Winter Knitting

Well, the holidays are over. Okay, they've been over for a while at this point. There was the big winter cleaning, when all the decorations got put away. Although I have to admit, they didn't all get put away. Most of them did, but I have a fondness for glittery, teal, artificial poinsettias; those are still adorning the top of the cabinet in my room. There's also a small polar bear wearing a bow and a snowman up there. Which brings me to the topic of this post: knitted/crocheted winter decorations that aren't just for Christmas.
The first thing that came to mind was snowflakes. So naturally I decided to try to make a whole pile of them about two weeks before Christmas. There was a plan to tie them onto a cord and make a panel of them to go in a doorway. Two weeks before Christmas was not the best time to start on that, especially considering how each one needs to be blocked and stiffened in some way. I like using the old-fashioned sugar-and-water method so I don't have to handle any chemicals, but it does seem to take a while for them to fully dry. The pile got to about eight snowflakes before I realized that plan just wasn't going to work out as well as I'd hoped. At least, not before winter was over. Also, on a side note, an intermediate level snowflake is maybe not the best choice for a 2nd tatting project. Crocheting snowflakes goes much faster, but the stiffening still takes time.
Which brings us to another project for winter decorating. Snowmen! They're cute and cuddly in a chilly way, and Ravelry has some great patterns for them. I especially liked these: Knitting Snowman and Frost Flower Snowman. But since it was my first attempt at knitting something 3D, I went with the knitting snowman pattern, because it seemed a little easier.
The first thing I noticed as I read through the pattern was that there was some sewing involved. More sewing, in fact, than I thought was necessary. (I like sewing, and I like knitting, but I don't really like sewing my knitting.) So I made a few changes to the pattern. This is how it turned out:

And here are the changes to reduce the amount of sewing.

The Changes

• I found it easier to knit the nose and arms first. The arms seemed a little long, so I shortened them by about 4 or 5 rounds. In retrospect, the 'hand' section of the arms could be a little shorter as well if you're not planning on making the skewer knitting needles.
• I knit the arms in the round instead of sewing up the sides, adding stuffing as I went (every 10-15 rounds or so). To do this, I followed the pattern for the arm until round 18, but instead of decreasing the stitches to 14, I started working in seed stitch with 15 stitches. I kept doing seed stitch in rounds until round 50, then jumped to row 55 and finished according to the pattern; on the k2tog round, I k2tog until the last stitch, and then just knit that one.
• For the middle section, I knit in the round so there wouldn't be any sewing. I also selected 3 stitches in between 2 of the stitch decreases, to be knit all the way down to the 1x1 ribbing. This made a little placket to sew the buttons to. I continued the seed stitch as though that placket was part of it. The rows went  K1, K3, K1 if the seed stitch landed on a knit stitch before the placket, and P1, K3, P1 if the seed stitch had a purl stitch before the placket.
• After I finished the middle section and part of the bottom section (up 'til the part of the pattern where it says to start stuffing), I sewed on the eyes, nose, front buttons, and arms.
• The rest was finished according to the pattern.

I haven't quite finished the hat and scarf, but I think it looks pretty cute without them, too. My computer has been having problems, and so far quite a bit of time has been spent trying to keep it running. But I'll update this post with another photo once I get the accessories done! And I still hope to try that frost flower pattern before spring. But there are so many amazing patterns to try for hats, doilies, and afghans. Stay tuned, and happy crafting! 😊

Update:

The hat and scarf are finished, despite a bout of the 'flu. I only made a couple of minor changes to both. The scarf is about 2.5-3" longer than the pattern said, and the hat brim has 56 stitches instead of 52. At the part of the pattern where it said to increase to 54, I decreased to 54 instead. I also made the hat a bit shorter than 30 rounds; after trying it on the snowman, I started the decreases at round 21 or 22, instead of round 27. Even with that, it fit better with the brim cuffed up a little, but that could be because I didn't sew it on. I wanted to leave the possibility for easy wardrobe changes later. As for the pom pom on the hat, more on that in the next post!