Knit a Simple Christmas Bauble

The great thing about knitting Christmas balls as ornaments for your tree is that you can start with a super easy pattern and embellish them however you like.

Knits’ End has a great easy Christmas ornament knitting pattern, worked flat but really large in size — about 15 inches around and 6 inches tall! That’s a lot of space to embellish if you want.

Here are some ideas beyond knitting a solid-color one, which is, of course, great:

use up little odd balls to knit random stripes
or bigger leftovers to make a stripe pattern
use a simple colorwork band around the middle such as Xs or checks or a snowflake design
because it’s worked flat it would be easy to add a design of your choice, or even a word or a monogram, using duplicate stitch
or make a little chart and work intarsia if you’d rather
throw in a simple stitch pattern in the middle section where there are no increases or decreases

Do you knit Christmas ornaments? I’d love to hear about what you do.

[Photo via Knits’ End.]

Looking for more Christmas themed Knitting patterns? Check out some of our favorite Knitting patterns on Etsy and

These Christmas Knitting Pattern Books on Amazon

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Now that all the Joann stores have closed, a mysterious message has appeared on the company’s website:

For generations, Joann has been honored to be part of your creativity: your quilts, costumes, school projects, and handmade moments of love. It has been our joy to serve markers and dreamers across the country.
We’re stitching up something new behind the scenes and we can’t wait to share what’s next.
Stay tuned for exciting news about the future of Joann.

To quickly recap, Joann filed for bankruptcy in January for the second time in less than a year. In February, in the hope of making the company more attractive to potential buyers, it petitioned the court for permission to close about 500 of its 800 stores. The company was put up for auction, with Gordon Brothers set to buy the company, sell its assets and close all the stores if no other buyer materialized.

In the end the winning bidder was GA Group, but the result was the same: all stores were to be closed by the end of May if not sooner.

Once store closure sales started the company quickly stopped selling on its website, and now all that remains is this jpeg image hinting at new ventures.

I’m sure there will be a tone of speculation in the coming days and weeks (or as long as it takes for them to announce the meaning of the message) as to what sorts of plans Joann could be cooking up.

My theory based on nothing but my gut is that they will transition to an online only storefront, probably with much reduced inventory, sort of like Herrschners (which had previously announced that it will be carrying Big Twist yarn, the beloved private label yarn brand sold at Joann). I also think they will use whatever retail sales they do to support CreativeBug, the digital learning platform that Joann purchased in 2017. That could mean producing kits for projects that already have classes, or developing classes based on products they want to sell, or both.

As of this writing the CreativeBug website seems to still be functional and there’s a full slate of new classes planned for June. I’ve got my eye on both the Joann website and the Joann restructuring website and will let you know as soon as I see changes.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your speculation as to what the next chapter might be for Joann.

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