Those Christmas projects I couldn't show before

I did lots of knitting this month, but very little blogging, because most of the projects were Christmas gifts.



Now that Christmas is over, I can finally show what I was working on.

There were some sewing projects. A pear-shaped pincushion, for my mother-in-law the quilter. This is from a Heather Bailey pattern.


... and some patchwork picture frames, from Denyse Schmidt Quilts.


Then there were lots of knitted ornaments. There were mini mittens, shown in the previous post, and tiny sweaters on silver-wire hangers, pattern here.


According to German folklore, finding a bird's nest in your Christmas tree is good luck, and will bring your family health and happiness throughout the year. That inspired these knitted nests, with little blue felted eggs.


The pattern for the nest is in Closely Knit -- I modified the design slightly to make a smaller, shallower nest. The book includes a pattern for knitted eggs, but I made mine by needle felting some blue merino roving.

I made my mother a simple triangular shawl from some salmon-colored hand-dyed mohair boucle from Mohair in Motion. This one really went down to the wire -- I finished it at about 11 pm the night before I had to give it to her. Unfortunately, in the rush, I forgot to take a photo when it was done. I'll have to try to remember to get one later.

And here's one final photo -- the pilot cap from the previous post, modeled by my four-month-old great-niece. Isn't she adorable?