I was wait­ing until the last presents were opened to post this :D And by the way, if you’re vis­it­ing because of the grown-up cardi­gan, thanks so much for drop­ping by! I don’t think I’ve ever had that many views in a day before. Thanks so much for check­ing out the pattern!

So, hol­i­day craft­ing! This bon­sai is a cus­tom order. I’ve nev­er made any­thing like this so it was all an exper­i­ment. I nev­er real­ly do prepara­to­ry sketch­es (or check gauge, or make swatch­es) but I actu­al­ly drew a pic­ture of how I want­ed the branch­es to twist this way and that. It did­n’t turn out look­ing like the pic­ture at all after I insert­ed the sculpt­ing wires, they seem to have a mind of their own? But I’m glad it worked out look­ing like a bon­sai any­way :D

And we even had a bon­sai pot hid­den away in our clos­et, wait­ing for years to be used for this of course! It was from a bon­sai that did­n’t live :( appar­ent­ly few peo­ple can keep a bon­sai alive for long — hence the need for a bon­sai that nev­er dies!

And I added a tiny gnome because I thought the bon­sai looked a bit lone­ly. Here’s a close up of the gnome. It was cro­cheted with embroi­dery floss with a 2.3mm hook (2.3 is kind of an odd size for a cro­chet hook don’t you think? But that’s what it says on the hook… any­way, I digress).

He’s kind of like a can­dy corn, except with eyes and a beard. Maybe I can even make a can­dy corn gnome in the fall… I like the gnome so much that I put him in the shop :D With a new and improved extra fuzzy beard. He is a pin :)

And then Mike request­ed a tiny yeti pin for his co-work­er who is rather fond of yetis. So I thought I could use the same method as the tiny yeti, except with the thinnest yarn I have and the trusty 2.3mm hook…

Behold the tini­est yeti!

Does­n’t he look like he’s ready to give the most sin­cere hug? :D He’s in the shop as well. Both the gnome and the yeti are about an inch tall. My hand is in the pic­tures for scale.

And I made these for Mike — they’re soot spir­it hand warm­ers :D

I decid­ed to make hand warm­ers for Mike because his hands get real­ly cold in the win­ter, to the point where he has dif­fi­cul­ties typ­ing when he first gets into work in the morn­ing. So I thought these would work great if he pops them in the microwave for 30 sec­onds before he heads out to sub­way to work in the morn­ing and before he heads home from the office at night. There are many tuto­ri­als on the web show­ing how to make them (with rice inside). But because I have black flan­nel on hand I thought it would make real­ly great soot spir­its! They appear in My Neigh­bour Totoro and Spir­it­ed Away. Here’s a love­ly video mon­tage of them in action if you haven’t seen the movies already :D

Also made these for my friend’s shop, cat ear­rings and necklace!

I bought them from a local Etsy sell­er, Yum Yum Objects. The shop own­er is super friend­ly, and the pack­age was wrapped in book pages and pat­tern tis­sue, with extra cat beads! The cat beads are a beau­ti­ful translu­cent grey that have an iri­des­cent qual­i­ty to it in the light. And so of course I have to imme­di­ate­ly make myself a neck­lace (and a pair of ear­rings) when the beads came in the mail! :D I’ve been wear­ing it for the past few days. So excited.

I also knit­ted and cro­cheted an assort­ment of scarfs/neckwarmers, a shawl, a hat, a few brooches and a loop stitch bath­mat for var­i­ous fam­i­ly mem­bers, but did­n’t take pic­tures of them. Aaaand there’s one more gift that I haven’t yet men­tioned because it will come with a pat­tern! So stay tuned! :D

Have a won­der­ful week everyone!