All The Homemade Gifts

 In place of a knitting update this month, because I've done very little knitting since finishing a few knitted Christmas things, I'm going to share pictures of what I handmade for gifts.

This beaded counted cross stitch Santa has been done since?? late summer?? except for the cutting out of design and felt, then gluing the two together with a braided thread hanger sandwiched in between.  Technically not a gift, I had made this one for me.

This Santa, Antarctic Penguin Santa, I made for DD1 this fall.  It too just needed to be trimmed, a felt backing cut to size and to have them glued together with a hanging loop.

Then there were the sewn gifts.

An apron for Faline, who likes to pretend to cook, help her parents cook, and had received a very nice play kitchen as a birthday present from her great-grandparents on Honorary Son's side.  She really liked it, and insisted on wearing it for the rest of our Christmas gathering.

I also made her a flannel nightgown and a matching one to fit her favorite baby doll.  She was excited about those too.

She wasn't the only one to receive a handmade apron; I made this one for DH (who has developed the ability to splatter grease on himself every time he cooks--which isn't all that often--and has ruined more than a few new shirts that way in the past year.)  The fabric has craft beer like bottle caps on it.

All of the sewing used patterns that I've had for years.  The apron ones have been used many times, beginning way back in 2000.  Come to think of it, the nightgown and doll nightgown patterns are probably also from around the same time period.  They're now on their second generation; I sewed for my daughters when they were little and now for my granddaughters.

I also knit a sweater for Buck, using the Viola and Sebastian pattern I downloaded in 2020.  I did take a picture of it, while it was blocking, but my phone seems to have eaten that picture. 😠  Also not pictured are the Chex Mix, Cinnamon sugar pretzels, toffee, peanut brittle and three kinds of Christmas cookies I made as various gifts.

Okay, I guess I do have a little bit of a knitting update to tack onto this post.

It was really hard to not be working on anything crafty after Christmas, and I only lasted until the 28th before I was digging through my yarn stash for something to make a quick pair of ankle socks with.  These will be for me; pattern is Solor socks, I'm adapting it for ankle height socks.  I cast on the evening of the 29th. They are barely started here, about nine rows of a 15 row cuff completed. 

The yarn is a small (50g) skein of Knit Picks Imagination fingering in the colorway Loch Ness.  I have no idea how old the yarn is, it was given to my mom by someone who was destashing and realized they didn't use that weight of yarn.  My mom doesn't use fingering either, but accepted it to pass on to me, who happens to use fingering more often than any other weight! 

In retrospect, 2022 seems to be the year of destashed yarn filling my stash; both my mom and my mother-in-law took on fingering weight yarn for the sole purpose of giving it to me.  Somewhere around two dozen skeins of yarn came my way, most of which is fingering but there's also at least eight skeins of some lovely lace weight in two colorways.

Might was well finish out with what I've read since December's knitting and reading update.

• Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans by Joanne DeMaio.  The first in a long series, I thought I'd give it a try.  Hard to follow in the beginning, and not the most captivating to my interest, but I did read the whole book and might read the next one to see if there's improvement.
• The Run to Gitche Gumee by Robert F. Jones.  I started and stopped this one a few times (lots going on IRL, couldn't focus on the story to follow it) before diving in and really being surprised to love it overall.  This is more of a guy's book, with a lot of hunting, fishing, canoeing, camping and high adventure risk taking, but it was that exact stuff (and the location) that I was familiar enough with that it sucked me in and kept me on the edge of my seat.  The ending is kind of abrupt, but fits the storyline and writing well.
• Begin and Begin Again by Denny Emerson is what I am currently reading.  It's not a how-to horse kind of book, more of an encouraging meet-you-where-you-are-and-give-you-a-pep-talk mixed with short anecdotes and biographical blurbs of other riders.