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.

Knitting projects (procrastination)

I'm procrastinating right now. There's a lot to do that I don't feel like doing... so here I am blogging about my knitting projects. Also, I'm working on about 10 projects right now (need to use up the yarn stash before moving to Japan), so there will be a lot more pictures of completed projects after Christmas!

First, hats. These are great for using up yarn. I posted pictures of Alison's baby sweater in my last post. I used up leftover yarn from that sweater for Alison and Alexander's hats, inventing the pattern as I went:

I also made a birthday hat for Elizabeth, which she received about 5 months late. Oh dear. She picked out the pattern herself from my friend, Cosy's pattern book. (She was 2 at the time... ;)

Elizabeth's hat, and Michael's birthday hat, which is still in progress (oh dear... his birthday was last week...) came from leftover yarn from this blanket (pattern available here), which was Carla and Arnaldo's wedding present:

I'm working on a lot of stuff at the moment. One recent fun discovery was this blog, which has many fun snowflake patterns. So I'm making Christmas ornaments.

Incidentally, the green sweater in the picture is the one that's been in progress for several years. It still doesn't have buttons, but I'm wearing it anyway. Hopefully I'll actually finish it soon...

Alison (and her sweater)

Keith and I spent the last couple of weeks in Florida (and road-tripping there and back). It was disgustingly hot, but we coped by carrying around an umbrella at all times, staying up to our necks in the pool, and drinking lots and lots of iced tea. The best part about being in Florida was that we had the chance to hang out with Keith's family. We were all on vacation together, so there was plenty of time.

While we were in Japan, of course our nieces and nephews all got a lot bigger. One in particular changed a lot in our absence: Alison Grace was a bump when we left and a baby when we came back! She was born to Keith's brother, Joseph and his wife, Catherine on October 28, 2009. We were so excited to meet her for the first time!

Yes! I got her to sleep!!

 

I had been working on a sweater for Ali since long before she was born... and finally finished it while we were in Florida! Vacation is a great time to finish knitting projects. It was my own design, so it was really fun to make! I made up the pattern as I went along.

We'll close this post with a cute picture of Michael, Ali's older brother...

Update 5: Dealing with my yarn stash

I've been a busy little beaver the last couple of weeks. We're moving out of our apartment in a month, so I have been organizing all kinds of things around the house. My most recent project was the yarn stash. There were a lot of unfinished projects and random balls of yarn. I packed up the random yarn and a few projects, but I took a number of them along on the road trip to work on in the car. So, on to the knitting projects...


Remember this one? I thought this shawl was for me, but then I decided it wasn't for me, it was for Sindy. It looks a lot better on her, so I guess it was meant to be! Sindy gave me a scarf that her mentor made.


While I was on that particular trip to Peru, I visited a delightful yarn shop. Sindy and our translator, Silvia helped me choose yarn for a blanket I had been wanting to make. I went straight to work as soon as I got home. I ran out of pattern, but still had a lot of yarn left over (the yarn was smaller than the pattern called for), so I started experimenting a bit on my own. I was very happy with the result... it's beautiful and soft and warm!



When I was done, I still had quite a bit of yarn left over, so I set about making hats for Elizabeth and Michael for Christmas.

I drew Cat this year in the Olson family Christmas draw, so I made her a purple scarf. Purple is her favorite color.

Not much knitting went on this spring. I had bigger fish to fry with all my arts thesis stuff. Not to mention, I had no projects in a state where I could just sit down and knit. I had a lot of planning to do. That explains this sweater: it sat in a bag for two years when all I had left to do was sew on the arms (my least favorite part), sew in loose ends, and block it, but I just never found the time. Oh well, it's done now! I finished it on a very lovely day sitting on the deck of a vacation home on Gambier Island. :)





We went to Colorado for OMF orientation (more on that soon), and took the opportunity to visit Kelly, Janelle, Elaine, and Elliott! We hadn't seen Kelly and Janelle for 3 1/2 years, which means we had never met either Elaine or Elliott! I brought big sister/little brother hats for them. (Elaine was wearing the yellow sweater I made her in the previous knitting post.)



We have a new nephew! His name is Alexander. I made him a little sweater vest. I designed it myself, and I used the same yarn as our other nephew, Michael's sweater.















I'm still working on the green fisherman sweater which was supposed to be for Keith but it turns out it's going to be for me. It was just too small, especially around the shoulders, even after I restarted it once. I'll try again later with a sweater for Keith. Izumi tells me that there are fabulous yarn shops in Sapporo! I'm definitely looking forward to that.