Designer Spotlight: The Little House by Mary Lee

Mary Lee loves knitting Christmas ornaments for her friends and family. After all, they’re cute, quick to knit and one size fits everyone! This year she came up with a new ornament design, which can be customized to celebrate any special event!

The Little House is a tiny, 3-dimensional ornament that looks exactly like it sounds (but cuter!). The base is knit flat and then seamed and stuffed. The roof is knit in seed stitch and added on after. Mary used different color combinations of our Vintage yarn and embellished with felt & embroidery to create different variations on her original design.

How did you come up with this design?

For the past 20 years, I’ve come up with one or two Christmas ornament projects and I’ve made a whole bunch of them to give to my family and close friends. This little house was inspired by my family’s house. I finished just before Christmas and wrapped it up for my mother.

When did you decide to make different versions?  

Shortly after finishing my first house, the idea came to me to make a gingerbread house version. Every year, my children and I spend the first weekend in December making gingerbread houses from scratch. It was easy to picture “The Little House” as a little gingerbread house that would hang on our Christmas tree and remind us of all the good times we’ve had making gingerbread houses together. Soon, I was waking up at 4:00 a.m. thinking of other themes for “The Little House” – Valentine’s Day, the Olympics, the special time of welcoming home a new baby, celebrating a new home, a house filled with love. My list of ideas grew pretty long!

How did you decide on the yarn?  

Vintage yarn is soft, good quality, traditional looking and is available in lots of colors at a very reasonable price. Plus, the “Cork” shade is the perfect gingerbread color! In addition to that I picked up “Cracked Pepper” (for a gray roof color) and “Mochi” (to use for a snowy roof), as well as ‘Misty’ (light blue) and “Fondant” (pale pink) for alternate base colors.

What’s your favorite project you’ve ever made? Why?  

Well, this is a fun coincidence…it’s a Berroco pattern! I made the free pattern “Missy” for my daughter. She loved that dress and wore it for many special occasions! 

What’s your favorite thing about knitting?

For me, yarn is my set of paints. I like to have a lot of colors available to try different variations on my theme.

Do you have a cool design you want to share?  Or did you recently finish a project with Berroco yarn?  You can email Ashley: apalumbo@berroco.com or post it to the Berroco Lovers forum in Ravelry.