I Survived My Christmas Knitting

Happy belated Holidays! I don’t know about everyone else, but as much as I love Christmas, I always breathe a sigh of relief when it is all over. Mostly because I can be done knitting and knitting on gifts for others. I am wise enough to know that I don’t have the time or ability to knit gifts for everyone on my gift list, as much as I would like to. This year I knit gifts for 1 niece and 1 nephew (out of 9 total nieces & nephews), 4 teachers, my Mom, my Mother in Law and 1 item for the gift game we play with my husband’s family. I choose fairly simple knitted gifts because I know how much knitting this is. I knit 6 pairs of Simple Garter Stitch Slippers (which another of my friends on Ravelry put on their favorites list), 3 dish cloths, 1 hat, 1 cowl and 1 shawl.

The slippers were very easy, but I was pretty bored of knitting them by the 5th and 6th pair. They were a great project though because I could use left over yarn in my stash. I didn’t buy new yarn for most of these.

The dish cloths are my standard and not worth mentioning, but here is a picture of them. I always pair them with a nice bottle of hand soap for the teacher getting them.

Our kids draw names with their cousins in my husband’s family. There are just too many kids for us to buy gifts for all of them. For my niece I knit a hat. I found a cute pattern (Hat In Bloom by Lisa Gentry) and loved how the hat worked up. The pattern picture also featured a cute crochet flower. I thought, “Sure, how hard could it be?” Well, as it turns out…extremely! I cannot crochet to save my life (or my Christmas gift.) I decided I would knit a flower. The pattern I chose had you knit up all the petals separately. I knit 3 of 6 and then realized that this flower was going to be stupidly large for this hat. In the end I use 2 petals and did some beading. I think it turned out well and my niece seems to like it. At Thanksgiving my sister-in-law  and I were knitting and my nephew kept coming over and seeing how our knitting was going. Eventually he told me he would like me to knit him a black and red scarf with skulls. Imagine my delight when my son drew his name in the drawing! I LOVE how this project turned out and I think he was pleased as well. It wasn’t a scarf, but close enough. I used a hat pattern with the exact pattern I wanted for the cowl. (Skull Hat by Gina Davidson.) On a side note, every time I do a fair isle project I wonder why I don’t do more of them. They are SO satisfying to me.

Finally, everyone who has read my blog knows about this shawl already. The Saroyan! I finished and decided to give it to my Mom for Christmas. It turned out so pretty. I hope she will wear it! I want to knit another for myself in a neutral/solid color. Like Gray. I had hoped to finish this in the fall and photograph it with the pretty leaves, but the photos of it with the snow are lovely too.

It only took me a matter of hours to dive right back into my own knitting projects that were put on hold for the last month or so while I was a Christmas knitting whirlwind! I finished the After Thought Heel Socks that I have been kind of loathing. I will probably not knit this pattern again. I need some excitement in my knitting. But, the finished product is nice and I will wear these socks!

I have been fantasizing about what to knit next and dreaming of all the new things I could start up…but I should be good and continue finishing things that got set aside previously.

Happy Holidays and Happy Knitting!

So Many Gifts, So Little Time

Can you believe that Christmas is in less than a week? Me neither! I have been busy knitting gifts since I’ve been home laid off. I have been busy getting ready for Christmas everyday. It makes me wonder how I got everything done when I worked 40 hours a week too!

I finished one of the two monsters I’m making for my niece and nephew! Christmas with my family isn’t until the weekend after Christmas so I have plenty of time to get the second done. I am using bulky yarn for these monsters so they are going to be bigger than the one Baby J got. It seems like the perfect size for J and G. I will be starting the second monster later tonight.

My standard teacher gift is a bottle of nice soap and some hand knitted dish clothes. This year I only had two teachers to knit for so each is getting three dish clothes. I did three different patterns. The top picture is the dish cloth pattern I learned when I was first learning to knit. I have knit dozens and dozens of these. The second picture is the Bulls-eye dish cloth, I have also done that one before. It is a quick one to knit up. The last picture is a new pattern I tried this year called The Squidge Cloth. It is so easy and satisfying! I have a few more dish clothes to make to add to a few other gifts.

Today I knit a soap sack. It is not really a gift. It was an idea I got while knitting all those dish clothes. Maybe in the future it is something I will add to gifts. I need my husband to give it a test drive first. There are lots of patterns for soap sacks on Ravelry but none of them were exactly what I was looking for. I made it up as I went based on the features I liked of others on Ravelry. It is a bag knit out of dish cloth yarn and you put the soap in side. When you get the bag wet the soap lathers up and you use the whole thing like a washcloth.

I have done a little work on my Fietsbellen Hat a little bit, but otherwise it has been all Christmas knitting.

I got a new job! I start on January 2nd, which turns out to be pretty perfect. I can take these last couple weeks and enjoy being home with my family for Christmas. I have been doing some baking with the kids (something that I’m usually too tired to do when working 40 hours a week.) Here is a picture of our Cookies!

Merry Christmas!