I hope you all had a wonderful and yummy Christmas! As is tradition, I went out to dinner with my family on Christmas Eve, and then our family friends came over to my parents’ house on Christmas day for a big dinner and white elephant gift exchange.

I crocheted a painting for my mom because she’d mentioned that she really liked them. One of her favorite sweets are madeleine cookies. I’ve tried to crochet madeleines in the past, but I kept frittering over the right color combo and stitch texture. I finally just decided to heck with it and committed to a project!

You might recognize the doily and the cup from my Macaronimal paintings. They just seemed really fitting for cookies!

I shot these with my iPhone in my car right before our Christmas day festivities. I didn’t have time to shoot them at my house, since I was furiously still putting the painting together before we left. I need to learn how to find a better balance between making my family presents and making your family presents :).

Last night, we went to Tiffany and Daniel’s house for their holiday party and white elephant gift exchange. She made dericious cookies by crushing up Candy Cane Joe Joe’s…YUM! I wasn’t quite sure what to bring for the white elephant. I almost brought a jar of Baconaise, but Hairy made a face like it was the worst idea ever, so I made something instead: a crocheted octopus coffee cup cozy.

I wanted to make something somewhat unisex, even though most of the stuff I design tends to be really girlie! So if you follow me on Twitter and wondered why I asked what color you think octopi are, now you know!

I might post this as a free pattern later, but right now, I still have to crochet some Christmas presents!

I made myself my first stocking last year. I stayed up all night on Christmas Eve to make it. I actually wanted to make two, but I ran out of time, and I never ended up making that second one.

A few weeks ago, Tess‘ bf Nathanael asked if I might help handmake Tess her very first Xmas stocking, now that they are settled in Brooklyn. He told me that he has had the same personalized stocking since he was a kid, and he wanted Tess to have the same, since I guess her family never really went all-out for the holiday. He wrote, “I’m excited to show her the joys of Christmas. ” So cute! How could I say no? He requested that it be pink and that it have some things on it that Tess likes, like stars and bows. Also that the lettering should say “TE$$.”

My personal aesthetic leans toward the overly sweet and cute.  And I tend to go overboard with a “more is more” philosophy. Tess is really styley and has an edgier aesthetic than I do, so I made an attempt to get her sense of “cool” in there, even if it ended up toward the slightly humorous with my fake pyramid studs.

Personally, I love pink and gold together. It rides that perfect line between tacky and cute.

At first I really wasn’t sure about the studs, but I emailed some pics to Nathanael, and he also thought they were funny and that Tess would get a kick out of them.

Instead of putting a bunch of smaller bows all over the stocking, I decided to go with one statement bow right on top.

This was the first time I crocheted a stocking with someone’s specific personality in mind. It was really super fun! It was not exactly traditional, but, I guess you don’t come to me for traditional! 😛

The stocking crocheted up pretty quickly, and the longest part was really figuring out the sizing of the lettering and making sure it all fit. I kind of made a million S’s because I knew that was the most difficult to alter, and then I just made sure the T and the E matched in size.

I based my stocking off of this pattern from Red Heart, and I based my lettering off this webpage for crocheting the letters of the alphabet. There aren’t any photos working on the alphabet page, but…. you know what the letter A looks like, so I think you can take it from there!

I still have some things for my family that I need to crochet, and I also still need to wrap all my presents!!! It’s been a really busy holiday season for me. Just a heads-up: I’ll be closing my Etsy shop  for a couple weeks really soon. I have a TON of Yummy You deadlines coming up, and I felt SO overwhelmed for the past month or so. I knew something had to give, and the one thing I really have control over is Etsy, so don’t be alarmed. I hope to re-open no later than February 1, just in time for lots of cute Valentine’s Day stuff! I also keep saying that I want time to work on new designs, so it’s high time I do that as well! I’m looking forward to it!

Thank you so much to everybody who came to visit my booth at Renegade Craft Fair! I super appreciate all the support, and it was the first time in a long time that I actually sold out of certain items. Woo hoo! Here are some photos and one (crappy, as usual!) video, so you guys can check it out.

I had a lot of fun building a gingerbread house-themed booth with my mom. I designed and built the PVC structure, my mom sewed the felt covers, she and I both painted and glittered the styrofoam candies, and Hairy drilled holes into the tables to mount my canopies, and he also wrapped the PVC in candy cane ribbon.

You can click on most of the photos to see them bigger if you like!

Don’t forget to come visit me at Renegade San Francisco next weekend, December 15-16, from 11am-6pm at the Concourse Exhibition Center!

I am working hard to bring you another fun booth set-up, so it will be another miracle if it actually gets finished! 😛 I’ll have popcorn garlands, peppermint ornaments, double-swirled cupcake hats, holiday cupcake hair clips, and a few other surprises, like a sweet new button set and holiday greeting cards! Come say hi!