December Madness

I'm sitting here and looking at my calendar in disbelief. It can't be the 3rd of December. Only a mere 22 days to figure out what I'm buying, what I'm making, and, well, MAKE it. Note that I count right up to the day--can you guess what I usually spend my Christmas Eve doing? Last year I sat in my mother's guest room, starching snowflakes (OK, that wasn't Christmas Eve--it was the first day of our post-Christmas visit. I spent Christmas Day crocheting!). It seems like every year I'm finishing the last item in a set of something. This is going to be a belt-tightening year, so I feel a bit of necessity when I say that I guess I need to get started on this stuff.

For the record, I'm still working on the Afghan from Hell. I'm just not finding much zen-style peace in a repetitive pattern right now (although, I have made progress). However, even with that on the back burner, nagging me, and the memory of LAST Christmas refreshed in my brain, I woke up this morning thinking SNOWFLAKES. I'm going to a gift exchange party later in the month, so I will make a few for that. They are easy and, having lived through my first starching experience last year, I think I can hack it. While I'm at it, maybe I'll make a few for my sister to tide her over until she gets her afghan.

Then there's my mother-in-law. She visited for Thanksgiving and declared that she wants nothing but "hand towels that don't require ironing." She has dozens of the old-fashioned linen kind. I enjoy using them when we go there--the are reminiscent of a quieter time--but I guess I'll appreciate them more now that I know I'm soiling an ironed hand towel. Of course, when I've made her many things over the years, actually going out and purchasing hand towels seems rather meager. It is what the sane shopper would do when it's already December 3rd. But, I've never professed to being sane at this time of the year. So, it comes down to choices: crochet or cross-stitch. I'd love to try making some lace-embellished towels. However, personally speaking, I've found washing hand-crocheted lace to be a royal pain. It has to be reblocked while drying, and you can't just toss it in the washing machine, which rather defeats the purpose of the requested gift. You have to be a little careful with color selection when doing cross-stitched towels, but, all-in-all, they are quick and you can make the pattern suit any style and color choice (in this case, blue and white).

I also have a great pattern for fingerless mittens. I made a pair for myself, and all the kids wanted them, too. Both older boys have come home from school saying that people have asked where they got them. They take only an evening to make, so I think I'll make several adult-sized pairs to give as gifts to sundry people on my list.

OK, that's enough for now. Time to get out the pattern books and inventory the yarn. Christmas is comin', fast and furious!

Creativity for the Uncreative

People tell me that I'm creative. But, the fact is, I don't think I've ever made anything up from scratch in my life. In the 1950's, a man named W. Edwards Deming went to Japan to teach U. S. manufacturing techniques to Japanese automobile manufacturers. The Japanese took this basic structure and ran with it, and we all know how that went, don't we? Well, I do the same thing--I decide what I want to make, I find a pattern that closely matches the form of my end-product (any pattern, even a not-so-good one, because it's a "look" I'm going for, rather than perfection, and some basic guidelines on how to achieve that shape), and then I go from there.

Take the armor: I made this armor for my son when he was about six years old. (As you can see, it still fit him when he had to dress up for medieval faire at school last year.) The benefit of hand-making something like this is that it has held up to six years of usage by three boys and, really, the helm took an evening and the gauntlets another. I started off with a basic pattern for an acorn cap (no longer online, as far as I can tell, but I'll keep looking), and then, using an open dc pattern that resembled chain links, extended it down his face and neck. I started working back and forth at the section with the face opening, and, then, when it was the right size, chained across, joined, and continued working in the round until it was long enough. The gauntlets were a mitten pattern--I made them fingerless, and then attached to the wrist end and worked my chainlink pattern until they suited me. I got fancy and edged the helm in gold crochet thread (he was King Richard from Robin Hood in the orginal rendition of this costume).

Don't ask for specifics--it was a stream-of-consciousness thing! And, really, that's the point--even an advanced beginner can do things like this when you have a basic foundation to work from. If it doesn't look right, you pull it out and redo that part (which is what I like about crocheting--knitting is still very scary to me in that respect!).