we're in holiday mode over here

Full-on holiday mode. Decorations are up, gifts are being made/purchased (largely from Etsy - go handmade!), and my daily coffee is coming from a Christmas mug.



I made the mistake (except not really) of adding the Craft magazine blog to my Google Reader, which has resulted in tons of inspiring projects tempting me on a daily basis. I haven't gotten around to trying too many of them yet, but the boys and I did make this advent calendar:







Here are the instructions. It was a lot of fun, and I'm really happy with how it came out, but can you see the issue with it?


Think about it.




Yeah, those little pockets? You have to fill them. I did not want to fill the house with more plastic junk and my kids' heads with present-every-day expectations, so I've been putting in things like small candy canes and puzzles printed off the internet. Next year, though, I think I'll incorporate this advent calendar too. Each pocket will hold one of the little felt lights, and we'll put them on the string each day rather than taking them off. Fun!


Okay, I need to catch up with showing the knitting I have actually been doing, so bear with me. No pun intended:



That's the last Bubby, the one for Jess' baby. The yarn is actually recycled from a store-bought cotton sweater, but it really reminds me of Araucania Nature Cotton. It's very soft and sort of slubby. The gauge on this was a bit bigger than on the other Bubbies, so the bear is too.



I also knit a bag for my brother's guitar picks, at his request. I hope he doesn't mind that I had a little fun with it.

That's the only finished Christmas knit I have to show you - little non-holiday projects keep popping up. First, Baby Sister asked for a cowl (really, she did) after seeing me wearing mine all the time. How could I say no?

I love how happy it makes her. It's a really simple one; just stockinette with ribbing at the top and bottom and the embroidered hearts. The yarn is less than a skein of Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino that's been hanging out in the stash since, well, the very earliest days of the stash. I was happy to let it see the light of day.

Second, Brand-new Niece turned one (!) this weekend, and I realized I hadn't knit anything to mark the occasion. Completely unacceptable! Enter the cupcake!

I made this up as I went along, and not to sound full of myself or anything, but I just about died of cuteness looking at it.

The other non-holiday knitting I've been doing has been related to the new etsy shop I've been playing around with. I didn't want to keep the old one going without Jess, and well, she's a little bit busy. New human being and all. So I started up a new one here. I've been working on it off and on, and trying to learn more about promoting it. I don't, however, plan on doing a lot of promotion here. It drives me a little bit crazy when a blog turns into a repeated sales pitch, so I'm not going to do that. The link over there in the sidebar still works, though. :)

And lest I forget, Big Brother's sweater is still moving along at its glacial pace.

Perhaps this goes without saying (it would certainly be less painful that way), but there's no way the kids will be getting Christmas sweaters. They will, as soon as my slow-knitting ass can possible make it, be getting Just-Because sweaters, but not Christmas sweaters. Raise your hand if you're surprised. Nobody? ETA: I just noticed the sweater looks like it's raising its hand in that picture. Ha! It has too much confidence in me.

AND I haven't forgotten that I've been off-handedly promising a couple of patterns and then not putting them up. They're coming - hopefully next week with the new schedule in place. All hail the new schedule!

Well, that's about it for this dispatch from within the holiday craziness. I'll surface again soon, I hope.

the c-word

No, not that c-word. My goodness.

I’m speaking, of course, of Christmas. And Christmas knitting, which has been underway for some time. I have enthusiastically taken the handmade pledge, and I think it’s going pretty well so far. I originally intended that all the handmade gifts would be handknitted gifts, but that’s not going to happen. Besides friends and family, there are people like the kids’ teachers, all six of them (hello - only three kids), and it’s just going to be too much. I’ll probably do some baking or making things like lip balms or bath balls. The handmade holidays group in Ravelry has tons of good suggestions. And then, not all the gifts can be handmade – though that’s all I’ll say about that here.

So what have I knit so far? Well, there’s the mittens.

The last couple of pairs have been stripey wool exercises in stashbusting. On the first pair, I made the stripes completely random, and then I put a bit more structure in the second pair. I’m also perfecting my jogless join, and using up as much as I can of those annoying little balls of leftovers. Do those drive you crazy, too? Or is it just me?

I’ve also been doing a bunch of stuffed animals, mostly using the Bubby pattern from knitty. I planned to do a cat (for the baby in the family that has cats), a dog (for the baby in the family that has dogs), a bear (the pattern ends there), and a salamander. Obviously I’m not going to do a Bubby salamander, but all the others will use that pattern. The cat and dog, actually, are already done.

They just need faces, but I’d like to get some embroidery floss for that. Also, I’m not sure I like the bow ties/neckties on either of them. I think I might get some ribbon for ties and be sure to stitch it down securely. Or maybe I’ll go all-out and knit them some little clothes. That might be fun.

The toughest Christmas knitting to get through is going to be the kids’ sweaters. I get the sinking feeling I’m going to do all the fun stuff - like, say, stuffed animals and mittens - first, and wind up spending the last couple of weeks before Christmas going crazy with the big projects. Because that is how I roll. At this point Big Brother’s sweater is knit up to the armpits, plus one sleeve and a little bit of a second sleeve. I started the second sleeve last Thursday, then spent the weekend (my prime knitting time) on other, smaller projects. Honestly, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m forcing myself to save Baby Sister’s sweater for last, because it will be by far the most entertaining.

And last but not least, I knit something up for my sister's boyfriend. Which, fellow Secret Santa participants, does not necessarily mean I drew his name! So there! Last year I made him fingerless gloves, so this year I was going to go for a hat. Unfortunately for me, it turned out Nancy had knit him two hats last year (one in black and one in brown, so being a guy, he'd never need another one). So a hat was out.

Hmm, what to knit, what to knit . . . a-ha, a COWL!

Love it when I get to knit a gift and indulge an obsession. I'm going to post the pattern for this (ridiculously simple as it is), but I'll make that a separate post.

So that's it for Christmas so far. I feel like I should put a countdown in the sidebar or something, but I'm not really that organized in my thinking this year. Gone are the color-coded Excel spreadsheets of years past, there's just not enough time. Sigh . . . I've been so busy and doing so much thinking and exploring - soon I'll sit down and share my thoughts. As soon as I can get them to stay in one place long enough.