Christmas Knits

When getting stuff ready for this post, I realized I made a serious blogger error.  I have basically zilch pictures of all the things I knit for Christmas.  What was I thinking?

Oh yeah, I remember now. I HAVE TO KNIT MY FINGERS INTO NUBS OR THERE WILL BE NO CHRISTMAS!

Yeah, it got kind of crazy.  Timothy would call me on his way home from work, try to talk to me, and then ask sweetly “are you upset, honey?”  I would ever so sweetly reply “No, but if you’ll hang up the phone please, I’ll be a much happier camper.”  To which he would say something along the lines of, “awww, yes.  You’re knitting.” or “You’re super focused right now, huh?”

Poor husband.

Moving on, it was a rush all at the end, but I enjoyed every minute of it!

The scarf that started it all!  Isn’t my mom gorgeous?!

This was my first major project (besides this headband.)   It took me two months and a few days.  I started it in September thinking that I was being extremely responsible by getting such a head start on Christmas presents.  Little did I know, knitting  can be slooooooow.

Slow but very rewarding.  I told my mom that I was knitting her something, but she had no clue what it was.  After I gave her the scarf she told me that she thought I was making her a knit belt this whole time.  She’s such a good mother.  For three months she has probably been trying to figure out what in the world to do with a knit belt.  Haha!

I followed this pattern and then added a stripe and bow to each end.  This and all the other knitting patterns are linked to Ravelry, my favorite knitting site.  It’s free to register, which I totally recommend you do!

I was so excited to officially give my first handmade present of the season!

I made this headband/earwarmer for Nonnie, Timothy’s grandmother.  She’s a college professor and has to walk outside in freezing Lafayette a lot, so I thought this would be good for her ears!

I also made this owl hat for my new baby cousin, Rhett Baxter.  I was quite intimidated by knitting in the round, but after I saw this pattern I knew I had to at least attempt it!

There are little owls all along the hat.  I put eyes on some of them.  It’s kind of hard to see the owls in these pics, but they’re there!

Knitting in the round for this hat was really hard at first.  It took me forever to get the hang of it.  And once I did, I realized that I was knitting the whole thing inside out.  But it somehow came together.

Isn’t Rhett the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen?  He’s the cuddliest baby in the world!

Then I made this scarf/cowl/neckwarmer thing for my dad.  Sorry you can’t really see it.  Again, I was a failure at taking pictures.

I actually started this less than two weeks before Christmas.  Dad made this wonderful Christmas present rule, and I was struggling to think of something to make for him.  All my ideas were super lame.  Then my mom came up with the wonderful idea to make him a short scarf that he can just tie around his neck and tuck into his coat.  A nice warm, manly one.

I loved the idea but thought that there was no way on this earth I could finish the scarf before Christmas.  Well, as I was looking online for patterns, I was trying to decide whether to make him this one or this one.  Timothy came to my rescue and suggested that the first scarf looked more like Dad.  But he LOVED the second scarf and if I ever wanted to make him something, please copy the scarf.  Exactly.

So what did I do?  Rush to the closest yarn store (an hour and a half away) and buy yarn for Dad’s and Timothy’s scarves.

Of course the idea that it took me two months to make Mom’s scarf didn’t really sink in.  I mean, I could knit two scarves in two weeks, right?  And knit one of those scarves in secret, behind Timothy’s back?  Of course!

Oh, my poor naive self.  First of all, I found out that the pattern was $10 and you had to have it shipped to you.  Say what?!  So I just did some internet stalking for tips and then figured the scarf out as I went.    Also, little did I know that Timothy’s scarf took the muscles of a lumber jack to knit!  I ran out of yarn.  Twice.  It took 6 entire skeins of yarn.  You can knit a sweater with 6 skeins, probably a blanket also, and maybe an entire carpet out of 6 skeins.  Ha!  The yarn was so thick that I developed super sore shoulders and walked around the house all hunched together.  It was attractive.  Timothy kept making fun of how sore I was.  I had to keep myself from strangling him with the secret scarf.  Want to see it?

Ta-da!  It’s a heavy, thick, ribbed cable scarf and he loved it!  He loved it so much that it made all the secretive knitting more than worth it.  Oh, did I tell you that two days in a row I worked a solid eight hours on this thing while Timothy was at work?  Yeah, that happened.

This is the item I’m probably most proud of because it was such an adventure to make.

I also made two bow headbands, another earwarmer, and a keyhole scarf.  And I didn’t take a single picture of those finished products.  Just know they exist.

So that’s the round up of things I knit for Christmas!

What about you all?  Did any of you make things for Christmas presents?