This year's handmade Christmas gifts included a variety of gifts from the kitchen as usual, including: preserves,curds, jellies, and dessert toppings. New recipes this year included crabapple pie jelly [pictured below] made from apples my friend and I picked this fall at her mother-in-law's house, and raspberry curd, which tastes like very creamy raspberry jam and is excellent spread onto white cake instead of icing.
My cats were very happy with this years' batch of special toys, all stuffed with raw sheep's wool and my own blend of catnip. Their favorite is their giant carrot kicker toy, which at just over a foot long is big enough for even my biggest cat (who tops the scales around 16 lbs) to hold and kick. I made it out of part of a felted merino wool sweater for durability and softness.
My sister hit the jackpot this year (in my opinion). I made her a whole set of winter-themed throw pillows out of wool-blend felt. These I sewed entirely by hand- not because I wanted to show off, but because my ancient Viking sewing machine gave up the ghost a couple of months ago.
My personal favorite is this snowman pillow. He has coal eyes and buttons, "branch" arms made of layers of wool felt with embroidered "bark", and a wool felt "carrot" nose that sticks straight out. I also knitted him his own little scarf out of lovely wool and mohair yarn. He's about 24" tall- so are all of the other pillows in the set, except the ornament.
My mom's favorite is this pine tree pillow. She really likes the embroidered and appliqued wool felt pine cones:
Here's a detail of a cone:
Along with those two is this adorable candy-cane. I made the stripes using jumbo pink rick-rack and regular-sized red rick-rack.
The stocking pillow has lace trim and little silver bells on the cuff. The letters were appliqued on.
Last but not least is the fun little ornament pillow with fuzzy trim:
My niece also got a pillow, but this one is out of deliciously soft cotton flannel and is made to match the bedding in her dorm room. I appliqued a silhouette of her dog on it so they can be together in their dreams...
My friend and neighbor special-ordered a soccer-playing pug doll for her son. I made the dog a uniform just like her son's, and gave the pug a drawstring backpack to hold his little bouncy soccer ball. As a surprise I also made a goal out of heavy wire and fabric netting.
For the boy's mother I made a tiny felt version of her little dog. She's needle-felted over a wire armature and has adjustable wool-wrapped legs. I'm very happy with the way it turned out, it looks just like her!
And for the little model herself, I made a fancy new coat!
For one of my hard-working friends at the cat shelter I made a catnip Tardis for her cats at home:
And another hard-working friend at the shelter- who I made the little Harry Potter for last year (see Christmas Presents 2013) was given his friends Ron and Hermione and his beloved owl, Hedwig.
There were a couple of other things, like mittens out of felted wool sweaters, but of course I forgot to take pictures before those were wrapped and sent off!
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