I don’t about you, but if I have time, I like to give handmade Christmas cards to my family and special friends.  It is nice to make the extra effort for the people you’re closest to.  So a few of our friends will be getting these cards this year:

Christmas Cards

They were so easy to make.  We used some card blanks bought from a local craft store and a piece of Novelty Labels and Classic labels Christmas fabric. From the fabric, we cut around each square label.  These were mounted onto a small piece of wadding which was slightly smaller than the size of the square.  We fixed the fabric to the wadding, wrapping the edges around the wadding so it was nice and neat.

The red and green card blanks already have square apertures cut into them which were the right size for the squares.  So we were able to fit the now padded squares into them and sealed them up.  The white card is plain, so we just glued it the square to the front of the card.

Easy peasy!

My Mum is a very clever lady.  She’s been almost glued to her sewing machine these past few weeks, making toys for both display in my shop and for our friends’ children. But she’s also been coming up with lots of nice little things for Christmas.  These placemats are one of her ideas.

She used the gold stars fabric for the main part and then cut borders from a piece of the Novelty Borders Christmas Fabric.  She sewed them together and used some special heat resistance wadding. She backed them with a piece of the Classic Stripe Christmas Fabric.

I spent a couple of evenings this week at the sewing machine.  Yes, I know… sewing, not knitting!  I haven’t actually done much knitting for a couple of weeks now.  I started a jumper at knitting club this week, but I think I’m going to start over with it, because I don’t like what I’ve done so far!

But I needed to make a sample advent calendar for the craft fair I’m attending in a couple of weeks time.

Christmas Tree Advent Calendar

The sewing’s not perfect by any means, although the gold thread I used for quilting it is sooooo pretty.  I’d completely forgotten how to do the quilting on Mum’s machine so had to get her to remind me and I knocked the tension dial on the machine and sewed for ages before Mum pointed out that you could see the upper thread colour on the back on the piece which wasn’t right!

But hey, it’ll do as a sample and I’ll probably give it to my brother as a present when the craft fair is over!

If you’re interested you can buy the advent calendar fabric panel in my shop!

I’ve also blogged about the whole making process on the shop’s blog.

I know it’s only September, but Christmas will be here before we know it!  Scary thought eh?

Well we’ve just started stocking Melly & Me sewing patterns in the shop now and my Mum immediately grabbed one of the patterns, Rudy, and made this little fellow with some Christmas fabric in her stash.

Rudy from Melly & Me

Is he cute? It only took Mum an afternoon to make him and she said it was very straight forward to follow the pattern.

A couple of days late I know, but I had no intention of turning on my computer on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas with family and friends around you.

We had a quiet and relaxing Christmas here. Just my parents, brother and I at home. We went to Midnight Communion which is completely candlelit and very special. And I went to church on Christmas morning too – I know – extra holy! Normally we get together with family friends on Christmas night, but that didn’t happen this year due to some of them having flu. So we watched TV and films and chilled out with lots of good food. Yesterday was much the same and I got to do some knitting too. Today, Dad and my brother have gone to the sales but I can’t face the crowds, so thought I’d take a few minutes to show you all the lovely knitting related gifts I received.

A knitting desk calendar (with a new pattern for every day of the year!), a novel called Needles and Pearls (the sequel to Divas Don’t Knit), Holiday Knits (a selection of knitting projects for the festive season, a bag to hold my knitting when I go to Knit and Natter, and some yummy yarn: enough balls of Rowan Silk Wool DK in a burgundy colour, to make a cardigan that I want to do, and some hanks of possum yarn from New Zealand.

Possum is so warm and soft. Several years ago when I went to New Zealand I bought Mum and possum wool scarf and she loves it. She then bought me a possum scarf one Christmas and I got a friend to pick us up some gloves when they went to NZ a couple of years ago. We love possum wool!

I think I might make a hat with this yarn. I know, another hat, but I do love hats!

I’m in the Christmas spirit.  Actually I have been for a little while now.  Mum and I went to a place called the Dartington Cider Press Centre yesterday which is where Dartington Crystal comes from.  But they have a number of different shops there – gifts, kitchen, toys, books – and there is always a festive spirit there in December.  It got me really in the mood and so when we got back, I spent the rest of the day sewing an advent calendar.

Yes, I know we’re already a week into December, but because sewing scares me, I have to be in the mood to do it.  I’d bought this advent calendar panel by Makower back in September at the craft fair we went to and decided I ought to make it before any more time had passed.

It took me all day to do, but I did it and I love it.  I’m quite chuffed with myself for doing it and it looks fab!

It has little pockets to put sweets or something in and my Mum said it’s like an heirloom because I’ll be able to get it out, year after year.

Presents

I’m not going to do much in the way of knitted gifts this year, but I am going to be knitting something for my brother again.  Last year I knitted him the Starsky and Hutch cardigan, but this year it will something much smaller.  I can’t say what, in case he reads my blog (unlikely, but he might if he was bored one afternoon at work!), but I cast on for it last night and virtually finished it in one evening.  It’s made with Rowan Cocoon, which is lovely and and soft and warm.  It has mohair in it, so sheds a bit, but I think that’s only to be expected.

