2013 Christmas Crafts - Ta da!

Now the Christmas season is over it's safe to post piccies of a couple of my Christmas makes.

Knitted Stocking

Red-and-white stocking by Yours Truly, green one by flatmate.

A couple of friends requested Christmas stockings and fortunately I had previously had the same idea so just needed to add some jingle bells to the stocking I had knitted.  Doing the HJC was a bit of a challenge as the red was knitted in the round but the white was knitted back-and-forth.  And I've never done much colourwork before.  It's something I will have to work on if I decide to do it again - having colour as well as texture to work with is a good move.

Hot water bottle cover

Late-night efforts paid off.  There are varying random stripes on the back.

This year my research group had a Secret Santa.  When it was mooted I thought 'if I drew L out of the hat, I would know exactly what to do'.  You see, one of the colleagues I share an office with has an office hot water bottle and used to keep it wrapped in a pillow case.  Imagine my surprise when, sure enough, the name I drew from the hat was hers!

So the crochet began.  I had some Patons Smoothie DK from a baby blanket project and started knocking up little pinwheels.  Everything went pretty well but, true to previous form, I had underestimated how much time was available for this make.  As a result I was frantically crocheting away the night before the present exchange - so late that I heard the Shipping Forecast on Radio 4 before the switchover to the World Service.  It all paid off in the end though and my colleague was very pleased.

Not Pictured Here

The other people who got handmade gifts this year were my sister and sister-in-law.  Sister got an owl-cable snood in lovely soft and smooth bamboo yarn to match some owl cable items I made for her birthday in the summer.  It did get sewn up just before I left to return home rather than before Christmas, but as previously noted, such is my wont.

For some reason I generally wrap presents to my sister-in-law in scarves.  This year that turned out to be a green tartan infinity scarf with a white backing.  Pretty simple to sew up but (again) I wish I'd had time to wash it into softness and I might have made it a bit bigger - apparently her head is a bit bigger than mine, so while I could get it on both singly and doubly wrapped she struggled with the double wrap.  I'll maybe use up a bit of the fabric stash on these for presents in the future.