December Gifted Gorgeousness

 December is a very special month for this very special SAL hosted by the very special Jo, our very special hostess (all these "specials" make it sound like something is wrong with her, but there isn't, I swear!). Special, because towards Christmas, my crafting turns from 50% gift focused, to almost 100% gift focused, and so of course I have a lot of things to show! For once, I could just re post every single project from my FFG post a couple days ago, but that would be boring, so I'll just link to it. I'm also not going to bother with WIPs this time, because they'll all show up again eventually, and I have three brand new finishes to show you that I think I've never talked on this blog before! They have all been received already so I can finally share.

First, I made a shawl for my bestie. She actually picked up this yarn for me last year and jokingly called 'dibs' on whatever I make from it. Little did she know that was my plan all along! Now the only issue was I needed to find a pattern that would work with the one cake I had, and still be long enough for her (she's pretty tall, so tiny shawls would look odd on her), and I finally found the 'Easiest LYS Shawl' pattern on ravelry that was perfect for my yarn. Sadly, the cake had a knot in the middle, that made for a bit of an odd 'jump' in colour, and also sadly, I only have this one picture of it, but I do like how it turned out:

Next one is another shawl that I made for a new, but already very close friend I made this year from one of my facebook stitchy group. I knew she liked this type of pattern, and I had tons of that black and white yarn in my stash from years ago that I never knew what to do with, and now it was just a perfect fit! So I found this free Houndstooth pattern online, and made a nice, warm loop shawl for her:

And last but not least, I tried my hands at something new! When we were in Japan last year, I picked up a couple of crafting kits, some techniques that I had never tried before. My grandma has an amazing physiotherapist who has been a great help to her for years, and he's also a japanophile, so I wanted to give him something special for Christmas, so I finally sat myself down with a free evening and my phone to translate the Japanese instructions (that thankfully had plenty of pictures), and got to work.The first half didn't quite turn out as it should, but thankfully, this is a temari, so it's a ball and naturally, one side will have to face down! The other side and the middle aren't quite perfect yet either, but for a first try, I'm very happy and I'll likely look into getting another kit like this: