Knitted Santa & Other Christmas Bits & Pieces

Well how is everyone doing today?  I've been rushed and crazy busy this past week getting things made and sent out before looming post office deadlines, but thought I'd take a little breather to say "Hello"

Thank you all once again for participating in my giveaway ... Linda's new table runner is on its way to the UK, and she just might get it by Christmas time.  I'll have to plan these things a little better next time.  I didn't even check with the postal deadlines before I offered the giveaway (silly of me).  Thank you all for leaving so many comments congratulating Linda on her win ... such a very lovely group of friends here ;)

I was out to see my dad on Saturday and put his wreath back on this door.  He was very appreciative of it, and thought it looked great ... mission accomplished!  I just never know anymore which way his thinking is heading, so I was glad he liked the wreath and didn't say "I don't want it! Take it away!".  I dragged a tiny table top Christmas tree out of his closet while I was there, fully intending to decorate it with the decorations I got him last year.  But where the decorations have migrated to is a mystery.  I found lots of tiny butter pats in his desk drawer :[  ... but no decorations.  Maybe I should just hang the butter from the branches. 

 

I love to make up things at Christmas time, but the only downfall to this is the Christmas time crunch.  I used to get all my shopping done before the beginning of December just so I could devote all of December to making fun things for Christmas.  But as your family grows, different methods are employed and we have to adjust. 

Since my kids were babies, my husband and I have taken them into Toronto for a big day of shopping and lunch in a nice restaurant.  When they were a little older, we would take our skates down as well and after we were about ready to drop from exhaustion, we headed over to Nathan Phillips' Square once it got dark (which is about 4 pm in winter).  We tied our skates on and skated on the outdoor rink with Christmas music playing and all the pretty lights in the trees.  One year we even skated with then Mayor of Toronto, David Miller, which my kids thought was so cool ... the Mayor!!  So now my Christmas shopping is not  finished by the 1st of December, and I feel the pressure creeping up on me.

 

This year I've been able to sew and knit my way through November instead.  I have a big parcel of presents to mail out to my brother & his kids in Victoria.  I always like to add a little something handmade to the package since we don't get to spend a lot of time together.  This year I made up a little knitted Santa & am still working on a polar bear ...

 

 

These really are little ... Santa is about 2" tall and the polar bear is about 1-1/2 ".  I've adapted them from the book Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi by Anna Hrachovec.  I pretty much wrote up my own pattern for the Santa, but got the idea from her gnome.  If you like tiny knitting, this book has cute little things in it.  Tiny knitting is ok, but very fussy when you start to add different colours.  These will be present toppers and then the kids can hang them on the tree.  For my brother I made a "sawtooth star" quilted decoration (which you might recognize from the table runner that Linda won). 

 

 

This quilted star was fun to make (still doing a bit of quilting around it) ... and I've been getting lots of practice making the triangles and having them line up properly (I made a larger one for my dad & hung it on his wall).  I told my dad I would make him a wall hanging for Christmas, so now I feel a bit more confident with making these stars to head into that project.  If I get the wall hanging done for Dad it'll be a miracle.  I have all the fabric (I think), and although the pattern isn't complicated, the colour placement can be tricky.  I'll let you know if I can do this ... another time crunch I've placed on myself ... oh boy ...

 

Another little Christmas thing I did yesterday was bleach a pinecone.  I've bleached pinecones before and they look nice & bright against dark green evergreen boughs.  You take an opened pinecone and put it in a container with bleach (I used a yogurt container).  You want the pinecone to be fully submersed in the bleach.  I stuck a skewer in my pinecone and then closed the lid on the yogurt container and the skewer held the pinecone under the bleach.  You could also weight the pinecone down with a string tied around it and a rock or something heavy.  I left it overnight and removed it the next morning.  The pinecone will close up in the liquid, but just let it drain first and you can put it over a heat register to dry it out completely.  Once it's dry, the pinecone will open up again and look like this ...

 

 

 

One year I made a few of these and the kids decorated them by first painting them with clear glitter varnish and then gluing on pale blue and white pom poms.  They looked really cute and "icy" with the non-traditional Christmas colours.

 

Well, that's me caught up (somewhat) ...

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Wendy

 

 

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