it knitted up really quickly. I managed to complete it across a couple of evenings and it was a very satisfying project (although it did feel odd to be knitting a chunky, super warm scarf over the hottest days of the year!).

I really like the colour that I've chosen. I deliberately chose a more muted colour because I have coats in several different colours and I wanted to make sure that it matched everything. I'm hoping to be able to wear it for a long time so it needs to continue to match with a variety of coats! My progress below is after just one hour of knitting. As you can see the yarn itself is striped, but when it is knitted up it all mixes together nicely.

The yarn is called Crazy Sexy Wool and is grown by Peru's finest Andean sheep! It's certainly lovely and soft, and it will definitely keep me warm this winter.

Here I am, proudly wearing my finished scarf, don't I look nice and snug!

I received the Lil' Foxy Roxy Knit Kit to review.

Me and knitting socks

I knitted my first pair of socks several years ago. I'm not a fantastic knitter, and I do require a lot of support while I'm knitting. If I make a mistake I have to stop and take it up to my Mum to sort out for me. But a few years back I became quite successful at knitting socks, which is surprising because they aren't the easiest things to knit. You have to make three knitting needles into a sort of triangle and then knit around them all, keeping track of all the needles at once and trying not to stab yourself. Then you have to do some complicated manoeuvres to turn the heel, pick up stitches, increase and decrease and all sorts. I needed a lot of help the first few times, but a few socks later I got the hang of it and produced five or six pairs of socks that looked pretty good, if I say so myself.

I think I particularly liked knitting socks because of all the fantastic sock yarns that you can buy. You buy a ball that is all different colours, and then when you knit it up it turns into stripes and other patterns that you couldn't imagine before you start knitting.

Somewhere along the way though some children came along, and the sock knitting was put aside. Abandoned right in the middle of a sock in fact.

I was reminded of my neglected sock again while I was hunting out my blanket knitting bits. I can't believe that I abandoned this gorgeous, brightly coloured sock. I was knitting a different pattern to my standard one which is mainly worked in rib, and it looks as though it will be so stretchy and comfortable when it's finished. The yarn is Wendy Happy 4 ply 2504 Capricorn and I can't even remember where I bought it from or when.

So I took it up to my Mum and she helped me to identify whereabouts in the pattern I'd got to, and she encouraged me to get started with it again. I don't have much to do to finish the first sock, then hopefully I'll be able to knit another one that looks pretty much the same. Then maybe by next winter I'll have a new pair of socks!