Yarn Along

Well, it turns out I’m a bit behind already.  I was planning on having all 4 animals done by now, and just have the clothing left to make.  Last night I finished stuffing Miss Dandilion Doe, and she just has her ears to sew on and nose to stitch.  I have to go back and stitch the noses on the other 2 animals too, because I forgot that step.  It doesn’t take long.

Mr. Fox is not even cut out, yet.  There’s still plenty of time to get Mr. Fox done for Elias.  I’m cutting it close, though, and I still don’t have any idea how to make a car pillow for David.  I think I’m going to rearrange my gift giving a bit since I’m about a week behind schedule.  You see, I bought a really fun robot making, engineering-type set off of Zuilly a few months ago, intending to give it to David for his birthday.  It was a bit extravagant, because we usually spend $30-50 on gifts, and this was a $150 dollar gift on sale for $50 or something like that.  I was thinking when I bought it that Elias will be so jealous because even though David is a crazy builder, Elias is as well, and robots are sort of his thing.  So I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to get Elias an equal enough gift.

But David’s birthday came, and I showed Knut the building set, and he said that David really wanted a snowboard, and Knut wanted him to have a much practice during the snow season as possible.  He said we’ll give the snowboard to him for his birthday in the fall, and give the building set to him for Christmas.

Well, I was putting together a Christmas gift list for the kids, and realized it was very lopsided.  Each of the kids get a small, homemade stuffed animal, and David gets this enormous building set worth 4 times as much.  He wanted a car pillow, so I thought I’d closet the building set until his birthday comes around again, but reluctantly, because he would really like it and I want him to have it now.  At the time the only other solution I could find was buying bigger/more gifts for the other kids, and that would get expensive quick, not to mention just that much more clutter in my house to control.

So I’m going to de-stress this last home stretch of gift making.  I’m going to skip making the fox for Elias, and I’m going to give the boys the shared gift of the building set.  That way neither one of them can lord it over the other that they can’t touch it.  That will free up a few days of crafting time with 2 less gifts to make, and allow me to finish up the other animal clothes without pulling some super late nights.

With this step I can also easily finish some handmade wool socks for the boys that I was hoping to do, and that way they’re still getting something handmade by mom for Christmas, as is tradition.  I can knit the socks in front of the kids easily because I have knitting projects around the house all the time.  They really don’t ask questions anymore.  But stitching up a stuffed animal has to be done in secret, and there’s only so many secret waking hours I have.

Silje and Solveig’s socks are pretty much complete.  I just need to graft the toes and weave in the ends.  Ingrid’s first sock is done, but they’re so little that they knit up in a blink of an eye.  I plan on finishing up hers today or tomorrow, and then start on the boys’ socks.  I really wish I hadn’t done the block coloring with the little girls and just did one solid color for each pair.  Oh well.  I’m so not redoing them.  They don’t look bad, but I think I could have done it cuter.

I should be doing more advent reading, but actually for my own reading time I’ve been still going through Susie Larson’s book “Your Beautiful Purpose.”  This book has now completely drawn me in, and I find myself thinking about something I read in here even days later.  I’d love to explain further the huge ways this book is touching my heart right now, but I don’t have time to write that tome.

Linking up with Ginny’s Yarn Along.