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

Fall will be here before we know it, and that means there are holidays coming right behind where we might be entertaining at home. It’s always fun to have a hand knit touch in your home for other people to see, and if you’re going to be in the kitchen all day you might as well have some nice knit dish cloths to use.

I love this little plaid hand towel from Darling Jadore. Use a little bit of leftover cotton yarn from another project for the plaid portion. It looks like the horizontal stripes are worked as you knit and the vertical stripes are done with duplicate stitch, making this a quick and easy project even newer knitters can make.

Combine garter stitch and an easy eyelet pattern worked sideways to make the Annette Dish Towel from Cluck Cluck Boots, which is meant to be reminiscent of flour sack towels. It calls for DK weight yarn and you can work it in one color or two (or even three!).

Add a little more texture with this set of kitchen towels from Whileberry Creative. They’re mostly worked in garter stitch with borders in easy knit/purl patterns, and you can work them in sport or worsted weight yarn.

Two of Wands Shop has another cute allover knit and purl pattern they call the Seersucker Textured Tea Towel. It’s an easy repeating pattern worked in worsted weight yarn, and there’s a chart in the pattern you can use, but don’t have to, if you want to practice knitting from a chart.

The Classic Cloth dish towel from Handmade Home by Connie is another one that can use a little leftover yarn in a contrasting color, or you could color block it our use stripes throughout the pattern. This one uses worsted weight yarn and another easy repeating knit purl stitch pattern.

If you like to hang your towel on the oven handle or elsewhere but it’s always falling off, try the Stay Put kitchen towel from Fancy Step Knits. This project is worked in garter stitch and includes a hole partway through so you can pull the towel through itself over a rod or handle. Stripes are optional but a nice addition.

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