Small DIY project: a nice set of balls - Cecilies candlestick!

I'm sorry for not being able to resist that pun in the headline. That's just me.

So, the other day my friend Cecilie posted this image on facebook, and since she always makes the most adorable things in crochet, I assumed it was something she had come up with herself. 

And right I was.

   

I think it looks great, and even though it is essentially an advent-candlestick (in Denmark we have a certain ritual with these: we light one candle, first sunday in advent, two the next, and so forth), and therfore a bit late to post here - it is also just pretty and festive, and a very doable little project. 

I could absolutely also see it with the balls in different red and pink hues, or perhaps in glittery yarn, yay!

I asked her how she had made it, and here are her instructions:

"This candlestick requires a bit of crochet skills, especially when it comes to crocheting a perfect sphere.

I used eight polystyrene balls of the good quality hobby kind you would use for dolls, sturdy decorations etc. (four 80 mm. diameter and four 60 mm. diameter), four metal candle holders, a stanley knife, yarn, crochet hook, a long ('dolls') needle, and, obviously, four candles! Use the quality kind, where the wax could be scratched off easily, if it should run into the yarn a bit.

Materials are widely available in hobby/crafting material shops, in DK they have all of it right here.

First, you'll need to cut a perfect slice of the bottoms on each of the large balls holding the candles, in order to stabilize them. To do that in an easy way, I found a small plastic container with a sharp edge in an appropriate size, and pressed it into the four balls - that gave me a precise line to cut from.

In these four large balls, you'll also need to cut out holes to squeeze the metal candleholders into  (make sure they are exactly on top, so the candles are in balance). I used the candleholders to press a marking line in the ball - same as before - before I cut out the hole.
 

When the hole is cut - don't make it too wide - press the metal candleholders in place (fasten with a bit of glue).

To do the crochet part, I did the small balls as a full cover, and the larger ones - from top towards bottom - starting around the metal candleholders. I did them free style, but there are many instructions to crochet a ball or a sphere out there. For the large balls I used a wool yarn and crochet hook no. 6, and for the small ones ordinary cotton yarn and hook no. 3.

A coat of base paint in the same color as the yarn, can be a good idea, especially if the yarn is dark, or if the yarn is of a thinner quality. Any kind of water based hobby paint will work.

When the balls are done, they are threaded together with some strong string, using the dolls needle -
and you don't necessarily need to tie them in a circle, you could also just have them in a curvy row.

Make sure that you use glues and paints that work on polystyrene.

Note that this is meant as a festive centrepiece or decoration, it is made of rather light materials, and should - of course - NEVER be moved around when the candles are lit, just as you should make sure to watch it, keep small kids at a distance and put out the candles before they reach the metal holders. 

Merry Christmas!"

Advent candle

Remember Christines Letraset candle from the other day?
Well, I made my version today, not quite as ambitious, since I only had a few characters and some
very odd glyphs left on a sheet of red Helvetica, which of course was the kind I had to use.
Quite tricky to make the little buggers stick, I tell you. The candle I had, had a bit of a coarse
surface, you'll probably need to go for a quite hard, smooth one.

An ode to Letraset

If you worked with graphic design, architecture or layout back in ye olde analog days, when we kept dinosaurs for pets, and only had one TV channel (in Denmark!) - you will  remember Letraset.

You will have spent hours rubbing away with the stick or the pencil, or you will have been shading architectural drawings by the yard, with the tiny little dots or lines, till your eyes hurt!
And deep in yourself, you will remember the grinding frustration of having miscounted the 'f's, or
whatever, on your sheet, trying to fix it somehow, just before some project had to be handed in to
the printshop. Grrr.

Then everybody got themselves a Mac or a PC, and bye bye to Letraset - hello to Adobe.

But of course, Letraset was also really mmmmmm. For anyone in love with typeface, that is.
Oooh, those crisp sheets of perfection. The blackness of the black. And the smooth silkiness of the
surface of the applied lettering (unless you had f***ed it up, and it was all wrinkly).

My friend and former colleague, Christine Cato, posted this idea on Facebook the other day.

The thing is, nobody could bring themselves to actually throw the Letraset away (it was just madly
expensive, remember?), so in forgotten drawers of design companies and architectural firms all over
the world, it lingers somewhere. Under some old pile of something.

Christine found it and she made this beautiful advent candle! Isn't it pretty?

Photo: Christine Cato

Of course I went to my own bottom drawer, and I actually found a few old dusty sheets - now you
go look for yourself! Unfortunately I found very few numerals, but I am contemplating some kind of 1+2+3+4 sundays-in-advent-type candle. I will post it, if I manage not to make a total mess of it.

My son (almost) made this

- or, okay - so he didn't exactly do all of the constructional bits, but he supervised it very much, and
he did stick the candle into the predrilled hole. He also had certain opinions regarding the pine cone.
And he was very pround and very 'It is MINE and I MADE it. MINE!!!' (he is 2½).

Countdown

It was a dark, confused and utterly screwed up morning. Absolutely not the ideal start of December.

But we lit the candle - I wonder if these are common elsewhere? I don't even think they have them in Sweden or Norway. The idea is, well... fairly obvious.

While I recouperate, and try to get down to some serious business - involving a lot of mindboggling
Excel spreadsheet and complicated text formatting - I have a bit of fun for you:

Ta daaa - the Countdown Heart. Of course.

Say: Yes, I will be starting the countdown, and I will click here to download!

2021: I have a new location for my downloads: please go here