Hello internet!
It has been a long year and I have been very occupied by lots of things that are not the blog, and I’m sorry about that. I miss the blog so one of my goals for this new year is to give it more of my attention. Let me start by showing you a bit of my holidays!
I gave myself permission to relax this holiday season, and so my crafting was pretty limited. I made some infinity scarves out of bulky yarn for my sisters, which were quick and easy knits. I didn’t even bother with a pattern, just cast on 100 stitches and worked in seed stitch in the round until I felt like it was long enough. I think, now that the holidays are over, that I’d like to make one for myself too!
I also knit a little something for my nephew, who is now a year old and growing every day!
Since I got him toys for his birthday, I decided for Christmas I would get books. So I got a few old favorites, and a new-to-me story, “The Mitten,” about a little boy whose lost mitten shelters woodland creatures, and grows tremendous in the process. So it seemed obvious that I should knit him two mittens, a regular boy-sized one and a stretched out one.
Nephew found them fascinating, so I think I shall knit him a proper wearing pair out of wool, and not the acrylic I used for these toy ones.
(I also think I need to make a pair for my brother-in-law, who put on the stretched mitten, found it fit, and then didn’t want to take it off!)
I also made a set of tea towels for my sisters (with more to come for myself and my parents – see that whole bit about relaxing!) and I worked from a Spoonflower tutorial I’ve been meaning to try for a long time. We had a number of hand-written recipes from my grandmothers floating around, so I scanned some and worked up a design that I was able to submit to Spoonflower and order printed on their linen-cotton fabric. When it arrived, I cut it up (four towels to a yard) and seamed them using the wonderful sewing machine my parents gifted me with on my last birthday. They came out pretty cool:
Each sister got one recipe from each grandmother, and I’m going to give one of the other sets to my parents and keep one for myself. One of my sisters has already framed them up and hung them on the wall – she decided they were too precious to use, despite my promises that if they were ruined I could make her new ones. I’m happy she loves them so much she wants to see them every day. I think having a little bit of family around, even though they’ve been gone for a long time, is a big part of what makes the holidays special for us so I’m really please with how well these went over.
If you are looking for a unique (and showstopping!) gift I highly recommend the tutorial. I’m still very much a novice sewer and was able to handle this project without much difficulty at all. It was a very good learning project for me, actually, and I enjoyed the process immensely.
And now that the holidays are over I am off on a vacation. Maybe I will get some traveling sock pictures for the blog! I hope 2015 brings us all health and happiness and good things.