Refining the Christmas puds

The Christmas pud baubles, that is 😄

I was fairly happy with my original attempt but thought that I could perhaps improve on it a little.  The crochet is done in two halves to cover the ball and for my first attempt I made the lower half using leftover brown Scheepjes Colour Crafter yarn. The top section was crocheted with a rather pretty white yarn that has a silky thread running through it, which I think is James C Brett Baby Shimmer.  This time I made two halves in the brown to cover the entire polystyrene ball, then made another half in the white yarn to go over the top.  I think this arrangement looks much better.

As I mentioned previously I did struggle somewhat with the leaves and holly berries.  For bauble number two I persevered with the original leaf pattern but still found it a tad difficult to be honest.  I came across a pattern for crocheted buttons and used that for the berries this time.  I was able to shape the berries with a few stitches through the base ~ I was quite pleased with how these turned out.

Bauble number three was refined a little more, although the pudding base and cream topping was done the same as for pudding number two.  The leaf pattern uses slip stitches but this time I used double-crochet instead and I'm really pleased with how they have turned out.  As for the berries, well the original pattern again used slip stitches in a magic ring; this time I used double-crochet in a four-chain circle and shaped them a little with a couple of stitches across the base.  I also sewed the leaves and berries closer together on the "cream" than I did on the second pudding.

I'm really rather surprised at how well this last pudding has turned out.  It goes to show that sometimes you just have to be brave and try out your own tweaks 😉