Just a little thing

Here is my little knitted ornament.

I used a pattern from Handknit Holidays by Melanie Falick, some sport weight yarn leftover from another project, and polyfill stuffing I had shoved in a closet. I really like when I can make something just with leftovers from other projects. It happens rarely.

And here it is on my tree.

Merry Christmas to those of you who will be celebrating this weekend!

More Christmas Goodies

On New Year's Eve I exchanged gifts with The Cable Girl, who gave me some fantastic and fun gifts as always, including these colorful crocheted vessels in which to put stuff. Yay!


The tall one is for knitting needles, and the other ones are three nested bowls. Here they are un-nested:


I am a fan of cute things in which I can put crap so the clutter looks less untidy, so these will be very useful! Thanks so much, Cable Girl!

In all of my holiday excitement and New Year's Eve party preparations, I forgot to take pictures of the gifts I made for her, but she has posted them so go take a look. I sewed her a bag, made stitch markers out of polymer clay, and also a couple of polymer clay Christmas ornaments.

What a fun and crafty way to end 2009!

Christmas!

Our home-cooked meal for the day was this lovely strata. Eric put it together on Christmas Eve using a recipe from Smitten Kitchen. It was delish!

But on to the handmade presents.

It has bothered me for a few years now that because I brought so many Christmas ornaments to this relationship, a vast percentage of them have my name on them. It was high time Eric had a personalized ornament or two. After considering different appropriate themes I decided to make a Stargate ornament out of polymer clay. It was not easy. But I finally came up with something decent. Notice the lack of any kind of personalization or anything festive. I was so proud it was recognizable I completely forgot my original intention.


It looks like a 6-year-old made it, but Eric seemed to like it so that's all I care about. (Also, I bought him a little snowman ornament with his name on it, so he still got a personalized ornament after all.)

I wanted to have his new and improved Dr. Who hat done for Christmas, and it IS done, but still has a pointier-than-desired top and rides up leaving his ears exposed. It is really rather confounding. But the new Knitty was published last week and included a lovely men's hat pattern so I decided to whip one up immediately.


It was difficult to photograph, but trust me - it's quite nice. And it fits properly! I just used Cascade 220, one of my go-to yarns, but somehow this skein felt extra wonderfully soft. I love the dark charcoal color, too.

I got an awesome hand crafted present as well.


Eric made me stitch markers out of plastic and an old board he found in the basement. Amazing. Ages ago I sent him a link to some clever stitch markers on Etsy that were made especially for sock knitting. They had SSK and K2TOG on them to help the knitter remember where you are supposed to do which type of decrease. I can never remember, so they looked super useful to me. These homemade ones look really fantastic. And the wooden ones are lovely too - just little smooth round discs, appropriate for any kind of project.

I also got yarn. My favorite sock yarn right now - Madelinetosh. Two skeins!


Aren't the colorways lovely? The top one is called Bearded Iris, which sounds vaguely obscene to me for some reason, and the bottom one is called Pheasant and I especially love that one. The colorways are a bit more wildly variegated than I usually buy, so I may consult the book Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn to get ideas about good patterns for them. I borrowed the book from the library once and it was extremely helpful and has some nice patterns, so I may actually purchase it.

Between the yarn and the stitch markers I felt inclined to start knitting socks immediately, but luckily Santa brought me Guitar Hero 5 so that distraction saved me from disastrously rushing into an ill-planned project.

Christmas may be over in a couple of hours, but this isn't the end of the Christmas crafts, no sirree! I'll be exchanging gifts with The Cable Girl on New Year's Eve and I've been working on some projects for her that I can't wait to show off. It's so nice when things turn out the way you plan.

Hope your Christmas (or just your Friday) was happy and fun and relaxing!

The rest of the Christmas gifts

Now that Russian Christmas - the pinnacle of my holiday season - is over, I can show you the rest of the seasonal crafts.

Starting with the cutest thing in the world.


Isn't it? A doughnut pin cushion - what could be better than that? This was a gift from my good friend Annmarie who has been crocheting up all sorts of cuteness. Like another gift that she gave me:


An entire container of crocheted dishcloths in colors that match my house! You can even see the matching of dishcloth to wall in that photo.


The stitch pattern gives them a great scrubby texture.


I also made gifts for Annmarie that I haven't been able to share with you before now. A dishcloth which seemed quite lovely until she made me a whole array of dishcloths. But I think it is pretty anyhow. This is from the ubiquitous ball-band dishcloth pattern published in Mason-Dixon Knitting.


Also, a little more amazingly, I managed to sew an oven mitt and matching potholder.


For the mitt, I used the pattern from Skip To My Lou. I just winged the potholder, and though it is only a potholder it is impressive for me.

I made another set for my mom, but her dishcloth was made in shades of pink and white. I was going to make one of each of these items for myself as well, but I'm a little done with looking at that fabric for a while. I could easily whip up a dishcloth, but I think I'll be all set with those for a while.

That's the end of my 2008 crafting, but later this week I'll show you what I've been doing so far in 2009!

Christmas!

It was a very crafty Christmas here at our house.

I spent all day Christmas Eve making this gift:



I also finally made the Doctor Who hat to match the scarf and fingerless gloves:




But Eric wasn't the only recipient of crafty goodness. He made me a fantastic set of blocking boards. You can't buy these in stores, people!


He bought several pieces of homasote from a building supply store, covered them with fabric, put some nubs on the bottom to keep them off the floor, and added measuring tape around two edges of each board. It cost around $35 to make which is a bargain compared to the $80 to buy one. And this set is much more flexible because I can arrange them in whatever shape I need. I'm dying to block something right away!

Last but definitely not least, is Christmas dinner itself, also made by Eric.


That's the butternut squash and caramelized onion galette from SmittenKitchen. Yummy crust, veggies, fontina and fresh sage - heavenly! It was accompanied by mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy, green bean casserole, and cranberry sauce. The galette was rather labor-intensive, but totally worth it (says the person who lolled about on the couch all day while it was being made). Seriously, I cannot emphasize the yumminess enough. I could eat it every day for the rest of my life.

Happy holidays, everyone!