Check out the Christmas in July Makealong

If you love knitting, crochet, sewing or all of the above, you need to keep an eye on the 2022 Christmas in July blog hop and makealong from Underground Crafter.

Every day in the month of July a blogger will be sharing a knitting, crochet or sewing project that makes a great gift for someone on your list. Each week has a theme:

Week 1 (July 1-7): Babies, Kids, and Teens
Week 2 (July 8-14): Women
Week 3 (July 15-21): Gifts for Anyone
Week 4 (July 22-28): Home
Week 5 (July 29-31): Pets

and a new pattern is released every day. I’m taking part through Our Daily Craft and I’ll share my pattern with you next week.

In addition to being a way to check out some great crafts and get a jump on your holiday making, the event is also a makealong and there are prizes! Check out the post at Underground Crafter for all the details, the patterns and to enter the giveaways. And if you make something from the blog hop this month you can share it — or see what others are making! — by using the hashtag #cijmakealong2022 on social media.

Next Pattern:

If you’re looking for a fun project to play with brioche knitting, check out the My Buddy knitting pattern/recipe from Casuarinagirl on Ravelry.

This project doesn’t include a brioche tutorial, so it’s good to know the basics, including how to increase and decrease, but you can always practice on a swatch before you start the project if you want.

The design is meant to be flexible for the yarn you have and what size and shape of project you want to make, from a skinny neck scarf to a asymmetrical triangle or a more classic triangular shape.

The shape you end up with will depend on how often you increase (and then decrease on the other side). The pattern mentions increasing every fourth, fifth or six row (and the one shown increases and decreases every sixth row) but you can do it even more or less often depending on the shape you’re looking for an how much yarn you want to use.

You can work to whatever depth you would like, or use almost half of the yarn you have set aside for the project and begin decreasing.

When it comes to yarn, she used three strands of yarn held together to make a super fluffy shawl, but you can work it with whatever yarn and needles you like to make a wrap that’s all your own.

If you are new to brioche (or to increasing and decreasing in brioche) it might be a good idea to make a little scarf or head wrap first before diving in to the bigger pattern, just so you’re more comfortable with the technique. Or just give it a go; nothing about brioche knitting is that difficult. (But you might want to use a lifeline because I find brioche hard to rip out or fix mistakes in properly.)

You can grab the free pattern for the Buddy Wrap on Ravelry.

[Photo: Casuarinagirl]

Next Pattern:

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