Christmas Cactus Flower Ornament by Heather Holland

Christmas Cactus Flower Ornament

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Crochet
Worsted (9 wpi) ?
3.5 mm (E)
English
Discontinued. This digital pattern is no longer available online.

This pattern is based heavily off the Cactus Flower Granny Square from Bigu . Her pictures will help a lot in figuring out how to do it, as some of the stitches involved are fairly advanced. The translation was a little difficult for me to understand though, so here’s my version of the pattern as quasi-translated (I speak some spanish), quasi-figured out, and modified to be a double-sided ornament.

Flowers (make 2)

With yellow:

  1. 10 sc in magic loop, join with sl st in first sc.
  2. 2 sc in each of the 10 sc, join with sl st, fasten off.

With red:
3. Sc a loop AROUND row 2 down into row 1 (in other words, you’re sc’ing a loop all the way down to the stitch that the 2sc in row 2 were sc’d into). Sc in second sc of the 2sc of the second row. So, you’re working 1 all the way to row 1, then the next in row 2 where you normally would work. Continue around, join with sl st (20 st). NOTE: be careful not to pull the long loops too tight or the motif will curl in on itself.

  1. Sl st into next stitch (we’re working a petal now. You want the petal to form with the edges of the petals lining up with the looped stitches). Ch 3. Forming a cluster stitch: Work first half of dc in same stitch, leave final loop on hook. Work first half of 2 more dc in next stitch, leaving the final loop on hook. Yo and pull through all 4 loops on hook. Ch 3, sl st into top of cluster stitch to make picot. Ch 3, sl st into the same stitch as the 2dc of the cluster stitch. Repeat row 4 around, for 10 petals Join with sl st, fasten off.

Leaves:
Once you make 2 flowers, position them back to back, with petals aligned. With green, * make a long sc looped between 2 petals and around row 4 into row 3 (this should align just above the long sc in red). Ch 8 loosely. Down the ch 8 starting in the 2nd chain from hook, work: 1sc, 2hdc, 2 dc, 2tr. Moving the leaf into place BETWEEN the two flowers, repeat from * . Join with sl st. Ch 30 to make the hanging loop, then join with sl st in starting stitch.

Note: the leaf part does take some wrangling and finagling. I’ve found it works best to work the long sc loop in front of the flower, then pull the top petal out from under the leaf so the leaf is in between the petals. Then wriggle the hook as you pull really hard to tighten the whole thing up, then do the ch8 of the next leaf.

Also the leaves will be pretty badly curled when you’re done. Yank on them, hard, they’ll straighten out. Same with petals if they’re a bit curled.