I’ve also been knitting some scarves and a hat for a friend who puts together Christmas boxes for children in Eastern Europe.  I did some scarves for this last year.  My friend (who is a beginner knitter herself) did a scarf from some brown acrylic yarn and then gave me what was left and asked if I’d make a matching hat.  I didn’t have a pattern for a child’s beanie, so sort of made it up.  Knowing what size to make was the hardest part and I asked around on Ravelry for suggestions.

The finished hat has a moss stitch band and then stocking stitch for the rest of it.  The crown shaping isn’t great.  I decreased in 8 places around the hat, but I think that might have been a bit too much.  6 might have been better and perhaps not on every row.  I think that maybe I should have done some plain rows between.

The yarn was awful to knit with though.  The first ball I tried to use, actually kept breaking as I unwound it.

Decorations

I’m planning to knit some small Christmas tree decorations too.  Simply Knitting recently had a supplement featuring an Advent tree designed by Alan Dart.

New Yarn

A friend of mine from church recently went on holiday to the US.  She’s a knitter too and brought back a suitcase of yarn and knitting books.  (You can see her new stash on her blog castoncallout.blogspot.com)  She generously brought back a yarn of Peaches and Cream yarn for each of her knitting friends and I got to pick a ball in a lovely shade of white, pink and purple.  It’s a really soft cotton too.  It was so thoughtful of her!

So how was your Christmas?  I’ve the whole week off between Christmas and New Year, and so I’m still enjoying sitting around the house, watching movies, doing a bit of knitting and generally taking it easy. Actually I’ve been sick too, which hasn’t been so nice.  I thought I’d picked up a stomach bug but am wondering if it’s food poisoning.  The only meal I’ve eaten recently, which the rest of my family haven’t, was salmon at my friend’s wedding last Saturday.  I was ill about an hour after that meal, but fine the next couple of days so though it was just because I had a terrible headache the day of the wedding too.  But Christmas night, after supper, I was ill again and then all day Boxing Day.  Yesterday I did start to feel a bit better but I’m still taking it easy when it comes to food.  Which is so annoying at Christmastime when the house is full of yummy treats, chocolates, delicious puddings and cakes.  I even had to forego my favourite meal of the Christmas holidays – Boxing Day lunch when as a family we always have cold turkey, cold ham, smoked salmon, pickles and chips!  I just couldn’t handle the smell of the food, let alone try and eat some.

But other than that, Christmas has been nice.  And I was really spoiled with presents…I was given a Canon EOS 400D digital SLR camera by Mum and Dad, a keyboard from my brother which will connect via USB to my computer so I can record music directly to the computer and use about a trillion effects using a program called Logic.  ”Father Christmas” also gave me a set of KnitPicks Options interchangeable needles and a ball of sock yarn and a pattern to make a pair of socks. So my ambition to make a pair of socks in 2008 might actually happen now…

I’m back to knitting the cushion cover now that the cardigan is finished.  I didn’t like how the actual pattern was looking on the back piece, so I’ve changed it slightly and it now has some vertical stripes, done fair-isle style.  I got fed up with dropping the yarn and picking up the new colour for every stitch, so I’ve been trying to knit continental style, with one colour in one hand, and the other colour in the other hand.  On a knit row, I’ve just about got the hang of it, but on a purl row it’s pretty darned tricky and more slow going than if I was knitting with one hand!

I got back from India on Sunday. It was an interesting trip and although I didn’t get to see many sites, I think I got a good flavour of Indian life. The area I visited was quite different from the usual images of places like Delhi or Mumbai which are colourful and hectic. I was up in a town called Kalimpong in the foothills of the Himalayas, near the Nepal border, where life is slightly slower. I also visited Darjeeling (v. disappointing) and a remote village called Lamagaon which only got electricity two years ago.

I did look to see if there was any interesting yarn available and I did spot a couple of yarn shops but they only sold brightly coloured acrylic stuff. I did however get some lovely Tibetan fabric. Can’t remember the proper name of it now, but I think I will use it to make some bags of various sizes, a Bible cover and things like that. It was only about £1 a metre and I loved the patterns. Cutting fabric and sitting at a sewing machine is quite a scary prospect though!!

I got back to see that my parents had decorated the house and Mum had made some mince pies… yum! I need to sort out what Christmas presents I have and if I need to buy any more before the Christmas deadline at Amazon! I have work all week and I’m going to a friend’s wedding on Saturday so don’t have anytime to get to the shops before Christmas Day! I must finish my brother’s Starsky cardigan this week too before he comes home on Sunday.

It is decidedly cold here in the UK too and it was a bit of shock when we landed at Heathrow yesterday. Not as cold as it is in some parts of the US though – the snowstorm pictures look amazing. It reminds me of when we spent Christmas in Vermont a couple of years ago. It makes me want to go back but I’ve already got all my annual leave booked up next year with trips to a Christian conference in North Wales, Malawi and Singapore, all of which will be great, but I do love going to the US.