Hurray! A beautiful finish that will now go live in a trunk for eight months. *groan* I’m really looking forward to debuting these on November 1st while decorating for Christmas while wearing my Hermey the Elf shirt. *happy smile*
Modifications: I saw a sock knit up with this colorway and did not like it, so I added the solid red heels and toes. Now that they’re done I realize that I probably would have liked it if I had also knit the ribbing in solid red as well. (I also would have preferred if I had done a 2×2 ribbing on BOTH socks, and not just one…whoops. Doesn’t the 2×2 ribbing look SO GOOD?!?! I’ve been a 1×1 forever, but I will be changing my ways from here on out.)
It’s a late finish, but I didn’t want to rush ’em. This is such a great colorway and I enjoyed knitting these so much! I’m very tempted to commit to the idea of new Christmas socks each year, but even I can recognize the insanity of such a pledge, so these may remain my only handknit Christmas socks (for a while…it’s loads of fun to knit Christmas socks!).
Read more posts about the Stripey Christmas Socks:
The past two weeks have been full of color, celebration, and music! Here’s a quick recap of what I’ve been up to:
Birthday Magic
We celebrated Rachel’s seventeenth birthday last week with doughnuts and a tea party! We had to postpone the family birthday dinner due to last-minute glitches with the tea party scheduling, but that will happen pretty soon. She had a fun time with her friends and I tried to make things nice for her last “childhood” birthday. I can’t believe these kids are getting so old!
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Nearing the Finish Line
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The King David’s Crown quilt is nearly complete. The “finished” photos of it were due this last week, so those have been taken and submitted, but there’s still some last bits of quilting to do on it and the binding and labelling, which I’m going to do slowly because I’m really burnt-out on crafting at the moment. (Blame the Februaries…blah.)
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So Much Music-ky Goodness
The past two Sundays had a lot of music in ’em. Ren and I performed a beautiful arrangement of “I Know That My Redeemer Lives” two Sundays ago, and last Sunday the choir sang a really pretty arrangement of “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need.” Music takes a lot of work to happen, but it’s work that matters! I love the enthusiastic musicians in our ward who are always up for the next thing. Work continues on the Easter program and I also need to spend some quality with the latest batch of newly-released hymns so I can write up a game plan to get them introduced to our congregation.
Also Some Sugary Goodness
Renaissance was asked to help out at the Relief Society activity this week and showed the ladies how to decorate cupcakes in three different ways. She did so good! Yay for fun church activities!
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Up Next…
I’ve got some “finished project” posts coming soon…there’s a pair of socks that took a tub-tub this morning and currently drying on their blockers. I’ll try to get that post written up ASAP to share with you! Happy Friday and have a great weekend!
Congratulations on making it through the first full week of February, y’all! We had a lot of snow around here—nothing that really stuck until today—and some late starts to the school days, which were appreciated because no one really wants to leave the house when it’s cold out anyways, right? No all-out snow days, though. Sigh.
Top priorities this past week:
Vet appointment for Quesnel
Rachel’s birthday
Valentine’s Day
Getting the quilting going on the King David’s Crown quilt
Caring
I was able to get Quesnel in for a vet appointment on Wednesday and it turns out that she had a kidney infection. It also turns out that vet bills are ridiculously expensive. But we now have a kitty that is acting more like her usual self after three days of antibiotics. Poor thing, she was so miserable.
Celebrating
I really didn’t do much work on Rachel’s birthday or Valentine’s Day. I think they’re as taken care of as they can be until a day or two beforehand. Gotta love all the last-minute work that can’t be done ahead of time, eh?
Creating
The King David’s Crown is not only basted, but the quilt also has its basic foundational quilting complete, BUT my quilting stencils are STILL NOT HERE YET. They sat at their post office of origin all week and finally moved yesterday across the country to Montana. I imagine the earliest they’ll get to me is Monday afternoon, but with how slow this is all going I’d gamble on them not arriving until Tuesday.
It turns out that I can baste a twin-sized quilt in thirty-five minutes. That was not the case the last time I attempted that sort of thing. Thank you, Yoga. [insert weird Gen Z hand-heart motion here]
I finished the Stripey Christmas socks! They are in the process of having their ends woven in and then they’ll go have a tub-tub and I’ll be able to show them to you!
I started BOTH the Midnight Lark socks and the Cherry Twilight socks this week. The Midnight Lark socks are my “waiting for kids” van knitting project, so they’ll come along at a slower rate than the Cherry Twilight socks because those are in the house and will be worked on whenever I have downtime at home.
