Handmade Holidays: For the Girls

I’m late in posting this, hoping I would have the last Christmas gift done beforehand. I’m almost there, but, alas, I have a bit more to do. The offending item is a quilt for Ani. I planned to sew her a matching pillow and quilt set, but pneumonia and various other last minute surprises waylaid my schedule. Staying up all night Christmas Eve helped – I finished the pillow and cover – but the quilt was still out of reach. I’m hoping to finish it this weekend. The pillow I created from a vintage pillow that was falling apart; I removed the lose strings adorning it, cut it in half, restuffed it and sewed it back together. Then I created this simple patchwork cover to adorn it. I didn’t really follow a pattern, which was either ballsy or crazy at 2am Christmas morning, but it turned out well. She loves it.

In addition to that and the cape for Aria, I knitted each girl a pixie. The pattern, from Knit Simple’s Holiday 2011 issue, is for several variations of fairies. These small dolls are a perfect way to use up small, pretty bits of stash yarn as they take tiny amounts of several colors. They are also very customizable. I left off the wings to create pixies; they turned out super cute and the girls really like them. Aria has been telling stories with hers and Ani slept with hers the first night or two. Seeing them strewn around the house is always a good sign. (I’ll post an update when I have the Ravelry notes up. They’ll be here.)

Both Aria and Ani also received a knitted gnome and house set (my own pattern). They’ve been anxious to play with the ones I’ve made for my Etsy shop, so I had to make them their own.

I’m off to knit night now to have some Mama time and do some selfish knitting. It’s gotten cold this week and as I reached for my warmest items it became suddenly apparent that I really don’t have any woolens of my own. Not sure how that happened to a long-time knitter, except that most of my knitting ends up being a gift. So, I’m off to remedy that a bit. Or start the Valentine’s knitting for the girls, we’ll see.