Creative Update

Tomorrow is St. Nicholas Day, and as a rule, I try to fill my children's pots and pans (see a previous blog post on that) with fruit, a small amount of chocolate and something handmade. My plan was to make them some adorable knitted animal finger-puppets and a zippered pouch to store them. Yeah well, that was before I decided to knit my boys new holiday sweaters. Total knitting time-suck. This mama only has so many hours in the day she can devote to her pointy sticks. (More on these sweaters when they're finished!)

Sweaters in process.

Being the project-oriented gal that I am, I soon hatched a plan B. A simple sewing project. My boys are always trying to wear my "big people" aprons in the kitchen so I decided it was time they had some of their own. For a couple years now I have been eyeing the free child's apron pattern from Sew Liberated so I went with that design. Total smart move. Easy and turned out super-cute.

Aprons are the perfect opportunity for novelty fabric.

The two best features of this pattern is the elastic at the neck strap and the velcro at the hip for fastening the waist strap. Both of these features ensure that a child can put this on without assistance. I love that. All-in-all I think it took me about 3 hours to make both aprons. I will try to update this post with a picture of them modeled by little boys after they are gifted tomorrow.

I feel really, really at home doing applique. Who knew?

And of course, the quilt sewing goes on. I am on block 3 of the 6 applique blocks required to complete what I need to do in order to assemble the neverending quilt. Lucky for this project, it doesn't get too neglected during the holidays because it's not "sneaky sewing" (see above aprons that had to be sewn in the wee hours when little people were fast asleep). My sewing area is next to the playroom so I can sew while keeping an eye on the shenanigans that go on in that den of crazy.

When the holidays are over, my main thing is going to be getting this quilt finished. Because I have two other ones to start! Hopefully I've learned enough during this process to make the next two go faster. :)

–Cassandra

UPDATE: Some quick snapshots of the aprons this morning....pictures are a little blurry because the kids were so jumpy!

St Nick isn't Santa Claus.

When I was a little girl, St. Nicholas left me small gifts every December 6th. The tradition in our north side of Chicago Slovenian community (there are many ethnic variations on this tradition) was that the night of December 5th, every child in the house got to pick out a pan (I always picked the roaster because it was the biggest) and leave it on the kitchen table. That night, while you were sleeping, St. Nicholas would come in to the house and full your pan with small goodies. In the morning my pan would be filled with whole walnuts, really big and beautiful oranges and apples, a pomegranate, chocolates, and small treasures like coloring books and hair pretties. I loved it. It was so much fun to get gifts (even if they were small) so close to Christmas. Now that my little guys are old enough, I am starting this tradition with them this Monday.

I had been planning on giving the boys Waldorf doll superheros for Christmas...but then I had a thought. They get so many gifts from friends and family that my hand-made presents might get lost in the shuffle. Maybe it would be a better idea to let St. Nicholas bring them some little superhero guys, with matching boy sized capes and masks, avoiding the insanity that is the gift-giving season.

It breaks down like this: I have the first doll done (as I've posted about here) and the second doll is almost complete. I just need to crochet his hair. Sweater #1 is all knitted up and sweater #2 needs sleeves and is very close to completed. Now I just have to get through the sewing. For both dolls, I have little corduroys, masks and superhero capes left to make as well as big boy sized capes and masks. It seemed like a fun idea to make matching superhero gear for the kids and I found a really fun cape tutorial here. I think I'm going to invent my own pattern for the masks...I'll fill you in on that next week.

A pile of stuff I need to make!

So, it has been very busy here at chez Ooo! Shiny! this week. Holiday crafting is in full force. I also have the second little holiday sweater well underway. The back is all knitted up and I have about 50% of the front left to do. I'm feeling pretty good about getting it done before the celebrations start.

Bogie's sweater in progress.

 Whew, it will be so nice when it is all done!

–Cassandra

P.S. Some of you may be wanting to know more about St. Nicholas day. For those of you who aren't familiar with St. Nicholas, here is a quick history from Wikipedia. And here is a wonderful site about international traditions. Enjoy!