I was at the Farmer’s Market recently with my friend Meg, whose hands were really cold. So, I made her a pair of fingerless mitts like mine. Now she’ll have cozy hands all winter too!
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Here’s the last Christmas gift I made that I promised to show you.
My mother requested a “scarf” that was a loop, but she didn’t want it to hang down very far and she didn’t want to have to double it up. That basically equated to looking for cowl patterns that were longer or could easily be made longer. I ended up using the Botanical Cowl pattern, which I found free on Ravelry. This was a great little pattern. It came in a cowl length and a really long scarf length. I used the cowl version, but ended up lengthening it a bit to fit my mother’s specifications.
She also requested that it be fairly lightweight, but not too light. Not as light as the mohair scarf that I made her for her birthday, but not chunky like the alpaca scarf I gave her for Christmas last year. That led me to the awesome selection of hand-dyed fingering weight yarns we have at the shop, and since she also requested browns and tans, I had the perfect excuse to buy Arroyo, one of the latest colorways of Hazel Knits Artisan Sock yarn. If you have not used this yarn, it is really great to work with. And as a bonus, there was enough left after the cowl (which used less than 200 yards) for me to make something for myself. (Photos of that project coming up soon as well, I promise!) Anyhow, I hope she likes the cowl/scarf. If she doesn’t, I’d be happy to take it back!! It’s been fabulous to have all my holiday gift making done so early this year. In fact, all the shopping is done as well, and all of our gifts were shipped on Nov. 28 to their respective giftees. The only thing left on my list to do since then has been to bake cookies as a host gift to take to a Yule party on Dec. 11. Other than that, I have basically sworn off all shopping other than food shopping until after the beginning of the year. You haven’t seen madness until you’ve seen an SF Bay Area mall between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Instead, I’ll be at my favorite coffee shop with tea and a scone knitting (I have tons of projects I would like to start!), reading, or doing a crossword puzzle. Hope to see you there! Over the weekend I whipped up these three bags for Christmas gifts. They came together pretty easily and quickly.
One of my coworkers copied a round-bottomed bag she’d bought from Trader Joe’s and made it into a pattern. If you are a member of our Honorary Bobbins club at Bobbin’s Nest, then you were lucky enough to receive this as your free original pattern for the month of October! We may at some point offer these patterns for sale on our web site for those who aren’t members, so stay tuned!
I’m doubly excited because I made all of these out of fabrics from my stash! It took some digging to find big enough pieces that coordinated.
The red one is made out of just the two fabrics that you see. The linen one (my fav!) is made out of the three fabrics you see — the entire inside is lined with the pink. But the green one actually has yellow for the bottom on the inside, because I didn’t have enough of the small floral.
And just when I thought I was getting some of my holiday sewing done early, I realized that it’s Nov. 7 already and I always plan to have everything ready to ship to family and friends by Dec. 1, or the first weekend of December at the latest. And everything has to be shipped. Which means I need to get cracking on that one throw quilt that I still wanted to make! Thank goodness my holiday crafting list this year is pretty short…. I occupied myself with a lot of little sewing projects while my mother-in-law was here, and managed to get this child’s chef’s hat made.
This is from a great tutorial over at the stardustshoes blog. There is a link to a pdf on the right sidebar. I did not do the bias tape finish on the inside, since I had a feeling that was not going to turn out looking very neat (not if I did it, anyhow). So I used my fake overlock stitch that I love and I think it turned out looking quite nice.
There is velcro on the back to make it adjustable. I really hope it fits! It’s hard making gifts because you can’t both get measurements and make it a complete surprise.
I’ve heard plenty of tales of this child helping out in the kitchen, so I hope it will be well loved.
The bear, on the other hand, is not always down with being the model for all child-size gifts I make. Not your day, teddy, not your day. I haven’t managed to work any more on my mini quilt. My days are basically occupied with working on the top secret project we are doing at Bobbin’s Nest — to be revealed at the store on Saturday, by the way! — and reading A Dance with Dragons. I have been waiting for months for my chance at this book from the library and now that I have it, I need to get all 960 pages read within my 3-week check-out period. Because there is a wait list for it, you aren’t allowed to renew it, and they fine you for keeping it over the due date. So, I’m trying very hard to get the whole thing read within my three weeks, but it’s definitely a challenge! Fortunately, I still have a few things from the last month or so to show you. Otherwise it would be pretty dull here on the old blog. I really need to get quilt-making! A couple of my favorite children turned 5 recently. Which is, of course, huge, right? So, for their birthday I made them backpacks following a tutorial over at noodlehead, except for leaving out all the exterior zipper pocket stuff.
These are for boy and girl twins. The girl is a pirate. This would be obvious to you if you met her. So, she clearly needed a pirate backpack. But I had a terrible time finding fabric for hers. This turned out to be perfect (except for the notable absence of any substantial amounts of pink or purple). I found this at StashFabulous on Etsy. She has more of this still, as well as some other coordinating prints that are really cute, in case you’re looking for pirates!
On the other hand, the boy LOVES alligators, which he refers to as “snappers” because, well, they snap at you. He was at my place for my birthday party back in May and suggested we hang the banner of Susan Beal’s that he saw lying in my sewing space. After hanging it, he declared that his favorite fabric of all of them was the Tammis Keefe snapper fabric. As this is readily available right now, how could I deny him? I hear they have already taken them to school. A success!  |
  
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