handmade holidays

This holiday season marked another year of the handmade holiday burgess tradition. This tradition calls for homemade gifts for immediate family. I am not sure exactly what year this tradition started but it has to have been about 20 years ago and it is still going strong. Being the planner that I am, I work on these gifts through out the year. They are my favorite to give and my favorite to receive. This year I received hand knit socks, a wood box, flavored coffee, hand carved wooden utensils, a 'toy box' for nellies toys, and a 2009 photo calendar - lucky me! Here are a few pictures of my 2008 holiday gift creations. Jam, hats and mittens were also in the gift packages and John gives homemade wine and cider. I think some members of my family may find this more stressful than fun, but not me!

It has been so much fun to have my baby niece to knit for! The pattern for the hat came from Sublime third little handknit book. The mittens came from natural knits for babies and moms I have knit several darling patterns from each of these books. The leg warmies came from another blogger.

Socks for my mom, who knits lots of socks for others, but not so many for herself. The socks I knit this year came from Getting started knitting socks.
I liked this pattern book because it had plenty of patterns for all different yarn weights.

Socks for Dad. I knit these with peace fleece and some nylon for the heels and toes.

I have my parents and sibs all a different color of this sock for christmas over the years. I can't remember the pattern, i will have to post it later. I have loved these socks, the pattern has a lot of cabling so you have to pay attention when knitting but I love the style so much I put in the effort. Made from brown sheep worsted yarn.

I made this wall hanging for my sister Em.

She was eyeing this at the local rug hooking store so I secretly made it up for her. I love rug hooking but my ergonomics must not be very good around this craft because I get tired/sore from it pretty quickly.