Handmade Christmas

Hey! Hey! I am so excited to finally be able to share all the yummy homemade Christmas goods! If you follow me on instagram, you might have seen this post where the Post Office took forever to get the package to my family in Tennessee. Like 8 days when I shipped it 2 day priority. And my local PO was not helpful. Shame on them. BUT the package got there and everyone liked their gifts. And now I can share it all with you.

First off, let’s talk about those knitted goods. I made 4 hats–one for each nephew and one for my brother. My brother requested the colors for his hat (Milwaukee Brewers colors) and I picked the colors for the nephews. Each hat was primarily made using Quince and Co. Chickadee sport weight yarn. The blue, yellow, and red hat was made using Quince and Co. Lark worsted weight yarn. I really like Quince yarn because the majority of it, in particular the Lark and Chickadee yarn, is grown and processed here in the United States. It’s 100% wool and it’s from Maine. I love that. The Lark yarn has to be my favorite hands down. It’s nice and cozy and thick. But because the winters in TN aren’t as cold as here Upstate, I used the Chickadee yarn because it’s a lighter weight yarn. It wasn’t my favorite. It seemed very stiff and itchy until I blocked it. I like the end results so that’s good. And so did the boys.

As for the patterns, I used my favorite hat patterns. First, for the more slouchy hats I used my favorite plucky knitter pattern–the conversationalist. I love this pattern. I love all the different color options. I love the fit. It’s an easy knit too. And it just begs for a pom each and every time! The other hat pattern is an adapted Petoncle hat by Alex Tinsley. You will have seen the original version of this hat if you’ve followed me for any length of time. You can see it here on instagram and here on the blog. It’s one of my favorites too. I adapted it so I could make a beanie-type striped hat. The color combos are endless with this pattern too. I’ve made this hat in so many versions. It’s all so much fun!

The gloves are a pair that I made a few months back and they just spoke ‘sister-in-law’ to me so I put them aside for her for christmas. This pattern combined with the yarn I used made for a tough knit. I think it was the mohair I used but I ended up breaking a whole set of needles knitting these gloves! But the end result was great so it was worth it. The pattern I used was the Cranford Mitts pattern and I held two yarns together: Knit Picks Andean Treasure in lilac and Rowan Kidsilk Haze in lavender. I’ve had both these yarns for ages and it was good to be able to use them with such a lovely result.

And the candles and healing salves! They were so much fun! I wouldn’t have ever thought to make them had Mandy from Mountain Mama Oils not posted about them on instagram. It started me thinking that it was something I could do that didn’t take as much time as knitting something but still had endless possibilities and I could source the ingredients locally as much as possible. In fact, I had made some chamomile oil earlier in the year and had some left over after making some soap. I also had about 2 pounds of locally sourced beeswax that was just begging to be used. And, of course, I have a stock of essential oils. And what better combo than lavender, chamomile, and beeswax? So I made a batch of lavender chamomile healing salve for my mom and sister in law. And then I started thinking about the possibilities of candles and decided that I liked the beeswax-clary sage combo. The one thing about the candles is that because you use more beeswax, you need a strong essential oil. But I didn’t use a strong enough one. But I LOVED the results. You get the smell of the beeswax mingled with the sage. Oh. It’s nice. The carrier oil isn’t as important in this one since you won’t be using it on your skin, so I skipped using my homemade oil and opted for a NY State made sunflower oil. In the future, I would probably just use olive oil and keep the more locally sourced oils for skin care and soap. And the candles required more beeswax than the salves so cutting the beeswax was more labor intensive than for the salves. But it was so worth it. I love the end product. And I hope my mom and sil do too.

Since I was gearing up for a shop revamping when I was making the salves and candles, I wanted to ‘test drive’ my labels. What I discovered is that I can use my soap labels on the jars as long as the jars are 4 ounces or bigger. I used some jelly jars and the labels were too big so I had to find labels for the lids, which is what you see pictured above. I found those labels here and the best part?? They’re free!!

So, overall it was pretty much a homemade christmas. I loved it. I loved every part of making the decorations and making the gifts. And in the end it all worked out okay. Everyone got their gifts. The Mister and I enjoyed a very low-key, homemade christmas. We put the decorations and tree up a couple of days after Thanksgiving and took everything down New Years Eve. That’s a record for us. I hope you all enjoyed your holiday celebrations! Tell me what you made for christmas.