FO: Christmas 2021

Winter of 2021 was a hard time for my family, but I still wanted to make somethings for the kids. I randomly came across these skeins of Sesame Street One Hat Wonder in Walmart on clearance a few months before and decided I wanted to knit hats for all the little kids - my two girls and my nephew. We had Sea World passes that year, so they got to go to Sesame Street and play and meet the characters anytime we went. They were obsessed, so I knew this was a good bet. I used my tried and true pattern - Basic Hat by Michelle of Ooo Baby Knits. It's a free pattern I've made a bunch of times and it worked great for this purpose as well. All the kids were thrilled and the stuffed animal on top really made all the difference. Oddly this is one of the only items I've made for the kids that I never took pictures of them wearing. It was a crazy time.

Now for the hard part of the season. My younger brother was killed in on December 2nd, 2021. He was walking through a cross walk and a car didn't stop. He was 21 years old, and it was a terrible time for my whole family. Since it was close to Christmas, some friends of my parents set up a Christmas tree for my mom (she loves Christmas, but she just couldn't do it herself), and we had all the guests at his funeral bring an ornament that reminded them of my brother. The tree is covered with things he loved and pictures of him - my parents still have the tree up in their living room to this day.

I knew I wanted to make an ornament for my brother. I always loved making him things - his birthday zombie, brainy beanie, various hats with beards, a knight's helmet. He always had requests for fun and quirky knit and crocheted items and he always loved them. He also always loved Spiderman - I was lucky enough to go to Universal with him in March of 2021 and he got himself a Spiderman shirt at the park. I knew Spiderman was a good choice that not a lot of other people would bring for the tree.

So, I started with the base of Knit Kid and Purl Girl by Anna Hrachovec. This is a free pattern and I've modified it for making Superman and Super Shannon before. It's a great blank slate and gives you an idea of where the color changes need to be for underwear. So I just altered where you change colors and then embroidered an asterisk in the chest and he's easily recognizable as Spiderman. 

I used my fingering weight stash for this so the red is Knit Picks Palette in Serrano and the blue is leftover Cascade Heritage Sock in Navy.  It was a bit fiddly to decide what would make him look most like Spiderman on such a small scale, but I'm happy with how this turned out. I think Briggs would have loved it.

Here he is in his space on the tree, where he still hangs today. It was a bit of a struggle to get this made given the circumstances, but I made it by the night before and I'm still glad I could make it happen.

 

I miss my brother terribly. He was an extremely kind and helpful person, and he was only just getting to be an adult. But I know I will see him again :) It will just be a while. I'm glad I was able to get this ornament done to be a part of his memory, and I'm glad I had the ability to make it for him.