Christmas Crafts 2022

 Now that Christmas is past, it's time once again to share crafty items I made as gifts. 

The best crafty item of this Christmas was a fantastic Christmas Tree gnome my sister crocheted for me, but I forgot to take a picture of him and he's now in the attic with the other decor.  I'll share him next year when I get the Christmas stuff back out.

I didn't do nearly as much as in some past years, but I made a few star ornaments out of the selenite crystals we collected while digging in the salt flats earlier this year.

It was fun to try to pick out coordinating pieces to put together to make the stars.  I love that in the one on the far right, the sand is far blacker than the rest-  I think it had more organic material in it. The ornaments look much prettier in the sun- you can see the way the light highlights the hourglass formation.

I also knit two pairs of simple mittens, one for my auntie who moved to Canada and one for my mom.  They all came from the same ball of Noro yarn which made some interesting color changes.  They were a fun knit, and my first mittens.  The pattern was Mountain Hiker Mittens from ravelry.

Finally, I made a little pencil pouch for my cousin Sage.  She lives in the UAE now, and her mom was gathering up a Christmas package to send her!

I  love making small crafty projects at the holidays!

Crafty Christmas Gifts-the wooden ones

Every year for the past several years I've made ornaments for my family and close friends.  This year I decided to use the laser cutter down on the OU main campus.  I've been using it this year to cut quilts, but I'd never tried cutting wood.  Then when I was home over Thanksgiving, my mom mentioned that our little wooden nativity scene from childhood was missing a bunch of pieces (thanks to some dog of years past), so I decided to make some new wooden pieces for that.

First up was the ornaments.  I made all the designs using adobe illustrator, and of course the designing is the fun part.  All of them are original designs except the golf ball which was modified from an existing vector file.  I didn't have a really good feeling for how fine my lines could be an after a test cut I realized that they'd need to be much larger than I thought.  Some of them are still very fragile!

These snowflakes were the sturdiest along with the golf ball.

Since I was making one for my niece Anna, I thought I'd make one for my friend Anna, but all her "Merrys" broke off so instead of saying Merry Christmas Anna it just says Christmas Anna!

The Joy and Peace ones cut well.

For my niece Anna, it was so fragile that I backed it with another piece of wood. 

My nephew Alex's was also very fragile.  Of course it's always a good idea to give little kids very fragile things, but if they break then that's life!  They were at least in a sturdy box!

This one was for me.  It may be hard to tell, but it has the names of all my beloved pets; Pumpkin, Sam, Shooter, Missy, Bullett, Blue, Bentley, and Angel.  All have passed away now except for Blue and Bentley (who live with me), and Shooter, who was kidnapped by my parents (DAD!!) a few years ago.  It's ok-  she loves it with my parents and I still get to snuggle her when I visit.

And here they are all together!

And now the nativity scene!  My sister and I loved playing with this one as a kid,  it was always on a low table because it had sturdy, kid friendly pieces, and I was so sad when the dog ate so many bits of it!  There were no shepherds or Joseph, and only one king!  

These are the new pieces I made, a cow, an angel, a village lady, Joseph, a shepherd, and two new kings.   I cut them on the laser cutter and then painted them.

Here they are all together, I think they blend in well with the rest of the set!

They didn't have a box everything fit into either, so I found a template online for a laser cutter file to make a box with this cool hinged lid and made that too.  The pieces all just glue together and then everything fit inside very nicely!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Crafty Christmas Gifts-the textile ones!

I didn't make quite as many gifts as I have some years, but I did make a few.

To start I knit this pair of bright yellow socks for my mom.  They used up leftover yarn from two other projects, this crocheted shawl and it's matching pair of socks.  I think now almost all the yarn from that project is gone!  It was my first time doing a regular heel, and I think they came out cute.  I hope my mom enjoys them!

I also crocheted a bunch of dishcloths and a potholder for my mom, sister, and santa ministry presents.  It was fun to go back to crocheting after mostly doing knitting for the last year.  It is a bit hard on my elbow, though it seems to depend on my posture.

I used some scrap leather to make a couple of keychains, one for Mike and one for our family silly santa game.  My mom wound up with that one and she was weirdly excited about the keychain.

And then I stitched up a quick gift bag for some socks out of some remnants of handwoven fabric the famous Georgia mad (hi Georgia!!).  It was almost the right size for a glasses case and my mom got new clip on glasses for Christmas, so I went ahead and took apart the gift back and made it into a nice lined two-pocket (she has two pairs of clip on glasses) glasses case!  I love using up these remnants,  I have a bunch and the weaving is so soft and beautiful.

I also made wooden ornaments and a wooden nativity as presents this year, check back on Monday to see those!