Handmade Holiday Part II: What the Elves Made

On my side of the family, we draw names for Christmas gifts among the siblings, nieces and nephews. This is the second year that the boys have been involved in the making of presents for their selected person (last year's kid-mades here) and they got even more involved in the actual making. This post breaks my long-standing rule of not showing my kids' faces on the blog, but I'm so darn proud of these three, I can't help it.

First, M made for his aunt E this headband:

He conceived of and designed it all himself, and did all of the embroidery and sewing--Mama just helped with cutting the fabric in the right shape and threading needles.

I think it's pretty awesome.

For his uncle E, Z helped to felt a set of juggling balls.

We started out felting by hand in a bowl of hot water, but Z's attention waned and then mine did too, so I tied them in socks and finished them off in the washing machine.

He wanted to make a set for Papa, too. He served as art director while I needled in the details to make his vision of a Santa, elf and bumblebee come to life.

And all that knitting E has been doing since May yielded this gorgeous scarf for his aunt V.

He started out watching his grandmother, and then me knit and slowly picked up holding the needles and working the yarn. He even did a few rows completely on his own (and a knitting fairy snuck in and worked on it as we got closer to time to mail it). Didn't it turn out beautiful?

For the many grandmothers, we made balsam pillows, with kid art drawn right onto fabric with fabric markers (Z always likes to make portraits of people's cats) and stuffed with balsam needles collected in our woods.