This was a long project. I worked on it steadily but never diligently and there’s a lot of yarn in it. Here’s a rule of thumb for estimating how much work a project is going to take: how much yarn do you have to buy? Because it’s all gotta be put in there before you’re done. I love this though. I think it came out beautifully and I hope my friend Rebekah likes it too.
Yeah, it’s April. So sue me.
It was a last minute scramble but I did manage to make a few.
These were made from glue-together foam kits, very simple. I added the Christmas tree lights to the 3D reindeer and a few other touches to spruce them up a bit, but the hardest part of these kits is holding everything together while the glue dries. Foam doesn’t really glue that well, although the end result seems strong. The only way I could get the 3D reindeer to stick together was to use pins.
This is one of those balls made by sticking pins through beads into styrofoam. They’re aren’t hard to do (except on the fingers) and the result is very fancy.
Here are two ornaments Noah made for me this year. Santa is made from beads that you place on a peg baord and then iron to set. It takes a lot of patience. The snowman is a painted suncatcher. I guess Noah takes after his Aunt Dawn.
You know how you can buy those little do-dads to hang from your wine glass at a party so you can tell one from another? These are a crocheted take on that. Each one was crocheted around a hair band so they can be stretched to fit over the bottom of the glass. 
Some included beads, like this one.
I suppose they could also be used as hair bands. If no two of your wine glasses match, like mine, then you probably don’t need markers.
After I made Steve the Boston Red Sox toilet paper cover for Christmas he asked for another one for the guest bathroom in a Caribbean theme. This was fun to make because I got to prowl the aisles of AC Moore looking for inspiration. I found some variegated cotton embroidery thread by DMC in beautiful Caribbean colors and various sea shells and findings to complete the theme. You’re supposed to imagine it’s a sunset at the top fading down through trees to the ocean at the bottom. The blue beads along the bottom edge are like the glass balls you see on fishing nets. And why is there a star fish in the middle of the sunset? Because it’s a “star” (ha ha).
Usually the baby blanket is a surprise but since I was doing most of my crocheting at Steve’s place, I figured Jamie had to be in on the secret. That gave her the chance to choose her own design. She picked one that looked like a field of daisies. Only problem is she doesn’t like yellow or green. Maliyah’s assigned colors were two shades of purple so I picked out a lilac and a grape and here’s the result, modeled by Maliyah herself. She was born two weeks early so I was home madly weaving in ends while she was making her first appearance to the world.
When I saw Steve’s old eyeglasses case in the trash because the velcro closure had worn out, I got the idea of making him a new one for Valentine’s Day. I snagged the old one out of the garbage and brought it home to be my model. It was the envelope style and my idea was to put some personalized embroidery on the inside of the case so it would be a secret message to Steve every time he opened it.
To get my message transferred to a piece of cloth so I could embroider it, I typed the words into a word processor, picked a fancy font, and printed the result. Then I trace the words with a piece of tracing paper between the print-out and the fabric and got a hazy but legible pattern to work from.
Once the embroidery was done, the hard part began. I had to incorporate my work into a pattern of my own design. I sure didn’t want to destroy what I’d just worked so hard to embroider, so I created a mock-up first to make sure I was getting the velcro and the embroiodery in the right places and to see how the stiffening layer I was using worked. After tweaking my design based on the result, I took a deep breath and sewed the case. It came out very nicely.
And here’s the (not so) secret message on the inside.
Last year I made my first placemat out of Christmas cards. I got another beautiful hand drawn card from K again this year so I added to my collection. I think I need to make more friends though because it’s tough to accumulate enough cards for even one placemat per year. This one includes a card from my car insurance company.
I got some lovely hand made presents for Christmas this year. Here’s a portrait Tara painted of me and Steve. She really captured my cheekbones.
And here’s a scarf Jamie crocheted for me. I taught her how to crochet earlier this year and she’s really coming along. Look how even the work is on this. It matches a jacket Steve bought for me last year.
And this is a painting my Grandmother did years ago. When I was in her room this Christmas I commented on how much I liked it and she said I could have it.
