santa's little helper

Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season. We spent the christmas day with friends and their family. It was close to the beach and after dinner and relaxing conversation we went for a stroll in the sand and took a few turns on the flying fox (both of which should be christmas traditions if you ask me). Then on boxing day we video chatted to the families back home that were gathered for xmas.

I wanted to get little girl handmade gifts this year (you know before she starts wanting all the mass produced crap from china that her friends have). So just before xmas I did a swap with miss millie. I made her some handspun yarn and she sent me one of her cute monkeys. She wanted something green so I dyed up some merino and it looked like this:

As I was spinning it, it looked so pretty and striped on the bobbin just for a little bit.

I really liked the final product, a nice light semi-felted single. I named it Usnea because it looks like lichen.

And here are the handmade gifts: Millie the monkey (blue named her...), Nicola the handmade doll (because she is a ginger, like our friend Nicola), and some soft cotton grapes for chewing (okay these are mass produced, but still handmade by some co-operative thingy). I got the doll on felt from poppetto.

Here is little girl opening her first present on christmas morning! What a sweet little elf!

ornament swap

This year I took part in a 'kiwi only' handmade ornament swap organized by twenty cent mixture. I made some felt fabric out of merino and silk and cut some sweet and not quite symmetrical stars (that's just how I like my stars ;-) They are pictured in the middle. The rest of the ornaments are from my swap partners. Thanks very much ladies!!!It was quite a handy swap as this is my first year having a tree and I didn't have too many ornaments otherwise. I was going for an all handmade ornament tree, but ended up splashing out for an elaborate and sweet hummingbird ornament at ballantynes and a rubber ducky dressed as santa (it was cheap and I couldn't resist). I have a thing for bird ornaments. There are 5 on the tree... out of about 16 ornaments.

My friend Simone also did the ornament swap and since we were in different groups we decided to exchange too. She made me this sweet e....which inspired me to make some more felt cutouts for my niece and nephew. I used some felt 'samplers' that I made at the felting workshop I took last fall. I knew I wanted to do something with the felt and I think I found just the right thing.