Christmas, New Years, etc.

Merry Belated Christmas & New Year!  Christmas presents have been completed, which took a while since I was mailing some and decided not to bother with the post office until after Christmas.  But now that all presents have been received, here they are:

For my mom, I made Woolly Wormhead’s Mayrose hat in King Cole Mirage.  The stripes in the yarn worked out really well with the pattern and each stripe worked out almost perfectly with swirly pattern repeat.  It was hard to part with once I finished, but I have enough from the left-overs to make another for myself.*

I also made cross stitches, which seem to require a lot of explaining to everyone except the recipients.

This is a Buffy cross stitch from the episode Hush in Season 4 where Giles is telling the story of the Gentleman via drawn pictures on an overhead projector because everyone lost their voices.  Here is the original picture from the show:

The pattern came from a fellow Buffy Swap participant on Ravelry, so I can’t take credit for the awesomeness of the pattern.  The cross stitch was for my BFF and she put it on a book shelf in her living room at the cost of looking like a psycho to everyone but me.  Although, it might prove to be an excellent conversation starter.

My husband is a big Alan Partridge fan, so I attempted to recreate his face for this cross stitch – it could be worse.  Sadly, but not surprising, it would appear that Americans are not familiar with Alan Partridge, so the reaction I got from people at home could be summed up with, ‘Why is that man shouting Jurassic Park?’  Fortunately, my husband really likes it and could tell it was Alan Partridge and not just some man shouting ‘Jurassic Park.’

The Brokeback Mountain cross stitch was for my other BFF.  There are too many layers of inside jokes to explain and make sense of to someone who doesn’t know us, but I’m really pleased with the result, all inside jokes aside.

I also had time to make a hat for myself over the Holidays.  The husband and I were surprised treated to a trip to Chicago to visit some family, so I whipped up Woolly Wormhead’s Everglade hat in, big surprise, King Cole Mirage!  As the weather in Chicago is significantly colder than VA Beach in December, a warm hat was needed.

I also made my dad some Illini pajama bottoms, but forgot to take a picture of them; you would probably just be blinded by the bright orange anyway.

I don’t ever make New Year’s resolutions, but I’m going to kick off 2010 by only knitting from my stash and completing unfinished projects.  This isn’t a year-long resolution, but when the lease on our flat is up in 6 months, it would be nice if I didn’t have so much yarn to move.  Wish me luck!

*I feel like I should say that I don’t do mother-daughter outfits.  I probably wouldn’t make one for myself, except that I know we won’t accidentally wear them out together since we live on different continents.