A Darling Gift & Sweater Embellishments

If you're new to our blog, this is Doris our antique sock machine.  She's somewhere close to 100 years old and makes fabulous socks.

This afternoon my childhood girlfriend came up and brought me an absolutely darling gift.  Dena frequents a shop in Utah called "Wood Creations" and decorated these letters to form the word "Doris."

She first paints each letter with an acrylic paint and then uses modge podge on the front and adds regular scrapbooking paper on top of that, followed by another coat of modge podge.  Once they're dry, she adds a ribbon here and there.

Pretty cute, huh?

I just love 'em and will have to find the perfect place in my office for them.

The other day I showed you one of the sleeves to our "Mrs. Crumpet's Flock" sweater.  Sleeve #2 is now complete and I thought it would be fun to add a few embellishments.  Even tho the actual chart will not show this, I'll add extra notes in the pattern with pictures to show how to add these little extras.  I think getting the knitter to participate in part of the design process is great fun and really encourages them to step out of their shell a bit with their knitting.

I use the same weight yarn with the duplicate stitch or French knots and thread the needle so that two strands are used.  Pick any spot and bring the needle to the front.............

Wrap the yarn around the needle twice and then insert the needle back in to the sweater just a slight distance from where you had brought it to the front.  Don't go back into the same spot, or you will undo the French knot.

Give it a slight tug once the yarn has been taken to the back, and there you have it - a French knot.  I love to make bushes out of these knots and it adds a 3-D element to the sweater which is even more fun for kids.

Once the bush is done, I do the same thing with a different color to make flowers.  The only difference is that instead of having the yarn doubled, I use just a single strand.

And there you have it, a couple of extra bushes for the sheep to graze on!

I think I'll keep one sleeve plain without any French knots to give just a slight variance to the two sleeves.

Another thing that you can do with a sweater like this is to add French knots to the actual sheep to "puff" them out a bit.  Adding embellishments is quite fun and will really make your sweaters unique.

Well, now that both sleeves are done, I will begin work on the sweater front and back.  I'm afraid the pictures will have to stop here until the entire sweater is completed.  I can't give too much away or you won't be surprised when it's all done!