Litha Solar Talisman

Supplies

  • a ten-yard length of red yarn
  • a ten-yard length of orange yarn
  • 3 six-inch by .25 inch dowels or sticks

Instructions

Starting with one strand of either color, put the ends together and pull it through your hands until you are holding the folded center. Lay it down that way in front of you.

Take three sticks and put them together in the shape of an asterisk.

Loop the center of the yarn over the topmost stick as in the leftmost drawing above. Pass the yarn under both of the other sticks, then up over the top stick on the opposite side, again under the bottom two, and once again over the top one. Pull to take up the slack. This makes a small center disk of that color, as shown in the second drawing.

With the other color yarn, fold it in half like before and loop over the top stick on the opposite side from where you looped the first. Pass it under just one bottom stick and over the next, then under the top stick, so all four yarn ends point the same way but with one color above the next stick, the other below, as in the third drawing.

Continue winding both colors, at the same time, onto the sticks. Use a pattern alternately of “over one” and “under one” so for each stick, the color on top is the one which was at the bottom before, and vice-versa.

Each stick should have all orange strands going over it and all yellow going under it (except maybe in the center disk) or vice-versa. It’s easiest to do a full turn of one color, a turn of the next, a turn of the first again, and so forth.