Some of the gifts I made for Christmas :)

This was from a pat­tern by the Knit Cafe, I got it while par­tic­i­pat­ing in the annu­al TTC Kni­ta­long. I don’t usu­al­ly knit with such fine yarn, so it took me quite a long time, but the result is well worth the effort!

I like the con­trast between the sol­id garter stitch and the lacy mesh stitch when it’s all wrapped around. Might make anoth­er one some­times, with a dif­fer­ent colour combination :)

Here’s a much quick­er project I made for Mike, using Bernat Blan­ket. It’s quite a soft but stur­dy yarn with very lit­tle stretch, I thought it’d be per­fect for slip­pers. The pat­tern is from Rain­bows and Sun­shine. Fits him per­fect­ly! :D

This bon­net was fin­ger knit­ted on the plane, on our way back from the east coast, with a skein of beau­ti­ful Sir­dar Kiko. It’s a baby show­er gift I made it for a friend who used to work as a flight atten­dant on the air­line we flew with :)

This is one of the stones from Mike’s grand­pa’s col­lec­tion, which I wrapped with wire and made into pen­dants. Mike’s grand­pa passed away a few years ago. He was quite a semi-pre­cious stone and fos­sil enthu­si­ast when he was young!

I’m not edu­cat­ed in stone iden­ti­fi­ca­tion at all, so if any­one knows what this stone is, please feel free to drop me a note! I made a total of 13 pen­dants for aunts and cousins, but I was too excit­ed about wrap­ping them up and writ­ing notes to go along with them, I neglect­ed to take pic­tures of the fin­ished neck­laces. I fol­lowed this handy tuto­r­i­al for the wire-wrapping.

While vis­it­ing Mike’s par­ents we looked through more of grand­pa’s rock col­lec­tion, includ­ing this piece of pet­ri­fied wood, with trans­par­ent inclu­sions! How cool is that?

Look at the light shin­ing through. Maybe it can be made into a sun catcher.

And here’s my young nephew wear­ing his present :D

I fol­lowed the owl hat pat­tern by Kat Goldin. Also made these owl mitts from Down Clover­laine for my oth­er young nephew, this pineap­ple bag for my niece, a cou­ple of knit neckwarmers/cowls that I made up with bulky weight yarn, this casse­role car­ri­er from Moo­gly for my moth­er-in-law, and a cou­ple more projects that I can’t show you just yet because the recip­i­ents haven’t opened them :)

After mak­ing gifts I thought I’d spend the hol­i­days mak­ing some­thing for myself. I recent­ly start­ed on this sweater from the cur­rent issue of Inter­weave Cro­chet. Here I am drink­ing tea, eat­ing Kinder eggs, and watch­ing fam­i­ly play scrab­ble while I cro­chet — hol­i­day at its finest :D

We’ve also got some very unusu­al weath­er in our cor­ner of the world this Christ­mas. It’s not unusu­al to not have snow, but it was warm enough to find these turkey tails (I think that’s what they are) in the backyard!

Hap­py about the fun­gi sight­ing, at the same time a bit uneasy about the dou­ble-dig­it tem­per­a­ture :S

Then on the week­end it was very windy, with water splash­ing onto the lake­side road. Reminds me of the roar­ing sea in the east coast! I don’t think I’ve ever seen the lake with waves like that, but then I don’t see the lake very much from where I live.

But all in all we had a fun time away from the city vis­it­ing fam­i­ly. And I’m grate­ful to have one more week of hol­i­days until the new year, which means more time to write about craft­ing fun here on the blog! :D

Wish­ing you a won­der­ful week!