Highlights of the Week
Nathaniel did Solo Competition today on the xylophone and received a Superior rating! That’s pretty awesome for a freshman!
Rachel had a big choir concert this week and it went really well.
I basted a quilt in thirty-five minutes! It was basically an intense thirty-five minutes yoga practice, and I was worn out afterwards, but still, I DID THAT.
Had lunch with a friend and it raised my spirits immensely. Friends are good.
Lowlights
I cannot escape weirdos sitting behind me at choir concerts, apparently. The couple sitting in front of us smelled of weed so badly it gave me a splitting headache, and the family sitting behind us was very adjacent to drunk, smelled like it, and didn’t shut up the entire concert, even breaking into song when the choirs sang familiar tunes. Whoever was sitting directly behind me also tapped their toe on my chair about a sixteenth of a beat off from the music, not only driving me crazy but also jarring my back the entire time. I could not get out of that venue fast enough once the concert was finished. I need to come up with some sort of mindfulness practice or something to help me get through these nightmares of concerts because this kind of occurrence is now the norm and it’s destroying my enjoyment of the concerts, which is not how I want that part of this chapter of life to go.
Poor Quesnel being sick. But she’s lots better now.
All in all, it was a lovely week—it’s always nice to put the final stitches into a knitting project, I was thankful to be granted more snuggles on the couch with Quesnel, and there are few things more perfect than drinking white chocolate peppermint herbal tea with your kids while you all watch the snow fall outside the kitchen windows. It was a week full of simple joys—Nathaniel’s Superior rating was a welcome development, and a simple lunch with a friend went way too long due to meaningful conversation. I hope the slow mornings keep coming, that the snowflakes keep falling, and the smiles keep happening.
Oh, and for those quilting stencils to get here faster…
Happy Monday! Happy February! I don’t know if you can wish anyone a happy Monday or a happy February, but here I am, trying to inject some semblance of cheer into the grayest part of the year! I found an image on the internet last week that I absolutely loved from Pippi Post, and I have been quoting it to myself over and over again ever since:
There’s a lot of stuff going on right now that is upsetting for people, it’s February and we haven’t seen the sun in months, and almost everyone I know is recovering from some bout of illness. We’re all tired and we’re all overwhelmed, so prioritizing joy is a good idea right now. I’ve been trying to avoid being a grump and it really is weird how you can just choose to be optimistic if you really put your mind to it.
Something that brings me joy is figuring out my week ahead, so here we are with a Crafting a Plan post! Enjoy!
Friday: Chicken-Tomatillo Soup with Chipotle Chiles
Saturday: TBD
Sunday: TBD
Clothing
I am so caught up with laundry! It is exhilarating! I actually have time to work on rotating our wardrobes at the moment, so there’s a big upheaval with the warm and cold weather clothing. I read a fantastic book about decluttering over Christmas Break and am applying the principles to my wardrobe as I work through the rotating.
Cleaning
I’m trying to do some decluttering and it’s going pretty good. The book I read is called Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff, by Dana K. White, and it’s got a completely sane approach to dealing with decluttering that does not involve dumping out an entire anything and spending hours at a time on the process à la Marie Kondo. I’ve gone through the front entrance of the house, the dining room, and I’m slowly working on the craft room. All the background thought that goes into the process makes the upkeep of the cleaned area much easier, so those areas of my house are looking really good, even weeks later. Very good book, highly recommended.
Caring
Haircuts for Michael & Nathaniel
I need to make a vet appointment for Quesnel. She’s not looking like she’s feeling very well.
I need to keep an eye on spring sports registration for Nathaniel.
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Creativity
King David’s Crown is assembled and awaiting basting. I decided that I wanted to quilt it nicely, so I’ve ordered some quilting stencils and the company has taken forever to ship them to me. They should arrive on Thursday, despite having ordered them last weekend. Hmph.
I started working on my scrappy Star Climber quilt last week and I am loving it! What a great pattern for using up scraps! Love, love, love. I’m planning on this one taking all year to complete so that I don’t have to rush it. I really enjoy working with the Woven Star foundation papers* and I think I’ve picked out a great color palette for this quilt that will use up a lot of scraps from particularly overflowing scrap bins. My schedule for this quilt calls for me to complete eight blocks in February, and I’ve finished four thus far. Another two are in-progress right now and I’m hoping to have them done by the end of this week.
It’s quite possible that I could finish the Christmas Stripey socks this week. I’ve made it to the toe decreases, so there’s not a lot of work left on them.
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Celebrating
Emily just celebrated her 21st birthday. I think you’re officially old when your kids start turning 21.
