Christmas projects

The Christmas presents all having arrived at their destinations, it is now safe to blog about the ones we made. So here they are...

Actually, Keith did not knit any Christmas presents. This cozy little scene happened after Keith spent the day cleaning out his old room. He had to prove to me that he still knows how to knit. Moving right along...

Keith did, in fact, hand-make a number of Christmas presents. We'll start with the candles. See the frying pan on the stove? This is not lunch... it's leftover fat from a roast... which Keith rendered to make into a tallow candle. It doesn't really smell when it's lit, but has a mild barbecue smell when you blow it out.

My mother probably ate the peaches out of that can back in the '50s. The can was found in my grandfather's workshop.

This one takes a bit of explanation. One of the kids at our Japanese church draws a cartoon about a character named Mr. Pickle--a pickle with underwear, a cape, and a cyclops eye. Keith provided the underwear for the Mr. Pickle ornament.

The recipients... it's the kid on the left who draws the cartoon. :)

We received this picture of the completed Mr. Pickle. Whichever child finds him on the tree gets an extra present!

On to my knitting projects. This one is not for Christmas. It was Michael's birthday present. His birthday was at the end of November.

This is not a rabbit. It's Totoro. It's for our little friend, Yuugo, in Sapporo!

I've been working on snowflakes. Keith says this is my most useful skill. Need a pretty gift for someone? Give me a couple days of sitting in the car and I can produce a variety of them. Really, it's the finishing process that takes most of the time. They have to be stretched, pinned, glued, glittered, and dried.

Here are an assortment of Christmas ornaments I made this year.

This was for my mommy's birthday...

...and this one was for Keith's mommy's birthday.

My biggest Christmas project was making toy chickens for all 4 of the nieces and nephews! I started working on them in October, and finished the last one on Christmas Eve. I worked on them for most of the drive from Seattle to Iowa.

Here is a nearly completed chicken... and a bag of "chicken parts" which I had to sew onto the chicken to give it a face and cute decorations.

Yay, all done, just in time!

A couple of hours later...

Elizabeth was too smart... she suspected I was up to something!

 

Just for fun, I decided to use the same pattern, slightly altered, so make a tea cozy for my brother.

It also works as a hat.