Tea and Cookies

I am a knitter.  Simple.  Knitting relaxes me.  I enjoy the feeling that I can be productive while sitting on my behind.  i like the tools of the trade -- the yarns, the needles, the baskets I use to store my projects.  I especially like the resulting fabric with its simple stitches that, when together, produce fabrics that are as diverse as they yarns that can be found -- light and breezy, warm and squishy, even rugged.  But every now and then, I find myself being pulled in the direction of a crochet hook.  Unlike knitting, it's not always the resulting fabric or the process itself since I often feel like I have gnarly old hands after only a short time of crocheting.  What gets me is the shapes that can be made with crochet.

Last spring, I made one of these tea sets for a special birthday girl.  Recently, another friend asked if I would make one for her little girl for Christmas.  I was only too happy to oblige.

The pattern is from Ana Paula Rimoli's book Amigurumi Two! (I will add a link shortly when I remember how.  I am not tech savvy and just don't have the mental energy at the moment to figure it out.)  It's a really cute book and the boys will often browse through it and pick out things they want me to make them.  If only I had that much time!  The cookies are my own pattern and are so much fun to make.

Our advent stocking of the day:

Still Counting the Days

We are, of course, still counting down the days to the Big Day.  In fact, last night, Quinnie was awake from 2:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. because he couldn't stop thinking about Christmas.  I thought it was rather cute the first couple of times he came into our room.  After two hours, it lost its cuteness and, well, I'd rather not talk about it.  I did make a large pot of coffee this morning though.

I've been trying to incorporate  Christmas crafts and activities into our advent calendar this year with some success.  My little guy is not always interested in crafting but gladly eats the chocolates.  Although my oldest could craft all day, at the end of the school day, he doesn't always have the energy or focus.  The one thing they have agreed on is decorating the tree.  We got our tree Saturday and trimmed it early Sunday morning.

A successful Christmas craft -- needle felted ornaments.

Keegan has been wanting to try needle felting for months and I finally got up the nerve to give it a try.  With the help of a cookie cutter, it was quite easy and, most importantly, painless.

The boys are not the only ones who were excited by the arrival of the tree and the many swinging, jingling, hanging trinkets associated with the tree.

Day 3

This morning:  pinwheel cookies.  Tonight we will be relaxing and watching the Toronto Santa Claus Parade while munching on popcorn.  The parade actually happened a couple of weeks ago but we weren't able to watch it live so we recorded it to watch at our leisure.  Tonight is the night.  I've been watching this parade ever since I can remember.  It heralds in the holiday season for me.

Yesterday's origami stars could have went better.  I had meant to practice before the boys came home from school.  Well, that didn't happen and by the time we got around to it last night after supper, well.  Okay, I have this weird relationship with origami.  i love it.  I am in awe of what some people can make from paper.  I  imagine a room with hundreds of paper cranes hanging from the ceiling.  Sometimes, I can sit down and it will just click, you know.  Then there are those other times.  Last night was one of those other times.  i could not wrap myself around the instructions.  The words, the pictures, nothing made sense with what I held in my hands.  It perhaps didn't help that I kept hearing, "Mom, I thought we were making stars."  So did I.  I finally had to admit that I couldn't do it, that perhaps I'll be able to do it tomorrow.  Bless, Keegan, and his belief in me.  He just placed the paper into today's stocking and said, "We'll just make them on day 3 or may be day 24."  Mentally, I crossed my fingers while he poked another toothpick into a gumdrop.

Day 2 and a Star Fish

This morning the boys awoke to pinwheel cookies in our little elf stocking.  The cookies were a little more labour intensive than I thought they would be but well worth it.  We'll be making paper origami stars later this evening.

Here are yesterday's gumdrop trees.

They perhaps look more like something from an episode of Dr. Who but much prettier.  Keegan's gumdrop trees morphed into . . .

Oddly, I think these are very pretty too and can almost guarantee that they will be hung from the tree in some manner.

The mail carrier was good to me yesterday.  I received this little starfish all the way from British Columbia.

k from fog and swell hand stitched this from repurposed wool.  I recommend checking out her shop.  Her creations and photography are beautiful.  Now we have a little piece of the west coast in our living room.  Oh, the little paper stars also came in the package.  So freakin' cute!