Next up is Rachel’s birthday. How in the world is she almost seventeen years old?!?! Nathaniel mentioned that her next birthday will allow her to vote. That was not on my radar. These kids just went and grew up on me when I wasn’t looking.
Michael and I aren’t up for a big night out on Valentine’s Day so we’re planning a family Mario Kart tournament for that evening. Depending on how into it the kids are, there could be some cute things happening. If the cute things don’t happen, whatever; we’ll still have fun and eat tasty treats.
Michael’s birthday is on the horizon, but I’m not quite into planning mode for that yet.
Same with Nathaniel.
Easter IS on my mind because I’m trying to get the Easter Program together for church. I’ve got my rough draft written up and submitted for approval, so we’ll see how much the bishopric likes it. I’d also like to do some planning in regards to Easter dinner; the kind of planning that will repeat itself every year and make my life easier.
Community
Ren and I will be performing the special musical number in church this week because I couldn’t find anyone else to do it. We are becoming very good at throwing pieces together at the last minute! So we’ll need to figure out some rehearsal time during the week.
Track down some flute music for Ren for the Easter Program.
Compose an ending/reprise for my arrangement of “As Bread is Broken” for the choir.
Pick up raffle tickets I had printed for band boosters.
Check in on the t-shirts we’re having printed for the band’s Disney trip
Top priorities this week:
Vet appointment for Quesnel
Rachel’s birthday
Valentine’s Day
Getting the quilting going on the King David’s Crown quilt
I wish you a happy first week of February! We’re getting some snow right now and I’m really hoping it translates into a legit snow day tomorrow so we can just bum around and drink cocoa all day. I’m reeeeeally hoping for that. May you get your snow wishes granted as well, if that’s your jam.
We’ve hit the third Friday of 2025 and it’s starting to feel like we’ve truly left the holiday season behind us and that we’re heading into a new, fresh year. I am really looking forward to this three-day weekend ahead of us, and really, really looking forward to the end of the kids’ semester at the end of next week with its FOUR-DAY weekend. Yay for extra days off of school during the darkest days of the year!
Top priorities this past week:
Progress on the King David’s Crown quilt
Finish the Piscis Project
Progress on the Stripey Christmas Socks
King David’s Crown Quilt
It’s coming along. The pattern will be released to the public in mid-March*, so you would think I have lots of time to work on this, but photos need to be submitted to Fat Quarter Shop ahead of that release date, so I’m needing to work at a faster pace to meet that deadline. The requirement is only one block to show, but I never want to do just one block so I’m doing a legit quilt at breakneck speed. My goal was to be done with 75% of my blocks this Wednesday and I was very, very far behind on that goal on Tuesday, but somehow managed to bend the space-time continuum over the next two days and I’m actually caught up on my self-imposed schedule as of last night. Woo hoo!
It’s a cool-looking block so I wanted to make a full quilt from it because it’s a little off the beaten path for me. I’m really loving the Creative Grids Starburst 30-degree ruler* that goes along with the pattern, and I have plans to re-use this specialty ruler to make all sorts of projects in the future. I’m addicted to Creative Grids specialty rulers. It’s intense.
I figure I’ll be working on this quilt for at least another four weeks, so get comfortable with looking at these fabrics. At least they’re super pretty, right? They’re a handful of prints from the Cali & Co. fabric collection by Corey Yoder.* I really wanted to make the multicolored-on-white flower dot fabric work in some capacity in this quilt, but it just wasn’t mocking up well so I went with the cherries for my background print instead because they are stinkin’ adorable. I love, love, love the periwinkle/cornflower blue of the lighter blue print I’m using and decided to incorporate that and some navy to make a subtly patriotic quilt for the summer months. I’m loving how it’s turning out.
Helpful Hint with this one: Prioritize the skinny tip of the triangle fabric pieces when you’re cutting the fabric and piecing the foundational units of the blocks. Don’t worry about the wide part of the triangle fabric pieces because you’ll be trimming those off. It’s all about the skinny tips on this one.
Piscis Project
I can’t tell you much about this because it’s a gift for someone. It is completed and it’s cute and I’ll show it to you once it is given to the recipient. It’s a small thing, so don’t get too excited about it.
Stripey Christmas Socks
A lot of knitting happened on these this week due to Rachel having two home matches this week and that’s when I’ve been knitting on them. I also knit on them a bit before Nathaniel’s band concert this week as well. I am past the heel and firmly into the foot section! And it’d be a lot more fun for you to read about if I could remember to take a picture of them while I’m working on them…hee hee.
