I am super excited to tell you about this project. After much help from my computer genius of a husband, you can now buy (for the super cheap price of $2.50) and download my Advent Calendar Coloring Book.  Then check “make advent calendar” off your list.  Done and done. All the pictures were drawn by yours truly and I had a fine time doing it. We all should draw more often. And color more often too! Because of course after making a coloring book, I had to break out the crayons and pencils and color!

My daughter, who is my little tester, has colored three whole books already and advent hasn’t even begun. And really, you could print out a coloring book a day for advent, instead of coloring one picture a day.  My kids are coloring fiends, so that much coloring wouldn’t be unheard of. And of course you don’t have to use it as an advent calendar, but just color all the christmasiness to get in a happy holiday mood.

And as a special treat, I am going to have a page to print out and color everyday for advent on my blog. So be sure to stop by tomorrow for the first one!

just a few pictures of what I’ve been working on, before everything I’m working on is for christmas.

I guess this qualifies for braid wednesday as well!

I think it’s pretty easy to go crochet crazy. I had a great aunt who crocheted anything and everything: toilet paper cozies, sombreros for the tabasco sauce, ear cozies–not ear muffs, just two circles that fit around your ears! And now I see how you can go down that road. It’s just so easy to make up shapes as you go with crochet, increasing and decreasing wherever you choose and if you need to rip it out, it’s no big deal because it comes together so fast anyway. Which is why after only a few weeks after learning, I can crochet on the fly. This super ridiculous santa hat is a mash up of two other crocheted hats: the pointy hat I made for my daughter and the mustache hat on instructables. I can write up a pattern if there is enough interest, but really, if you can crochet you can probably just wing it.  Ho! Ho! Ho!

This tart was delicious. That said, I don’t recommend actually making it, unless you have all day to make a tart. I saw the recipe here, thought, “that looks lovely and hey, I have some pears,” but then didn’t really read the directions. If I had I would have discovered that there were three parts that all required separate making, baking, cooling times before you put them all together and bake it again. I made it for a potluck so I fudged a bunch of steps because it had to be done right! now! but it still came out pretty good. And really you can’t loose with almond cream. I could eat it raw for breakfast and be happy.

My half eaten gingerbread man had a nice little shout out from Jess at howaboutorange and tons of people download the pattern because of it. To date, it’s been downloaded over 2500 times! Damn! So I thought it was about time that I started an elsiemarley flickr group. I love seeing the things people have made from my tutorials–you might recognize the string of lights advent calendar above from last year–and I thought there should be a place to share them with everyone.  So go to the group and join and show us all the awesomeness you’ve made.

I wasn’t kidding when I said I wanted to make every project in the Kid’s Crochet book. And here are 2 more. This little pointy number is pretty fantastic. The super cuteness doesn’t really come across in the photos, not that I didn’t try–my children will. not. be. still! As with all the projects in the book, this hat went very fast and I didn’t have one bit of trouble with it (here are the specs). My daughter picked out the variegated yarn (she called it rainbow yarn) from Joann’s and I wanted to try to get another hat out of it, so I added some stripes.

To mark the back of the hat, I embroidered her name on some wool felt and stitched it in. She picked out the orange thread and damn if that child doesn’t just have some amazing, if sometimes crazy, color sense. What four year old picks out taupe yarn anyway? But she did and it’s beautiful. While we were at the store we got some yarn for a cardigan I want to crochet for her. Stupidly I didn’t bring the pattern and we ended up buying the wrong size yarn, but she chose three gorgeous colors: a purpley raspberry, a magenta and a taupe-y brown. I never would have thought that’s what she would pick.

The skull cap (a variation of the same pattern) went even faster than the first hat. I did run out of yarn, so I added larger stripes of the yarn leftover from his scarf, but the wool at the bottom is curling. I haven’t blocked it, but how do you block a hat? On your head?