Christmas Gifts – showtime!

Now that all Christmas giving has been done, I can finally show you the things I made. That is, as far as I was able to take decent pictures (quite the challenge these dark days in this part of the world), or simply did not forget to photograph a particular item before gifting it.
As I’ve said before, I loooove making and giving handmade gifts – since they’re gifts from the heart – but I’m always kind of nervous about it as well ……
For most men in my family I crocheted “Hey Hats” (original pattern in Dutch by Wimke Tolsma, more info/links to pattern in Dutch and English in this blog post).
They have all been received well, my sweet brother-in-law being the happiest with his hat. He kept saying how cool and awesome he thought his “Hey Hat” was – I could not have been more chuffed with his response.
The grey/teal one is his hat; the grey/black one was gifted to my father.
                      
More “Hey Hats” went to husband, son and daughter’s boyfriend – more satisfied recipients …….
For my brother I knitted a scarf, and (hurray) he was really pleased with it. I used 9mm needles, a super simple purl stitch and this lovely yarn.
I so love how Joyce’s leather labels put the perfect finishing touches on my projects!

Some more knitting was done making this fun Christmas bauble for a mint-loving blog friend. Going from 9mm knitting needles to toothpicks couldn’t have been a bigger change, haha!When I found this adorable (free) pattern on Alexis’ beautiful blog (Persia Lou), I knew I had to make cat-loving Quinn one. Don’t you agree she looks very cute wearing it? Other than some more small Christmassy bits & bobs, like home-baked cookies (1,5 kilos of just flour went into those) gifted in upcycled-jam-jars-turned-into-cookie-jars, and a couple of crocheted Christmas baubles, the scarf I made my mom was the last one on the list.

It’s basically The Little Bee‘s lovely “Monsoon Stole” that I made earlier this year (more here), but longer and wider; I used all the different stitches given in the pattern, just played a bit with the number of rows to get the desired length. A lot of the beautiful Lana Grossa yarn that I got at the Knotten Crochet Party went into this one – including the shiny Lace Lux.
I edged one side of the scarf with pom poms (tutorial here), and love how it turned out.

One of my new year’s resolutions is to start planning and making my Christmas gifts way sooner, and sticking to it this time around …….
Any tips in this department are warmly welcomed!

Love,
Marianne xx