Knitting Christmas

I'm starting to make some progress with my handmade holidays. First up is a knitted cowl I made for one of my closest friends. Green is her favourite colour, so I used some beautifully soft bamboo yarn in my stash. This is my first knit-in-the-round project and I'm very happy with the result.


My other good friend is getting a similar cowl to the one above. I'm using the same pattern; however, I have added 5 rows of K5, P5 ribbing at the bottom. She wears black all the time, so this dark charcoal Rowan yarn is perfect.


The last project on my needles right now is this tea cozy for my aunt. She is a such a lovely and vibrant person that I wanted to make her something that reflects that. After all this circular knitting, it's marvellous to work a project on straight needles. I do own a copy of 100 Flowers to Knit & Crochet and it's the embellishment part of this project that I'm most looking forward to. The ladies in my family are each getting a tea cozy personalized with their favourite colours and flowers.

Please take a minute to stop by my blog as I have some amazing guest bloggers taking the helm as I craft away!

I'm well on my way...

I'm off to a flying start - I'm so loving all the ideas of peoples christmas gifts on this blog.   So glad its up again this year.

Mine are as follows:

Strawberry jam for all the primary school teachers (12 bottles but only 8 teachers) so a few left over for who knows who.   Labels were downloaded from this site: merrimentdesign.com.   They're so NICE !

Place mats for a couple of little girls I know.   One of them loves purple, the other loves green.   I just made them up as I went along, perhaps I'd make them bigger the next time.  Oh well, live and learn!

A make-up brush roll for their mum.  Another one I made up as I went along.   I mean, how hard can it be?  Shown here with scissors and a pencil because I didnt want to contaminate it with my dirty brushes!

And for the same mum, a crocheted tea cosy, again my own design.

And look !   I'm making vanilla essence too thanks to this post, and a more comprehensive one on her blog too many pasttimes.  Thanks so much for the information  I'm loving it - this is only 2 days old and already smells like the real thing.   This was my first time ever with a vanilla bean too.  I just bought a 4 pack off ebay and I was away.  Used two for this, stuck one in the sugar storage container and have another one left for who knows what!

and lastly is a personalised pillow for a few other kids.
I've interfaced fabric and cut out the letters.  Grabbed some bright lime green flannelette from stash.   Now I have to sew them on.

Playing with placement on an old pillowcase.  I'm not sure what I'll do !  (probably the arch? - comments or hints would be great!)

So I'm pretty pleased with progress so far.   But keep those posts coming, because I can always use a bit more inspiration!

lore
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