Deck the halls with balls of fair isle!

‘55 Christmas Balls to Knit’ is probably the cutest Christmas knitting book…ever. Not cute little fluffy angels and snowmen cute, not that kind of cute. I mean cute as in the guys who wrote this book are just about the most charming pair ever and that shows in every stitch. I want to live next door to Arne and Carlos. I want to play in their doll house. I want to have snow ball fights with them and make them hot chocolate with marshmallows in. You get the feeling these guys are super friendly- that they’d be totally up for all sorts of old fashioned silliness, knitted and otherwise. The patterns in the book have an old fashioned kind of feel and indeed some of the fair isle designs are sourced from vintage patterns. The balls are knitted on four needles which meant that I handed the book to Mum to actually knit the balls (I am such a four needle wuss), she made these three balls. As she didn’t have any pure Nordic wool she did the first with some double knitting which was kicking about and the ball came out a little, ahem, large. She switched to 4ply and got a much more sensible sized decoration. She says the patterns actually ‘work’ really well, they’re nicely laid out and she had no problems following the charts. I really like the idea of doing these in black and a variegated sock yarn or some such-I’ll have to ask nicely, but not too much grovelling will be required I don’t think as she really enjoyed knitting up these darlings. I have also put in a request for a scarf, nice and wide and long, with balls at either end. I think that would be ‘cute’ in the most charming way ever. If you are wanting to rustle up a set of decs which reflect a kind of vintage Scandinavian feel, and who wouldn’t, this really is a lovely book. More than that if you want a peak into the whimsical world of Arne and Carlos they put a lot of themselves into this book which makes it Nice- with a capital N!