I thought I’d show off some of the gifts I’ve received, because all the gifts I’m making are still in pieces (or shipped! yay!).   The tea cozy isn’t really a gift, unless you count the ones you give to yourself.   I never thought I would be a tea person, much less a tea cozy person, but after my second child I just stopped drinking coffee.  “COFFEE!” used to be the very first thought I had when I woke up in the morning, but my son was very sensitive to caffeine and with two kids I had to be able to nap at a moments notice, so I started drinking tea (fascinating stuff, Meg, do go on).  It is custom made (a couture cozy!) from this shop and it fits my funny tea pot perfectly.  The little knit thing next to it is a dishcloth.  Knit up by my mother, just because I said I liked hers. Thanks, Mom.  I can barely knit my way out of a paper bag, so it’s nice to finally have some beautiful knit goods around the house.

My oldest friend sent me an amazing christmas package yesterday full of fabric scraps, vintage buttons and trim, and the feminine encyclopedia!  Actually, l’encyclopedie feminine des ouvrages! I took a couple years of French in college, but translating Baudelaire and translating crochet patterns don’t have much in common.  Luckily the diagrams are explanation enough and the ideas are pretty fantastic.  I do love me a good 70s craft book.

Did you open any of your christmas presents yet?

This is a little seahorse ornament I made for a friend of mine. We watched a couple DVDs from the BBC production Planet Earth, which if you haven’t seen you better pretty soon. There are five discs and all of them are amazing–especially the caves, go rent the one about caves right now. This pygmy seahorse is from the shallow sea episode. There were two of these unbelievably small, red, polka dotted sea horses battling it out for a woman or territory (it’s always one of the two). It might have been the greatest battle of their lives, but to us it looked like they were bouncing off each other. Doink! Doink! Their polka dots didn’t make it any easier to take them seriously. I embroidered some random french knots all over and then did a sad blanket stitch around the whole thing. And there you have the smallest seahorse in the world ready to duke it out.

My holiday traditions exchange is all wrapped up and ready to go.  I’d love to show you what’s in all those packages, but you’ll have to wait until my partner gets it.   Meanwhile you’ll have to look at the fabulous vintage wrapping paper I used.  Isn’t it fabulous?  There are only scraps left, but I cut some of the pictures out and glued them on white cardstock. And there you go: all my christmas cards made.  Now I just have to write them, address them, wrangle my children and take a picture of them, and get them to the post office.  Truth be told, they will probably end up being new years cards, because I’m slowly loosing steam.  Back to the wrapping paper.  I got this roll and two others at St. Vinny’s last year: one is printed with carriages and the other cute angels.  The angels are just a little too cute for me, so I’d thought I’d pass it on.  I don’t know how vintage it is, but the paper is sturdy and new.  If you like it, leave a comment and I’ll send it tomorrow when I go to the post office.

see my flickr site for bigger pics

I am halfway through this handmade holiday thing–making everyone’s gift is a lot of work.  Thankfully I have a fantastic husband who lets me hide in my studio and sew for hours.  I even got myself to the post office Monday morning before it opened (there was already a line!) and a bunch of presents are on their way! The apron above is from Denyse Schmidt’s book and has an oven mitt to match. I made a few of these set for a few sets of people–aprons for the girls and oven mitts for the boys.  I think an oven mitt makes a fine man gift. I only have a few boys on my christmas list, but I have some crafty man gifts up my sleeve, which really I should be making now that I think about it…

These are a couple of placemats I made for one of my sisters (and if my mom can hold off telling everyone she know about this blog–hi mom–she won’t know she’s getting them for christmas).   You would think placemats would be easy, hell even my husband said so, but you really do have to pay attention.  You can’t watch crappy tv while cutting them out with your dull ass rotary cutter on your cutting mat that is way to small, or none will be the same size.  This set is saved by the pretty fabric, but I made another set (for another sister) and everything went wrong: they are too big,  I used plaid fabric so you can see every flub,  I tried to make them pretty with a decorative stitch, but it make them look old fashioned, so I made some matching napkins (I never want to hem anything again) and they look ridiculously small next to the huge placemats, oh and I had to patch some fabric together because I didn’t have enough. There is always at least one project that goes like this, where everything goes wrong no matter what you try. My mom used to call these days “E.I triple T. S.” days: everything I touch turns to shit.  So here’s something nobody can screw up:

pomanders.  I did this with my daughter and her friend last week: just push cloves into oranges or clementines; for small people cut a tiny slit in the orange so the clove goes in more easily. You can tie a pretty ribbon around them and hang them on your tree or in your closet–they smell lovely.  I was going to make letters with the cloves and spell out something festive (noel was the shortest christmas sentiment I could think of) but we started eating the oranges…

Here is something you can do if you want to eat them and another if you don’t have any cloves.