School starts up again soon, and I have a mixture of feelings about it. This summer has been a much-needed relief from the ridiculousness of my school plus work schedule, and I have been enjoying it immensely. However, near the end of any extended free time, we all feel that same nagging feeling that maybe you should be doing something. Something more than eating crackers and watching marathons of Criminal Minds.
I have been celebrating the end of my awesome summertime monotony by dutifully making delicious oatmeal creations every morning.
I have been writing thank you notes and catch-up notes to fantastically patient pen pals. (Cassie, it’s in the mail!)
I have been waiting to see the first blossoms bloom on the baby magnolia tree we planted earlier this winter.
And I have been making super awesome Christmas stockings.
As previously stated, one of my coworkers requested some Christmas stockings so that she and her husband could celebrate their first Christmas with their new baby girl in style.
I may have gotten a little too excited about having something to do, and therefore made this a huge embroidery project to satisfy the weird urge in me to make simple things more difficult. Graph paper and radially symmetrical doodling was in order.
These stockings are a heavily modified version of the worsted weight basic Christmas stocking from Interweave Press‘s Christmas Stockings.
You can tell it’s modified from all the giant post-its.
Sarah, my lovely coworker, requested something simple with their names at the top and a single snowflake on the front of each stocking. Because this was not going to be a fair-isle affair due to the pattern not going all the way around the stocking, it was a good time to polish up my duplicate stitching skills.
I mean, look at that stuff! I am so pleased with myself. And isn’t that what blogging is all about?
Now, I can’t keep tooting my own horn and say that I was planning the whole thing from the very beginning, but I really like how the dad’s stocking’s snowflake is a little heavier and more solid, the mom’s snowflake is more delicate and airy, and the new daughter’s snowflake is somewhere in-between.
See? I’m not just imagining that, right?
These parcels of early holiday joy are all packed up and ready to meet their new owners soon. And now before school starts in 2 1/2 weeks, I need to make a knitted carrot with a smiley face. Because, why not?