Gemma 
Welcome to Day 19 of Blogmas At Home 2024! 🎄🎅🏻✨
Last year, just before Christmas, I saw this amazing crochet garland on Instagram by @deliacreates. It was designed to look like a string of popcorn and cranberries, which is a festive tradition in the US that I have always been fascinated by! I could never bring myself to sacrifice so much delicious popcorn in the pursuit of pretty, Christmassy decor (I love popcorn), so a crocheted version felt like the perfect, fun alternative. As an added bonus, the (free!) pattern looked super simple and straightforward, so I knew this would be a quick and easy project for the festive season. Unfortunately, I saw the post a little too late to make a garland in time for Christmas last year, so I carried it over and made it this year, instead!
Table of Contents
Materials
To make this garland, I used the following materials:
- 1 skein of Cygnet Seriously Chunky yarn, in the shade Cream (0288).
- 87 x 12mm dark red wooden beads (I bought this pack of 100 on Etsy).*
- 6.50mm crochet hook.
- 3.00mm crochet hook.**
That’s it! Because I already had the crochet hooks, I only had to buy the yarn and the beads (which worked out at just under £6), so this was a super budget-friendly project!
* The original pattern used bright red beads, but I wanted a more realistic-looking, muted garland, so I opted to use these dark red beads, which I felt had more of a cranberry vibe!
** The original pattern calls for a 3.25mm hook, but I found a 3.00mm hook was easier to insert through the beads and worked just as well.
Cygnet Seriously Chunky: Mini Review
Cygnet Seriously Chunky is a 100% acrylic, super chunky weight yarn that is sold in 100g skeins. Each 100g skein contains about 48 metres of yarn and (at time of posting), costs £2.99 on Wool Warehouse (my go-to for yarn-y purchases!). The yarn comes in a variety of colours (though it’s not the most extensive shade range I’ve seen), and I chose the shade Cream (0288) for this project, which was a nice, neutral, popcorn-esque colour.
I have to say, I truly forgot that this was an acrylic yarn as I was working with it- it has a real, wooly ‘fuzz’ to it that really tricked me into thinking it was made of natural fibres. While the ‘fuzzy’ look probably wasn’t quite the right vibe for making popcorn kernels, I do think this would be a great, budget alternative to a natural fibre yarn for other projects. Even though my kernels are a little on the fuzzy side, I still really love the way this yarn worked up for this project- I think it gives the garland a really homespun, felted look that feels very festive.
Making the Garland
When making this project, I followed the original pattern to the letter. It’s such a simple process, but it’s so effective (and so quick to work up- I made this whole garland in a single sitting!). The popcorn kernels are made from a simple puff stitch, worked in the super chunky yarn, and the cranberries are just wooden beads, added in between each kernel. I kept going until I ran out of yarn, then fastened off, and before I knew it, I had the perfect popcorn & cranberry garland, ready for Christmas. My finished garland, using a full skein of yarn and 87 cranberries, ended up being about 375cm long.
I did pick up a few little tricks and techniques when making this project, so I thought I’d share those with you here:
- Keep the beads at the front of the work.
When I first started working up my garland, I didn’t pay much attention to how I reinserted the 6.50mm hook into the working loop of yarn after I added each bead. After a little while, I found that this did have an effect on the garland- in some places, the beads were fully visible, while in others they were obscured by the yarn that runs along them. After a little bit of trial and error, I found that making sure the working loop wasn’t twisted when you reinsert the hook and making a conscious effort to keep the beads to the front of the work helped to minimise this problem. While the garland still twists a little, it’s much less noticeable than before!
- When adding the beads, keep the working loop of yarn as taut as possible.
Adding the beads is the fiddliest part of this project, because you have to pull a doubled piece of super chunky yarn through a pretty small hole! Honestly, this was easier than I expected- it took a couple of attempts sometimes, but, as the pattern says, if you split the yarn, you can just remove the hook, bring the yarn back together and try again! One thing that I found that really helped here was to hold the yarn as tightly as I could around the hook as I pulled it through the bead.
- Keep the beads in a bowl beside you.
This is such a small thing, it barely even warrants a bullet point of its own, but it made a big difference to my speed and efficiency! My beads came in a little, grip seal bag, which is great for storage, but not so great for quickly picking one up every time you need to add a ‘cranberry’ to the garland. I transferred my beads to a bowl and put the bowl on a flat surface beside me (a flat surface is important, if you would like to avoid beads rolling all over the place). This meant that I could just grab a bead super easily whenever I needed one, which really sped up the whole process for me.
Final Thoughts
I am so thrilled with how this garland turned out- it gives me such festive, homespun, felty vibes and I just love it! I particularly like how quickly it came together, how easy it was to work up and how effective the pattern was- I do really think it looks like a popcorn and cranberry garland!
I’m really glad that I opted to use the darker red beads- I think it not only makes this garland look more realistic, but it also looks a little more understated and classic. While the yarn I chose is a bit on the ‘fuzzy’ side, and so makes for slightly fuzzy popcorn kernels, I actually also really like that effect- this is, after all, a crocheted garland, and I don’t mind that being evident!
Overall, I loved working on this project almost as much as I love the finished product! It was the perfect, quick and easy festive project and I know I’ll be using it in my Christmas decorating for many years to come. Plus, no popcorn was harmed in the making of this garland, so that’s an extra little win.
If you're interested...
You can find the "Popcorn & Cranberry" Crochet Garland pattern here.
You can check out the Delia Creates website here.
You can find my Popcorn & Cranberry Garland project page on Ravelry here.
Gemma
xxx
