Nativity Update: Here's Joseph!

It's been two months, almost to the day, since I last shared my progress with my Nativity. This is because until a couple of weeks ago, that's how long it's been since I last did any real work on it! You can see why I thought it was a good idea to start knitting it back in July in order to make sure it was ready for December.

Last time I shared Joseph he looked something like this:

And that's how he remained for a very long time.

Before I went to Wales I knitted up his arms but didn't get around to seaming them. Armless Joseph then spent a month and a half hanging out on my side table with a bunch of balls of yarn and my three completed Wise Men, waiting for his hands, beard and hairpiece.

I decided to take a break from colouring in and grabbed my knitting stuff to sew up Joseph's sleeves while we watched Columbo. In the time it took to watch the whole episode I not only seamed both sleeves, I knitted his hands, sewed them up, stuffed the arms, sewed the hands in and started preparing to attach them to Joseph.

When we relocated to the bedroom to watch M*A*S*H I got the arms sewn on, knitted his beard and made a start to his hairpiece, which I finished the following night. That's right, in two evenings I managed to get everything done to finish poor Joseph who has been standing around in pieces ever since August.

I feel kind of bad.

He's looking pretty good now though:

Now I'm working on the shepherds. The scene in the booklet has two shepherds so I decided to do them both at the same time since they both use the same pattern, just in different colours and I figured that if I did them one at a time I'd get bored doing the second one. I used the same approach with my chicken family a couple of years ago. It doesn't make the actual knitting any quicker since you're still doing the same number of stitches in total, but it forces me to do them both without taking a long break between finishing one and starting another.

I got both bodies knitted, sewn up and their faces embroidered. After that it's the robes which I've been working separately; I got one finished at the weekend and I've been working on the second one while we watch M*A*S*H in bed. That's the biggest bit to do so hopefully I won't lose momentum after I finish like I did with Joseph. A week from now I should be starting on some sheep for the shepherd to look after.

Once the shepherds (and their flock) are done, it's just Mary, the cradle, the baby, the donkey and possibly an angel to do. I might make an innkeeper as well if there's time. If not, he can wait til next year. At least Joseph is finally finished.