Highlights
I found out at our Band Boosters meeting that we raised an extra $2000 more than we originally thought because the Square app stopped logging donations and purchases at a certain time during the Evening of Jazz and it wasn’t deposited into our account until the next morning. Whew! I was seriously bummed at the end of EOJ because our profit seemed really low for the amount of donations we had this time.
Lunch with friends is always a nice thing
Getting caught up on the King David’s Crown quilt! Didn’t think that would happen!
A friend’s daughter started her mission on Monday! She’s doing at-home MTC right now and it’s fun to hear the updates on that situation each day. So excited for you, Abbie!
We hosted our Potluck Club this past week. I decided this month’s dinner would have a “Winter Wonderland” theme and it went really well! If you’ve been thinking about organizing your friends to have dinner together once a month, just ask! It’s been such a good thing in our lives these past few months!
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Lowlights
I am struggling with my points on the King David’s Crown blocks. I think I’ve figured it all out, but geez…
Enjoy your long weekend if you get to have it! I hope you find some time for some craftiness, warm socks, and hot beverages!
*Affiliate links: I receive a small commission at no cost to you should you purchase from these retailers after clicking through on the link
I always make plans that are way too big for practicality, so I’ve done a lot of thinking and planning to try to keep my aspirations grounded in reality. I feel like I didn’t do a lot of crafting in 2024, but then I remember the prom dresses and the Layer Cake Latte quilt and the Baking Doodle Cowl and I feel stressed out all over again by it all, ha ha. I really hit the ground running hard at the beginning of last year, didn’t I? That was pretty intense. No wonder I took the remainder of the year off!
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I was busy in the garden all summer, and did it ever reward us with a delightful crop! I’m so proud of the garden this last year, it was great!
And then autumn came, and with it a whole lot of difficulties. Thankfully, two of those hardships now mean that I’m stronger and more available to do crafty things in my free time. Yay!
Something will need to change in regards to the Christmas season next time ’round, though. I’m drowning every year and family members were complaining this year as well. It’s hard to step back from doing good things, but I think we’ve officially reached the point where we’re doing too many good things and need to cut back.
Looking Ahead in 2025
I have a Fat Quarter Shop quilt a-brewing in the background right now, so that’s fun.
I’m trying to declutter my craft room because it’s officially too full of junk to be enjoyable to work in. I had an epiphany regarding my quilting stash the other day as I was decluttering, and I’m hoping that it will lead to more quilts made from my scrap stash in the future!
Plans for Winter Quarter 2025 thus far:
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Fabric:
Finish King David’s Crown quilt for Fat Quarter Shop
Begin Star Climber Scrap quilt
Yarn & Handwork:
Piscis project
Finish my Christmas socks
Begin the Cherry Twilight socks
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And I’ve learned that it is foolish to plan out further than a quarter at a time, so I’m just going to make do with winter plans at the moment.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to each of you, dear readers! December 2024 was a whirlwind of activity, mostly revolving around the constant of music in our family, so I wasn’t able to do a whole lot in the craft room throughout the month, but I DID finish up a pair of handknit socks for my sweet hubby to open on Christmas Day!
Modifications: The yarn skeins don’t stop and end in the same place, stripe-wise, so I did my best to match up the stripes, but had to split my second skein to start in the same place as the first skein, which meant I had to join in the last bit of yarn near the toe so it stripes a little weird in the second sock. Fortunately, no one will see it because it’ll be hidden by his shoes when he’s wearing them.
This is the first time I’ve pulled off making a pair of socks for Michael for Christmas two years in a row! Woot, woot! And I barely pulled it off—I finished these during the afternoon on Christmas Eve and got them wrapped and under the tree with only minutes to spare before Michael walked in the door from work.
I love the idea of a tradition of making Michael a pair of socks each Christmas. Back when I started knitting, I eagerly looked forward to the Yarn Harlot’s frantic pre-Christmas circus posts where she’d get through insane lists and spreadsheets of handknits to complete during the holidays, and I loved reading through the posts that featured her handknits in the hands of smiling recipients, Christmas tree lights twinkling in the background. I enjoy going to other people’s circuses from time to time, and her Christmas circus was such a delight to behold in all its urgency and anticipation that would then yield beautiful photos of a happy family and beautifully-knitted gifts and lovely words of love, joy and gratitude. (I miss the old days of blogging, they were really wonderful. Instagram is, really…was, great and all, but I miss the writing that we used to treat each other to back in the day.)
