Tangled Yarns

Now that the holiday activities and travel are done, I finally have time to put up some pictures of the rest of the items I made for Christmas gifts.

This is a shawl I made for my mom.  I made it from bamboo yarn with a bit of silk in it, and it is super soft!!

The pattern is called Aphrodite Shawl and is available for free online.

I also made some stuffed animals for my nieces.  They each wanted a Snoopy...

A yellow lab puppy for Sophie...I bought the pattern on Etsy and unfortunately had problems making the legs.  I spent so much time frogging them and redoing them.  Then when I was down to the last leg I  discovered I made a mistake in the previous one and made it a few rows too short...by that point I was so frustrated and couldn't bear to redo it, so I just made the 2nd leg to match it.  It makes him more of a sitter than a stander, but I don't think Sophie really cares.  Phew.

Last but not least, Cheer Bear for Nicki, from a Care Bear pattern book I have...as with Grumpy Bear I made for her birthday, I cheated and made the tummy symbols, eyes, eyebrows, eyelashes and hearts from felt and hot glued them on.  I also didn't finish the feet the way they are in the book, giving them the look of having toes, but I didn't understand the instructions so I left them plain on both bears.

I also made a get well gift for my brother-in-law Dustin.  There is a bit of a back story to this...a few years ago while visiting Dustin & Kristelle, we watched Willy Wonka (the Johnny Depp version) and found ourselves singing a catchy little tune from the movie. It has remained something of a running joke, and we still sing it.  While Dustin was recently in the hospital with some health problems, I pondered what I could send as a get well gift.  While browsing Etsy one night, I came across a pattern for the Mad Hatter, and figured I could alter it to make it a Willy Wonka doll.  What would make it perfect would be if I could find a little music box to put in it that would play the Willy Wonka song when you squeezed it.  Good luck finding that!  As it happened, while I was checking out a craft supply website, I came across recordable boxes.  BING!  Problem solved.  I ordered the box, and the 10 seconds it allowed me to record was just perfect to record the part of the song we always sing.  Then I made up the doll, put the box inside, and voila, he was done.  We ended up going to visit over the Christmas holidays, so I was able to deliver him personally.  I didn't pose him very well, but you get the idea!

I took along some yarn and my hooks thinking I might work on some other things while we visited, but I didn't touch any of them.  I don't have my next project planned yet, but I'm sure it won't be long til I'm back at it!