The Gifts of Christmas

Our daughter has been very busy over the last few months, working on gifts for us and her grandmother. I knew about the bee picture for her grandmother, but had no idea she was making something for us as well.  "Home for the Holidays" was a stitch-along at the Barmy Fox on Instagram.  Each day for 3 1/2 weeks, there were new stitches to learn and add to her picture. It looks great on our mantle with my little gnome. She learned several new stitches including the whipped backstitch, the feather stitch, the open and closed fly stitch, padded satin stitch and the Bayeux stitch which was originally on the Bayeux tapestry.  Wow!  I will have to get her to teach me some of these!

 If that was not enough, she also made us three Christmas ornaments. These patterns were from Thread Folk. 

Before Christmas, I took a short trip to Stitch it Central in London, Ontario to pick up some thread for a wedding gift cross stitch picture that I will be making over the next few months for a friend's daughter and her husband--they got married at the end of November and we attended the wedding on Zoom.  I offered to make them a cross stitch picture and emailed a couple of pattern possibilities.  They picked one called "Love Birds".  They made a diagram of the colours they wanted me to use and I picked out the matching colours at the store.  I made one substitution for the first colour when I got home.  My daughter had some thread that matched better. The pattern is from Peppermint Purple. 

I have made a start on the picture this past week. This project will take a while.  The newlyweds are patient and look forward to seeing my progress pictures as I work on their wedding gift. 

A while ago, I showed you a picture of a landscape that my daughter was stitching--it took a back seat while she worked on Christmas gifts but she managed to finish it this past week.  I took a close up picture of her bullion stitches.  I am in awe! The pattern is from Lark Rising. 

She is going to keep this little landscape picture for herself. 

Since August, I have been knitting a scarf and hat for my husband for Christmas.  I purchased the wool at my local knitting store, The Little Red Mitten. This wool was from Shetland in Scotland and was spun in England.  I had read about both places in the book my husband bought me for Christmas last year about the history of knitting in Britain called "This Golden Fleece".  

I just learned to knit this year so I am not very fast. I picked a relatively easy pattern from Ravelry. With some guidance from my knitting friends, I got started on the scarf. 

I tried to knit two repeats of the pattern as shown above each time I sat down to knit, at least 3 or 4 times a week. It was slow at first until I got the pattern memorized but eventually, it started to grow. 

I had to hide my wool and my knitting in a zippered pouch in my sewing room so my husband would not see it.  The knitting was done while my husband was at work or at a meeting.  I had to have a public project underway at the same time (that's why I kept making dish cloths and facecloths!) so that he would not suspect anything. My friend, Christine and I knitted in my backyard in the warmer weather and then we knitted on FaceTime when it got too cold to knit outside.  

I finished the scarf by the end of November...here I am modelling the finished scarf.  It took two skeins of wool to make the scarf. 

The hat did not start out very smoothly and I had to take it apart 3 times before my friend, Pat, helped me to get it cast on correctly.  (I originally tried to use double pointed needles to cast on and thought I was doing fine until I discovered they were the wrong size...ugh! ) I used round needles to knit the main part of the hat and then changed to double pointed needles when it was time to reduce the number of stitches on the crown of the hat.  I lost a few stitches in the process of doing the crown, but Pat helped to get me back on track. Thank goodness for knitting friends!

Finally finished the ribbing:

I started knitting the patterned part. 

Progress!

I finally got to the final stitches and finished the hat a few days before Christmas!

Here is the finished hat:

My husband was totally surprised by his knitted gifts.  He told me he did not think I would know how to knit something this complicated since all he had seen me make was dishcloths and facecloths!  He has worn his hat several times already when we went for walks and when we were shovelling the driveway--as you can see, we had a white Christmas! Keeping the pattern going as I did the crown of the hat was a challenge but it looks fine!  

Pat gave me cable needles and some wool for my next project for Christmas.  She will give me a quick, in person, masked, outside lesson in January.  I think I will make a practice piece before starting the actual project I have in mind. We sometimes trouble shoot my knitting questions on video chats as well.  I have seen a couple of videos of how to make cables so I have some inkling of how to do them.  

I made a couple of sewn gifts for my daughter for Christmas.  I ordered one yard of this book fabric from Spoonflower to make a pillow case and zippered pouch for her embroidery projects.  My daughter is an avid reader and this fabric matches the colours in her quilt that I made when she graduated from university a few years ago.  The white and gray fabric on the pillowcase was purchased at QuiltCon in Nashville. 

Here is the zippered pouch--the pattern is from Noodlehead. 

I still have a little bit of the book fabric left for another small project!  She loved both of these gifts, which  made me happy. 

One last little gift...I made a few counted cross stitch patterns to make ornaments earlier in the year and finished one off for Pat for Christmas.  I still have two more ornaments to put together---I think these last two will go on our tree next year. 

I will be linking up with Kathy and the other slow stitchers in the morning. I am sure that everyone will have lots of projects to share --after all, we are makers and we love to make gifts for our friends and families!