Embroidered Tea Towels

After knitting a few Christmas gifts, I remembered my love of embroidery and made a few embroidered Tea Towels as gifts.

I decided for the Tea Towels for my sister-in-law, I’d make one with coffee of it because of her love of coffee.

I found the cutest patterns for a coffee cup at Wildolive.blogspot.com.

The same person also made some cupcake patterns, and of course I had to make a couple cupcake tea towels. 

For my mother-in-law I decided simply put an S on the towels, but I wanted a delicate and pretty S, I now want to make some for myself.

One thing that I loved about these projects was that I realized I’m not the only person that likes to do old-fashioned crafts. It makes me feel a bit more normal when other people have the same hobbies as I do. Notice I said a bit because I will admit I will never be “normal,” nor do I want to be.

Mom's Christmas Vest

This is another Christmas gift, that I also finished back in October, wasn’t I productive?!

This vest was for my mom.

The yarn is Rowan Purelife Revive in color Grey Suffolk.

A couple years ago my mom picked out this yarn along with some other for scarves and hats. I used the other yarn first and it turned out to be too itchy for her to wear, she is very sensitive. Well at that point I didn’t make her anything out of this yarn because it was itchier than the other stuff. Since then it has been sitting in my pile of yarn.

I finally decided to make something with it and decided to make a vest. That why it wouldn’t be touching skin and hopefully wouldn’t bother my mom. I also wanted it to be a very loose weave so my mom would wear it, normally she over heats so a vest was the best option.

I finally found this pattern is Seabrook by Amanda Keep Williams.

Overall I really like the vest, my only complaint is that the arm holes are very large, but it seems to fit with the style of the vest.

Ruched Infinity Scarf

I have been waiting since October to share this, but it was a Christmas present so I had to hide it.

Yes I finished some Christmas gifts back in October, I knew I would get behind and barely finish so I started early.

This little scarf was made for my grandmother.

She picked out the yarn, but I chose the pattern.

The pattern was Ruched Infinity Scarf by Heather Cabanas.

I didn’t know if I was going to like it at first, the pictures in the pattern didn’t seem very “Ruched,” but the actual scarf has more than it appears in pictures.

The yarn is Blue Sky Alpacas Suri Merino in color Fog.

This yarn is a little expensive for most of my knitting projects, but it is amazingly soft and easy to knit with. If it were a bit cheaper I would use it for everything!

Last Minute Gifts

Despite starting to plan and make Christmas gifts back in September, I am still sitting here waiting for a few to arrive and waiting for a certain someone to decide what to get his certain family members… basically if they don’t get gifts this Christmas they can blame him because I tried.

If you are still looking for last minute gifts here are two that I highly recommend. They take only a couple minutes to make and since they use the same ingredients it makes them so much easier to make.

The first is HomemadeChapstick  from The Elliott Homestead. These where a huge hit last year and are now my favorite chapstick.

Image from The Elliott Homestead

The second is SuperEasy Hard Lotion Bars from Laurie Neverman. They are the most amazing things! I have super dry hands that crack in the winter and no store bought lotion has ever been able to heal them, these lotion bars did!!

Image from Common Sense Homesteading 

If you are a super fast knitter you could also knit up some washcloths and throw in a nice bar of soap (its way too late to make your own) and you have a spa basket. I did that last year for some of my friends and they really seemed to enjoy it.

Or you could settle and write a sweet card and tell the person what they mean to you and say you are moving away from materialistic things… they don’t have to know you ran out of time, and it the note is sweet enough they shouldn’t care.

Good luck, God Bless and a very Merry Christmas!

Tis the Season...

Sometimes I take joy in things I really shouldn’t.

Like today…

I ran to Walgreens to pick up a few things, as I was checking out, I was listening to the checkout lady get attacked by a person on the phone complaining about their photo order. I understand the person’s frustration, I'm still waiting on a photo order, but it isn’t the checkout lady’s fault. But what gave me joy was the checkout lady finally says, in a very kind tone, “I don’t know if they are ready, you said they were. If you want to see if they are ready, you will have to take your chances and come up here and see. Good day.” She then hung up and rang up my purchase.

It made me happy to see her remain “nice” but stand up for herself and go about helping other customers (we were all a bit shocked by the phone person).

But since this wasn’t enough Holiday cheer, when I walked out to my car the person parked next to me had put their cart between their car and my driver side. I'm not going to lie; my first thought was not a nice one. The person was still in the car, and the way it was positioned I had to move it to get into my car, so I decided to return the cart.

I returned the cart for two reasons: one, I thought it was the elderly lady and its cold; two because I was left with no choice but to return it. I could go on a very long rant about all the other places the cart could have been left, all of which meant I could have gotten into my car, but no one cares to read that.

So I waddle the cart back into Walgreens and as I come out I see the person finally leaving, so they weren’t in a huge rush. We met eyes and I saw that it was not the elderly lady; it was a young fit woman. I would have thought another nasty thought, but the look on her face was enough. She realized that by leaving the cart there she made a fat, pregnant lady waddle the cart back while she sat in her car on the phone.

Like I said I take joy in things I shouldn’t. It is wrong of me to judge and I should have just happily returned the cart and thought the best about the person who left it.

But I think the reason it got to me like it did, was its Christmas. It’s the one time of year where people are generally nicer than the rest of the year. But we are so caught up in material things and ourselves that we don’t think about others. So now I am reflecting on the joy these events brought me and how I am just as bad, if not worse, than the two people I thought were “bad” people.