Oh Dear

The holiday season was much crazier than I anticipated.  It ended up being an almost entirely hand made Christmas on my end, which ate way more of my time than I thought it would.  Thus, I fell out of the blogging habit.  So, not dead, just forgot how to internet.

But, new year, new start, or something.  Yay?

First things first:  Christmas card swap.  Here's my totally awesome card that I really should have posted about as soon as I received it from Sarah.  Thank you so much!

Front!

Inside!

And then on the back she included the first verse of a German carol along with the translation.  Again: totally awesome.

Here's a few of the things that have been keeping me busy.  Not all, because I'm relying on the cell phone for photos at the moment.

Here's the tote bag I sort of made for the Boyfriend's mother.  I say sort of made because I cut out the pieces, got grumpy, toodled off to raid my parents' kitchen (which was as delicious and de-grumpifying as always) and when I'd stuffed myself stupid returned to the dining room to find my mom had pretty much made it.  So, 'sort of' is a bit of a stretch - it'd be more accurate to say I had an idea and then didn't end up having to do any of the work myself.  Except the running upstairs to do the ironing which I don't think really counts at all.  Thanks Mater, you're the best!

I also decorated a friend's school bag.  Which was one of those things where I could see what I wanted in my head but had difficulty actually making it happen.  This isn't the completed bag, but an in progress photo.  The finished bag had some rather blobby starfish-like flowers because the white paint pen kept not working, then changing it's mind and exploding.  We covered them up with some cute little buttons though, so I don't think she was too disappointed.

But the majority of the winter time crafting was spent on hats.  So many hats.  I don't know if I'm going to be able to even think about making another hat for a while.  I think the total count was nine, eight to be given away and then one for me, because I decided that I needed a hat too, to prevent me from stealing the ones meant for gifts.  I'm a little overdue for a hair cut and frankly slapping a hat on is way easier than spending several hours trying to convince my hair to stop acting like a Rorschach blob.

I would like to say that I made Mater's gift all by myself.  She never once saved me from my own ineptitude, yay!  Though she did seem pretty amused about the fact that the internet would know Mater's face since I had to show it off.  Pattern is Atarimae Beret (Ravelry link).

And here's the hat I made for Pater, since he was coveting my chullo.  Not pictured is the long bow that Mater gave him for Christmas, which if I had been thinking would've been the greatest illustration of our usual Christmas time ever.

There were more hats, obviously, but I don't currently have pictures of them.  But I will bother the recipients to let me take photos of them for great justice the blog.

There.  That's me back from the dead.  Maybe this is the year I can learn to stop being quite so useless about self imposed commitments.  Probably not though.