My Christmas Angel
On Christmas morning we all went out for a walk, my three boys and me, and as sometimes happens on such occasions Harvey fell asleep on the journey home. I slowly removed the straps from the baby carrier, placed the sleeping bundle down on the bed, and backed away. This was what I saw:
That's my little Christmas angel!
Christmas Making 2009
The last few months have been a blur of yarn and thread and the same three rows of stitches ripped out over and over. Now that it's all over, I think the little elves in our family are entitled to brag a bit. So here, in short, is a sampling of the projects we made for Christmas 2009.
First off, here's Harvey's new stocking (from Santa's point of view).
... which got filled with ornaments by Dan:
And Dan really took strides in the quilting department this year, turning out some nifty potholders, including this one for his mom:
I had a quilt in the works for Harvey this year, but it's back in the to-be-finished pile after being hurled across the room a few hundred times. To calm myself down I made some embroidery for some of our bible study friends:
And finally finished a new Hat for Harvey (as seen in this video). Third time's the charm in hat patterns it seems this year... I've got one too-big and one too-small hat waiting in the wings for any friends with children of deformed head sizes.
You can see from the photographer's angle that Dan was most charmed by the pom pom. I guess more pom poms are in the future for the squibix family.
Returning to the sewing machine, I refused to be out-done by Dan's beautiful white and blue ornament for Harvey, and so I knocked out this lamb-headed taggie blanket between the hours of 6 and 9 on Christmas morning.
This present is also pictured in the video. Edited out of the video was Dan's mom saying "Can you imagine making a toy from scratch on Christmas morning for a 6-month old who doesn't even know that it's Christmas?" Yes, I can imagine. It's called having a mental illness.
But the big present this year, the one that I had planned from September and which took me perhaps three months to complete, was this sweater for Dan.
My first adult sweater... indeed my first adult knitting project that doesn't fall under the category of "accessory." This project came from the book Men's Knits by Erika Knight, and I can't recommend this book enough. Unlike a certain baby knitting book that deserves to be burned for kindling (I'll never get those hours back, Natural Knits for Kids!) this book has patterns which are well written, beautifully photographed, and generally do what they say they're going to do. Which is to say, make an awesome sweater for my special snowbunny.
As always, there were some projects that took weeks in the knitting but somehow can't make it to a five minutes photo shoot. These include hats for Tom and Lisa, a beautifully cabled cowl neck for Dan which he will likely never wear, and the Jam, oh the Jam, that deserves a post for itself!
We've already got big plans for Christmas 2010! Including plan #1, start earlier, #2 photograph more, and #3 chill the f—- out, it's only Christmas! Merry Christmas everybody!