I envisioned the same future for myself, which has basically come true (except for the handknits part), and here we are today with us going through a Christmas circus every year that can only be managed with spreadsheets and to-do lists. It’s mostly all music-related for us Brookes, but I still endeavor to throw some handmades into the mix. These socks were created in all sorts of stolen moments in between putting together the band fundraiser, the Ward Christmas Sacrament Program, and our family’s own holiday celebrations and traditions. I like a little crazy.
Each stitch in these socks is a little bit of crazy, a little bit of peace stolen amidst chaos, a little bit of tradition. A little bit of the holiday experience over and over again. I love having these reminders throughout the year of another Christmas that has come and gone. Each Sunday, when Michael is putting on his church shoes and I see which handknit socks he’s chosen to wear that week, I’m inundated with memories from whichever Christmas and year that particular pair was created. It’s a lot of a memories, over and over again. We’ve been blessed to have so many Christmases together. I hope, twenty years from now, that I’m still making socks for him each year, and that I’m darning the older socks and reliving the glory days of Christmases past—days of our children in footed pajamas, mornings when they were teenagers in flannel pants and messy buns, to eventual days of their own children in footed pajamas and maple syrup-stickied fingers. I learned to knit when I was just starting out as a wife and mother, and I hope I’m still knitting and making memories that include handknit gifts with happy faces and twinkling lights for many, many years to come.
Life is absolutely crazy right now with the upcoming band fundraiser, the church Christmas program, and plain old Christmas. I sat down at the end of November and planned out my crafty schedule for December, but have been only been able to put a pittance of effort into my projects because all the Christmas music is getting in the way! Maybe I need to call December a wash every year because Christmas music will always be a huge part of my Decembers?
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I did get some time to work on the Sew Many Stars Quilt last week, which ultimately led to disappointment when I realized that the batting I had for it wasn’t large enough. So I’m waiting on a bigger batting to arrive in the mail, and it’s supposedly going to get here tomorrow. Fingers are crossed that there can be a couple of hours I can squeeze out of the remainder of this week to do a little bit of work.
Not enough batting border for quilting!
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My original schedule had me possibly finishing this quilt by Christmas Eve, but with no label, which I’d get to in the week after Christmas, but I do not know what to expect from this project at all anymore since losing out on the last week’s sewing time. We shall see…
A task I took on with a frown, To stitch table runners all brown, For the band fundraiser—oh dear! But I’d rather sew Christmas cheer, And can’t wait ’til these projects wind down!
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You have a lot of time to think when you’re doing boring sewing, and sometimes my brain comes up with haphazard limericks. Happily enough, the band fundraiser table runners are close to being completed—I’ve sewn up thirteen of the fifteen as of this morning—and I am that much closer to diving into Christmas sewing!
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I’ll have to take a day or two to do some deep thinking and organizing for my church’s Christmas Sacrament Program and a newly-taken-on public music performance near a local Giving Machine, but after that it’s all the Christmas sewing, all the time!
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I hope your seasonal sewing wishes are coming true! See you next week with, hopefully, something extra fun to show you!
As the band moms and I gear up for the super duper important band fundraiser that will take place in December, multiple comments were made about how the decorations last year were “looking a little tired.” To be fair, they were metallic mesh that had been stored in smashed up positions throughout most of the last three years, only to be brought out to breathe for one evening in December. The tiredness made sense.
The kicker about decorations for a fundraiser is that any money you spend on decorations comes out of the proceeds you earn from the fundraiser; so, even though I loves me an excuse to go wild with decorating, I’ve been very hesitant to upgrade the decor in any meaningful fashion in order to keep the Band Booster coffers filled. However, when multiple people make the same observation that your decorations look just plain sad, you gotta listen and figure something out.
We decided that we’d replace the table runners this year, but keep the mason jars with the sticks and worry about upgrading those next year. Seeing that sewing is my jam, I volunteered for the uncontested honor of sewing up the table runners.
I had a very smart moment and looked for 108-inch wide quilt backing fabric first because you can get six 15-inch wide table runners from one width of it, rather than only two or three from the regular 45-inch wide fabric. AND(!), 45-inch wide fabric costs about twelve dollars a yard, and 108-inch wide fabric costs only slightly more at about twenty dollars a yard. Winning!
That’s what I’m up to this week: Sewing table runners. It’s very boring sewing, but I’m optimistic that it will look nice at the event. I’m hoping to be done by early next week and that I can then devote my attention to some fun Christmas sewing!
The autumn sunshine is perfect right now and accentuates any fabric hanging from my ironing board. It may be boring sewing, but it certainly makes my heart happy to walk into my craft room each morning and be greeted by golden backlit fabric draped and waiting for me. I absolutely love it in this space and feel so much gratitude that I get to spend time doing what I love.
That Crafty Cara 