I've made qutie a bit of progress on projects for the holidays. I only have three handcrafts left to finish, and one of them is nearly done. The sad part is that I am coming to the realization that the other two may not be done in time. It is becoming more and more likely that I will have to resort to taking a picture of the project in progress and wrap it up for the respective family member instead of the finished product. That's not mean, is it?
Okay - so stuff that is finished:
Mother-in-law SocksI promised before I would relay the story behind these, so I guess now is the time. During my first year living in South Dakota, I decided to make a pair of socks for my mother-in-law-to-be. I got one done, and I used red Sugar 'n Cream yarn (or something similar - I honestly don't remember). I gave her this lone sock with the promise that the second one would follow. It never did. I suffered from Second Sock Syndrome before I even knew such a thing existed. Fast-forward to a few months ago. I continue to fall in love with yarn based on the name of the color. (I used to want to name crayons for a living.) So when I saw "Splat," a colorway dyed by my good friend Rita of
C. R. Yarn, I had to get it. And I had to make socks. And they had to be for my (now) mother-in-law. Rita is a seasoned sock knitter, which is just what I needed when making these. My mother helped me with my first attempt, but she was all the way back in Indiana. Knitting instructions via phone don't work well at all. But that sock is something vague in my memory now (I seriously don't remember what it looked like, other than the fact that it was red), and now I have a pair of nice, hand-dyed Splat Socks that I shall wrap up in zombie wrapping paper for my dear mom-in-law. Seriously, I do love her. She's awesome.
Pure Fern Fingerless Gloves 
When Rita designed these gloves for a class, I jumped at the chance to test-knit them. I loved them so much, I decided to not only knit a pair for myself, but also to turn them into a present for my sister-in-laws (both also awesome), but one pair turned into...
Owl Fingerless GlovesA bastardization of Rita's Pure Fern Fingerless Gloves, the owl fingerless gloves utilize the classic owl cable. This was my first experience with cabling (Why does "cabling" look so weird?), and I actually knit three of these gloves. The first time I thought I was finished, one thumb was higher than the other (due to my need to superimpose the cable chart onto Rita's glove pattern), , the owl's feet were effectively backward (due to my wonderful ability to read cable charts), and some of my stitches were CRAZY wide. It was finally determined that it was because I was switching from knitting to purling at the same time that I was moving from one needle to the other. Was I going to rip out the second attempt at the second glove to fix this, when the first was somewhat "fixed" by blocking? Hells no. Sucka be done and ready to wrap in zombie paper.
Did I mention my
zombie wrapping paper? It's awesome. It's from ThinkGeek, and I love it. I'm hoping that it is a product they continue to produce/make available from now until the end of time, because I love it so. I can easily see myself wrapping in it for years to come. I won't even need labels.
"Oh, wow. Look at that zombie wrapping paper!"
"That's from Marti."
"How do you know?"
"Because she hasn't used anything but that for years."
It will seriously become the equivelant of my mother's "French horn paper," which was in such low supply that everyone who got a present wrapped in it felt significantly honored.
That being said, if anyone else knows of a place aside from ThinkGeek to get variations on zombie wrapping paper, do share!
I was writing about something else. It was... it was... Oh yes! Holiday gifts.
Felted CranesI made these for my dad. They're from
Knitalong: Celebrating the Tradition of Knitting Together by Larissa Golden Brown and Martin John Brown. First of all, I love that Larissa's middle name is Golden. Golden Brown. Sounds like she's a perfect marshmallow, ready to be slid off the stick and smushed between two crackers with a wedge of chocolate. Mm. Okay. Enough of that. I made the cranes in her book for my dad. My fondest and most frequent memories of my dad are of him folding paper cranes. It didn't matter where we were, or what he had to fold - he did it all the time. And the cranes he made, he would give to me or put on precarious and whimsical display. He tried to teach me how to make them, but I never got the knack of it. Making cranes out of yarn, however, proved to be much easier. One of my father's many talents is design. He designs buildings, theatrical sets, and (to some extent) his home decor. Not wanting to "cramp his style," I puzzled over how to give him these cranes in a way that would not tempt the resident felines to indugle in their destructive habits. It took some thinking and some conferring, but a method was decided on. I needed a birdcage. I spent a day in antique stores before I found what I wanted at, of all places, Hobby Lobby. How to place the cranes became the next dilemma, but I decided it would be best to make them moveable. The Husband helped me to craft a swing, and small rings to the crane's as well as attaching clasps to the cage at various points will allow my father to arrange the colorful birds as he sees fit.
Those are the only projects I have finished so far, and since this turned into an enormous post with no pictures (sorry!), I will close it here and post again soon. I swear it to you. And I also swear that there shall be visual stimuli that does not consist of arranged alphaneumeric symbols.
