Revealing gifts

I made cookies. The gingerbread ones came out very cute though my icing was quite runny so the bows on the dogs are kind of vorpal. It's a good recipe (Joy of Cooking gingerbread men) . It was to go to the office Friday for cookie Friday but I forgot to take the box. And the Santas? The dough's still in the fridge. The second batch. The first batch was made with too much butter so I colored that with two colors and made spiral cookies. The Santas require a fair bit of work which I'm not up to today (throwing off another cold.)

I want to at least show you a few pics of the bowls I had been making for gifts. These are moebius bowls from Cat Bordhi's Second Treasury and the pinochle portfolio for Sam and Clark. As you can see there are different shapes and twists. Part of it was the decreasings. The first one, done in Noro with a Cascade handle, was my first attempt. I didn't catch the extra twist in the cast on so ended up with a tri twist handle. The Noro didn't shrink as much as the Cascade so it has more of a pot belly than I expected.

The second bowl was my intentional tri twist. It's done entirely in Noro but I was disappointed in how it came out. For some reason it ended up being really pointed on the bottom and I couldn't felt it down enough to make it stand up well. The decreasing wasn't to my liking so decided that on the following bowls I'd try a different decreasing method.

The third bowl was one done in Manos but in the decreasing process, I did the first decrease too radically and ended up with a flat bowl. The bottom is green though. It'll be good for holding change and keys. Another lesson learned: pay attention to the knitting.

I did succeed in making a bowl out of Araucania Nature Wool with a single twist and basic hat decreasing for the bottom. I didn't get a picture of it though, which was my bad (it went to Don and Bo). I then did a basket in Manos and the hat decreasing and was very pleased with how it came out.

This is the pinochle folder I made for Sam and Clark. It's made of Cascade 220 in cream and chocolate brown like a fudge sundae. The left pocket has a red insert like a cherry and the right side is large enough for a 6" x 9" pad. This was to replace the sticky, icky cards they had been playing with since -- ohhh I don't know when. ;)

A trip to New Seasons market for various sundries including raisins for the Santas yielded also a fresh batch of catnip. I had a box left from a shipment I got earlier in the week and the cats were enjoying getting in it to roll around and bat a toy inside. So I seeded it with the fresh catnip, laid out a couple other lolling sites, and watched the fun.