Knitted Christmas

This year I ended up knitting a few of my Christmas gifts. I love giving homemade gifts and I wish I had the time to make everything. As it was I barely finished and haven't had much time to talk about them until today.

The first thing I made (and probably my favorite of the items I made) was a hat and scarf set for my niece. My niece is super knit worthy - for her birthday I hinted that I had gotten her something really cool. Her response: "you made me a hat and scarf?!" Unfortunately I hadn't but now I knew what she was getting for Christmas. I picked out some variegated purple/green/grey in Sheepish as my niece loves purple. For the hat I used the Three Tams pattern from an old issue of Knitty (and used white Sheepish for the contrast color). The scarf pattern was Yarn Harlot's One Row Scarf.

My niece loved them! She was actually wearing them when I saw her this week, even though it was 75 degrees outside. Like I said, totally knit worthy.

For her little sister, I knitted a stuffed owl. My niece is so into owls so I thought it might be fun to knit her one (plus it would probably go over better than a hat would). I found an adorable giant owl pattern from Purl Bee. The pattern calls for super bulky yarn on Size 15 needles. I used Lion Brand Hometown, which is also a super bulky but recommends size 13 needles. I like the owl but I do wish I had gone with size 11 needles for a denser fabric.

My niece liked it. It's so big she could hardly get her arms around it!

Another project I finished was a hat for my aunt. In our family we do an exchange by drawing names and getting something for that person (like secret Santa but not secret). My aunt had seen me working on my niece's hat and joked that she hoped I would get her name so I could make her a hat. Well sure enough I did pick her! I used the Flora hat pattern. Other people who had kntitted the pattern mentioned in their notes that it came out big. So I switched to a size 6 for the body of the hat and a size 4 for the brim.

I tried it on before I gave it to her to make sure it fit and it fit me fine so hopefully it fits her well. I also gave her a bottle of wine to go with her present so I thought I'd have a little fun.

I made a hat for the bottle! The pattern is obviously not the same (I used Susan B Anderson's Santa hat ornament) but the yarn is the same.

My last knitting project for Christmas were gift card holders for the boys' teachers. They were nice, quick knits that added a little bit of personalization to the gift cards. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of them before I gave them away. But trust me, they were cute. I used a mini stocking pattern with leftover scrap acrylic on size 5 needles.

I also had two other non-knitted craft projects for Christmas. In my resolutions post I mentioned the sewing I did last year, with one of the items being heating packs for my FIL. These are so simple - just two pieces of fabric held right side together and sewn most the way around the outside, leaving a couple inches open. Then they are turned right side out and filled with beans. Lastly the opening is sewn shut.

The last project was a couple of ornaments for the babysitter. I made a batch of salt dough and rolled it out into two disks. I then had my boys press their hands into the dough and then poked a couple of holes at the top for the string. Since they were a little big I poked two holes in each to provide more support to the string. After I baked it, I painted the imprints of their hands and sprayed a glossy sealant on them. Then I ran some string through them.

Whew - I think that was all of the crafting fun around here!

For more finished objects, check out Tami's Amis!