You know it’s Christmas. Here are some of the Christmas cards I’m sending this year. There are loads of great little kits in the shops at the moment. The stick and go ones are fantastic, most of those kits come with the blank cards as well. You should definitely give it a go for some of your cards this year. I had about 3 packs of Christmas embellishments but I managed to get 10 cards out of them by using a bit of imagination 
A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by a journalist for a piece in the Sunday Tribune Magazine, the article is here in full. It was a great opportunity rant on about how great handmade Christmas gifts are
I was delighted to find this pattern on the Internet a while back and couldn’t wait to try it out. I used some leftover acrylic yarn and decorated with buttons. This is a very simple tree ornament, if you’ve any experience of crochet at all, give it a go. One of the commenters on the pattern itself mentioned that they made them as pins for their friends. The ones I’ve made have been a little bit too big for that, but if you had some finer yarn and smaller hooks that would work nicely.
This is the simplest of scarves, just cast on 25 stitches and knit away til it’s long enough. I bought three balls of Tivoli Flair Tones and that will be just enough for a cozy scarf for my better half’s Grandmother. She more often than not wears pink sweaters so I picked out a yarn that has a few different shades of pink. The result is a self striping scarf.
This is the last of my handmade gifts, so once I have this done I can concentrate on some more fun crafts for the festive season.
Despite a few “what have I gotten myself into” moments I have to say that handmaking my gifts has been a generally positive experience. I reduced our joint Christmas budget considerably from previous years but a lot more effort has gone into our gifts this year. There was only one voucher on my shopping list this year but that was specifically requested so that the recipient could be kitted out for Christmas nights out in the student haunts of UCC. So I think we can be forgiven for that
This One Skein Scarf is an old favourite of mine at this stage but I said I’d give it one last outing as a Christmas gift this year. I made this one a little bit wider than previous ones and I attached a crochet pin for a little bit of extra decoration.
Another two of these hats, slightly different look this time. The first one is done in Debbie Bliss Pure cotton in various colours. The second one uses some of the same yarn but I’ve also used some other types of yarn including Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran and Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece. Hats like this are a great way to make the best use of any small balls of yarn you might have left over from other projects, the different textures of yarn worked really well together so don’t be afraid to try mixing them for small things like this.
I promise that after Christmas I’ll try to do a pattern that’s not from The Bible, but in the meantime here’s another one. This is the Self Fringing scarf and it’s so simple to do (pretty much just all single crochets). The best thing about it is that there is no tidying up to do at the end, I hate weaving in the ends of the yarn so this is the perfect scarf if you’re like me. I’ve actually done three of these so they’ll be appearing under a number of trees in the extended Made Marian family this year.
The only problem with the Debbie Stoller book is that much of the yarn is not widely available in Ireland, luckily I have always had excellent advice on substitutes from Lisa at This is Knit. But on this occasion, I loved the look of the scarf in the pattern so much that I sourced the yarn from Paradise Fibres in the States. It turned out lovely if I may say so myself.
I picked up this Rowan Country Wool in Lena’s in Limerick a while back not entirely sure what I was going to do with it. As it turns out it’s now a scarf for someone’s Christmas stocking. I love the colours and the thickness of the wool, it makes me wish I could wear wool 
I started off by chaining 17.
Row 1) Double Crochet (DC) into the 3rd chain from the hook and DC across (14 DC)
Row 2) - ? Chain 3, turn and DC across
Basically keep going until the scarf is long enough or you run out of yarn.
We’ve decided to give hampers as gifts to some lucky people this year. I’m in the process of making them up at the moment and will post pictures as soon as they are ready. But if you are like me then you like to get a head start on these things, so I said I’d post a list of my chosen suppliers for the hamper goodies.
The hampers will contain things from the following list:
I’ve bought some baskets in Dunnes and some nice festive Ribbon to decorate them, photos as I said above to follow. Margaret has been giving hampers for years and they are always well received, she does one better than me though, she makes a lot of what she puts into the hampers. I am way too busy making yarn related products to make food as well but if you’re so inclined it is a great gift to give.
Yes it’s that time of year again, and it’s the perfect season for all things crafty too. As I mentioned previously I’ve taken the pledge to hand make most of my Christmas gifts this year but it’s a great time to get crafty with your decorations and table settings too. On the recommendation of my friend and blogger on sabbatical, Mary T , I bought this book. Creating your Perfect Christmas has some brilliant ideas for advent calendars, Christmas Stockings, table centrepieces, ornaments, gift wrapping and loads more. I got my copy in O’ Mahony’s in Limerick for €6.50. I am also taking the pledge to blog more frequently over the next few weeks, I have made fantastic progress in the handmade presents but I need to photograph them and blog them. I’ll be doing some gift wrapping suggestions too and I’ll post some links to places where you might get your hands on some handmade presents of your own. Until then, happy weekend everyone.
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