Yesterday was the last day of Question Week for the HGP. It was also the last day of Clean the Living Room Week, and I finished dusting and sorting and so forth. We were supposed to put a meal in the freezer, which I did not do, but I did put a container of Danish Almond Sheet cookies into said freezer.
But we were also supposed to decide on the holiday gifts we intended to make, and this week we are to buy the materials to make said gifts, and/or package them up in ziplock bags so that we can easily grab the gift for Grandpa and work on it.
I still haven’t made up my mind.
Since I don’t intend to buy anything but food and toilet paper till #1 son graduates, I will plan to make things from the materials I already have on hand. Fortunately, I have quite a bit on hand in the way of materials, so that is not an unrealistic or even a mingy plan. Unfortunately, I still haven’t come up with anything thrilling to make.
Over the years, I have made charms, hats, table runners, hot
water bottles with wooly sweaters, soaps and spa products, Christmas tree ornaments, cookies, candies, soup kits, movie baskets, scarves, slippers, bath sets, quilts, toys, firestarters, moccasins, clothes, and tote bags. I have made things with sewing, quilting, embroidery, polymer clay, beading, decoupage, and woodwork. Probably more, too, that have escaped my mind for the moment. I have made most of my Christmas gifts for the past twenty or thirty years.
And yet I cannot seem to come up with an interesting idea this year.
So I am hoping that my fellow craftspeople will come to my aid.
Even if you don’t follow the HGP and aren’t ready to think about holiday gifts, do you have thoughts on the subject? Are there things that you have made in the past that people loved? Do you have opinions? Do you scorn to give handmade gifts to non-crafters, on the theory that they don’t appreciate these splendid things, or do you see it as part of your mission to spread the love of handknitted socks far and wide?
Here, I’ll start.
I prefer to give handmade gifts, except for children. Your kids actually need and want things and do not have the income to buy them, and will not feel humiliated if you buy the things for them. For everyone else, it actually is the thought that counts. So I will try either to buy them something they would not have thought of for themselves and yet would love, or to make them something, since that shows, whether they want it or not, that I thought of them and made an effort for them.
I have never given anyone a pair of handknitted socks. I don’t think that people who do not knit will feel that they are a gift, even if they are wonderful. If I had a sudden desire to give someone handknitted socks, I would change the plan to slippers, because slippers are recognized as a gift, while socks are only mentioned as gifts in jokes.
I also don’t give people baking mixes, like those pretty cookie mixes layered in jars, because I figure they would rather not have to bake the stuff themselves. Otherwise, you know, they would.
And I don’t give people coupons for future services or whatever,
because I think that people never really feel comfortable redeeming them. “You know how you gave me a coupon for babysitting? Well, Friday would be good,” they don’t say. If they were going to be comfortable asking you, they wouldn’t wait around for a coupon, any more than people who want to bake would wait around for a decorative jar of cookie mix.
I have heard that there are people who think that handmade gifts are “cheap” and Scrooge-like. These people a) have not been shopping and seen how cheaply ready-made goods can be had nowadays, b) don’t deserve handmade gifts anyway, and c) haven’t actually read Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
I have a plan for what to buy my two remaining minor children, in case my new business brings me such wealth that I am able to buy things in spite of tuition and car repairs, but otherwise I plan to make things for all my gift-ees.
So please share your thoughts and experiences.
Yesterday, after the fire, I did some housework and some errands and some tasks for my new business.
I also spent some time enjoying the rain, hanging out with my family, reading and working on the quilted table runner I began way back in the spring.
I have that, a bed-size quilt, Ivy (poor thing — not sure what I’ll do about her), Erin (ditto), the Doctor’s Bag, and my fall/winter SWAP in the WIPs pile.
It is conceivable that this is hampering me in my quest for good Christmas gifts to make this year. Maybe my subconscious looks at the pretty stuff in my craft books and says to my conscious mind, “Don’t let her start anything else, for heaven’s sake.”
Whereupon my conscious mind produces thoughts like, “Oh, she wouldn’t want that… He probably already has one of those… Mine wouldn’t look that good…”
I told #2 daughter that this might be the year that everyone gets scarves, and she was actually pretty enthusiastic.
What do you think? Seen any good crafty present ideas lately?
How is your yarn stash?
I hesitate to suggest this, but I have a pattern available for wimples and hoods.
They’re really much better than a scarf for stopping drafts, you can pull them up and put a hat over them, or wear them down. Make a wimple to go with a crew or v-neck sweater, and you’e made a convertable neckline.
My grandaughter says every time she wears one of hers, somebody tries to buy it from her.
I’d be willing to send you a pattern at wholesale price for the wimple and hood pattern, and, if you want, for the mitts pattern at wholesale if you blog about what you make from them.
The fingerless mitts can be worn in a chilly room while typing or knitting, and you can make mittens to wear over them. Then, when you have to do something that requires dexterity, you can pull off the mittens, and your hands are still partly covered.
I plan to include glow-in-the-dark polymer clay star Christmas tree ornaments with Christmas cards. If you have some clay around.
You might give some thought to doing altered books. You can keep them short [and inexpensive] by starting with children’s board books from a used book store — that’s saves all the time gluing pages together and tearing pages out. Just be sure you get plain square books with ordinary corners, not the kind that are shaped like tractors and cats; from experience, I can tell you that trimming everything into the shape of a tractor or a cat is horribly labor-intensive. There’s a whole post of instructions for doing those books at my blog; I’ll be back with the URL in a minute.
The post for doing altered books is at http://ozarque.livejournal.com/319115.html .
I am a firm believer in homemade gifts. For a long time it was all we could afford to do. But there is also something less consumerist about it that I like. And I feel like I am really giving something special. This year, I have been shopping all year finding just the right small items for people at the right price and that will be supplemented with homemade gifts. My homemade theme this year is Vanilla. I have vanilla extract brewing away in the back of my pantry. I have also been saving empty spaghetti sauce jars and will be making vanilla sugar and I want to make vanilla soap with ground vanilla beans to round out the vanilla theme. If you are interested I can tell you how to make those vanilla items…well except the soap, I’ll be making that one up. Hmm….maybe I’ll even dig out my vodka bottles today and see what my extract is looking like!
Other homemade gifts I have done: pancake mixes with syrups I made and canned myself from the Ball Blue canning book, quilts (I made 4 or 5 that year…it was a lot of work), cookie in a jar mixes, jellies, soaps, potholders…those are the ones I can think of quickly. Pancake mix is always popular and I have a good recipe for oatmeal pancake mix that is almost like making muffins in pancake form, dense, nutty and hearty!
handcrafted, homemade gifts are my favorites, I always figure anyone can go to the store and buy something, handcrafted gifts come from the heart. last year everyone received scarves from me, I picked out yarn based on peoples personalities. this year I was thinking about holiday table runners or placemats. still not sure, the younger ones are harder to come up with something for, still looking through books and trying to get ideas from craft fares.