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. 

Christmas FO: Mini Snowmen Ornaments

This project kind of grew like the Grinch's heart - now that has got to be the cheesiest line I've ever written on this blog, lol. I bought this pattern last year thinking I would make Christmas ornaments for my family and friends. Ha ha ha, let's all take a moment for that deep laugh to subside. I always have great intentions for group gifts like this, but then I quickly become overwhelmed by just how many I would need to make to include everyone. So they were never made. This year I decided I would make one for my sister, since that was the original inspiration anyway, so I started making just one, which took about an hour. Well I couldn't make her a cute ornament and not my nephew, and since it was quick to knit I just made another right after in one evening. Thus the first two were created:

See the reason I wanted to make one for Kelly is this awesome charm topper thing I snagged at a thrift store years ago. It was some kind of family name thing that the previous owner never put together (where each name dangles from the one above in a line), and I had uses for 2 of the names. Kelly was my only family member present, so I grabbed it and put it away for just such a project. Now that it's made I really wish I could find these things for everyone, but that is just not feasible. Maybe I'll actually get good at lettering and make something next time. We'll see. Anyway, Kelly and Luke loved their snowmen, as evidenced here:

Luke kept wanting to hang it from everything, lol. His had a green scarf because that's his favorite color right now, which he thought was pretty cool.

Well, giving these sparked a chain reaction of family members wanting one. My mom saw theirs and her reaction was awesome about how cute they were, so when I had a little time one night I decided to make her one next:

My mom's favorite color is red, so it just had to be a red scarf.

Next I really wanted to make some for my Aunt and Uncle as a thank you, and I needed to get them in the mail so they would arrive in time, so I spent a few hours making these:

For these I got creative and switched up the color of the hanging loop. Fancy! lol.

I never know what to give my sister Shannon's husband (sorry, Justin!). He likes cars and such like - not exactly my forte, ya know? So this year he got Amazon money, but I wanted to give him a little handmade touch so I made him a snowman as well. And, you know, I can't send an ornament to the guy and not the girl - it's just not the way - so I made Shannon one as well.

After making these two, I deliberately gave Shannon the red scarf because it was a bit sassier looking, lol. And yes, I realize these look identical to the one for my Aunt, but I swear they are not (I even checked to make sure the photos were of different sets). Tricky little snowmen...

Finally on Christmas Eve, I really wanted to have something to give my grandmother and she LOVES miniature things so I knew this would be perfect. At that point, I had this pattern down to a science, so I knew I could get it made along with the other finishing touches I had to do that night.

I gave it to her at our big family breakfast on Christmas morning, and it promptly went into her miniatures cabinet. He looks pretty chill with that squirrel.

For anyone else needing to make a quick gift next year, this is the Mochimochi Snowmen by Anna Hrachovec and I can't recommend it enough. If you don't mind things being small and therefore slightly fiddly, this is a fantastic pattern. It's super fast and very easy as far as tiny knitted people go (I've made a several different patterns this size at this point and this was definitely the easiest - no arms and legs!). Also this pattern is only $2 on Ravelry - can't beat that. I also have quite a stash of fingering weight in various colors at this point, so the snow men were Golden Sun Bamboo yarn (from China on ebay) in white  and bleck for the embroidery, while the scarves were all from Knit Picks Palette in Macaw, Serrano, Cyan, and Limeade Heather. But really as long as you have white yarn for the body, you can use absolutely anything for the scarves and they all turn out cute.

So while I did not realize my dream of making one for everyone, I am happy with my little crop of 8 this year. Now that I know how easy this is to make, I'm sure that I will make more in the next few years for those who did not get one this time around. All in good time, folks!

WIP Wednesday: Big = Slow, Plus An Accidental Ornament

This holiday week has really put a damper on my knitting time! I still managed to get some done, but things are just not going as quickly as I normally would expect. I think part of it is that I'm not so great with the big yarn I'm using right now...

My Roland is still progressing, but man oh man does it take forever to make anything with such big yarn! Seriously I feel like each stitch is made in slow motion just from the time and effort it takes to wrap it around and pull it through each time. I'm on the decreases for the shell, so I am in the home stretch at least. My quick project has turned out not to be quite so quick, so I may have to set this big guy aside until I finish more gifts :( Just for the record, that gray "shell" piece already has used almost 2 entire skeins of Lion Brand Hometown USA! That's nuts! Judging by the weight of this piece alone, I can tell you right now this things is going to be really heavy. I hope I have enough poly-fill!

On Monday night, I decided to be responsible and work on part of a gift. I cast on this toddler sized mitten as part of my sister's present (which it now turns out may cause her to question my sanity, but what can you do?) She already saw this piece yesterday , by the way, so I'm safe in posting it here. I made this little toddler sized mitten using the Frozen Mittens pattern (which is a free pattern from Bernat). I made the smallest size because it said it was for 2 to 3 year olds - just the one mitten only took me 2 hours (during which I watched one of my favorite movies), then I decided I would have Luke try them on before I made the second one ... just to make sure. It's a good thing I did! I could barely squeeze his little hand into this thing, lol. I did manage to get it on him (and he thought it was pretty awesome, because he started to laugh and rub my leg with his mitten covered hand), but it was definitely not big enough. Apparently my nephew is big for his age in ALL ways. Duly noted. I need to make his bigger for my project, but this left me with one tiny completed mitten. Guess what my Christmas ornament for this year is going to be? lol It's the perfect ornament size - I just need to add a hanger and I think I'm going to embroider the year on it. I think it actually works out great - what better way to commemorate the year I had no money than with a handmade ornament, lol.

As a side note, this was really a neat pattern. The mittens are knit flat and then seamed, but the way you knit it causes a natural curve inward (it's hard to explain, but it's not just a flat shape). I would definitely recommend the pattern if you wanted to make any kid mittens :)

And as usual, I've made a tiny bit of progress on my Emelie cardigan. I'm almost finished with the left front now! lol This poor project has taken so long.

I'm to the point where you bind off for the neckline on the left front. I think I will skip in the directions and do my button bands before the sleeves just so I can make sure I have enough yarn - I've ended up making more modifications than I originally thought, including making it longer, so I would be devastated to end up with uneven sleeves. Hopefully it works out!

So, that's all I can show you that I've been working on lately. Seriously, I can't wait til after Christmas just to show all the other things I've made, lol. Do you have any secret projects in the works?