Now I'm just feeling super blabbity

I had plans for Christmas. Silly plans. I would make some sort of handcrafted gift for everyone in my family.

It turns out that when you work 40 hours and teach twice a week, this is what most people would consider to be a really dumb Idea. Fortunately I had some lead time (I decided this back in October) and a couple of projects half complete, so it seemed fairly doable.

The first of them was for my mom; I would finish a cross-stitch I had been working on for her over the past four years (So maybe I'd started before October, even?). I'd started it when I had access to TV, and soon after I lost access to TV, I learned that cross-stitching is really, really boring. Most of the work on it has been done at my folks' house, on their couch, in front of the boob-tube. To compensate for my lack of cable, I began renting movies like a madman the past two weeks. I've seen some good stuff, and some stuff I could've lived without, but it got the job done, you know?

For my dad, I made a tie. This turned out to also be a stupid idea, because it was supposed to have been a birthday present. For his Birthday. In August.

Oops.

It turns out that using #1 size needles makes everything take 17 times longer than you'd expected it to. Also, it turns out my hand-sewing skills are shit, which is why I'm leaving the lining of the tie up to my mom, who has hand-sewing skills that are more like the roses that grow out of the shit-skills I currently have if you give them enough time. Maybe one day I'll be able to handle it, but with my rate of learning sewing techniques, there's a chance I'll be doddering and incontinent, and I'd probably end up wrapping a tie around my dad's gravestone.

Still, so long as you don't flip it over or look too closely at the carrying side, it looks pretty decent.

The next gift was intended for my elder niece. (By elder, I mean she'll be four the day after Christmas, which still makes her older than her little sister.) I've been designated "Strange Aunt Sasha," or "Silly Aunt Sasha," so I felt compelled to live up to my name and make her some mittens.

Shaped like LOBSTER CLAWS.

In spite of a couple of experiments with gauge swatches, they turned out goddamn huge. However, it turned out that the wrist-holes were too small, so while they would have been too big if she'd gotten them on, she couldn't actually get them on. Grah.

This may be a lesson about not trying to size things for people if they can't volunteer body parts for them.

At the same time, I started work on a project for the younger niece. Let's just leave it at failure due to terrible instructions and forget it ever happened.

The next project almost became a failure as well. It was my first attempt with felting, which is kind of like when you ruin a new sweater by putting it in the washer, but with purpose. Wool will turn to felt, and can be shaped and formed if you're careful about it. It's not really complicated, but you only get one shot at it, and if it doesn't work, then it doesn't work.

I wanted to make my older brother a stuffed hedgehog. He'd collected them when he was a kid, and this seemed like a simple enough gift for him that would end up in the hands of his own children. Or it would have, if the first one hadn't failed. You see, all of the paws felted zip-zip-zip-zip, but the rest of the body had only felted in clumps here and there. Also, the fur turned from this pleasing, lush texture to an unpleasant, clumpy feel.

So, I went to the yarn store and whined to the woman working there, and she advised me to a better choice of fur-yarn. I went through the pattern again, and then delayed actually felting it, worried that it would fail again. I had another talk with the lady at the knitting store, and she told me where I could find a proper washer that would be hot enough to do things properly, a big change from the less functional machines in my apartment building.

So a weekend before Christmas, I felted that sucker up, and it worked all properly like it ought to have the first time.

On top of that, I made one set of gauntlets for Seth, which I neglected to take any pictures of. It was a quick adventure in cabling. The first one was from a pattern, but I didn't like the way it worked out and decided to try a different pattern for the second. I couldn't find anything I particularly like, so I made up something new, derived from patterns that I had liked. They worked pleasantly, and I liked the way they turned out; the same cabling technique, but on different scales.

Blah, blah, blah.

I may make many more of those hedgehogs, now that I know how. They're adorable and quick to make. The lady at the knitting shop had mentioned using smaller needles and a lighter gauge yarn. If there's one thing I've learned from Japanese people, it's that making things smaller makes them more intensely adorable.

For my little brother, I made some hats. Yay for hats!