Handmade Xmas: Cold Knights Toque and Battle beard

This started out as a novelty hat I wanted to knit.  Thought it would be really cute to knit up a simple spangenhelm for Trevor.  And then I thought to myself - what's better than a scarf?  A beard!  But doesn't he already *have* a beard?  Yes....but.....a beard WARMER!  a beard-shaped sort of attachment for his hat!  Wouldn't that be cool?  (this is the conversation in my head.)

I freehanded the basic toque and knit a seperate t-shaped piece in seed stitch to sew on top to form the spangen-part.  the beard was knit in chunky wool on big needles, nothing fancy.  moustache was knit seperately and sewn on.

I used a crochet-hook (prolly improperly, but I couldn't bring myself to google 'how to crochet' again) to do the edges of the beard so it wouldn't roll and would hold its shape better.  the beard attaches to two buttons sewn into the upper chin-straps of the hat.  tadaa!

Here she is, my precious.  modelled by me.

breaking points

i miss people so damned much.  since K was born (and since the subsequent shameful decline of my habitat and resultant lack of company) my world has shrunk down to a size that....well, small enough to blend in and hide amongst all the shattered goldfish crackers on my floors.
at first i liked it.  i like creating an insular little unit, snuggling up in that group.  i love my family, what else do i need?

but then it stopped being about laziness, or choice, exactly, and the hermitting continued.  couldn't keep the house in anything resembling non-frathouse condition.  couldn't keep the kids quiet or properly entertained.  couldn't shower.  didn't know where all my pants went.  it got so i'd even *refuse* the opportunities i had to leave the house.  you know how your world can narrow and narrow until the idea of an open world, full of other stuff, becomes a little terrifying?  that was me.  that *is* me.  i'm just trying to fight it.

so i'm cleaning the house and inviting people over.  and if the house messes itself back up or never really gets clean i am NOT uninviting them.  i will have people here, in my space, and either i'll clean it up so i'm not embarassed or i'll just deal with it and stop letting the state of my floors dictate whether i can have friends.
i can't get out and about that much right now, ok.  but people could be coming to us.  i've just been stopping them.

Handmade Xmas: KidCalendar (cheat)

So we have a tradition since the first child was born.  We make calendars for the grandparents, full of photos of the kid(s) and give them as gifts.  By 'make' I mean that we assemble them online and print them through staples.  It's not quite as homespun as I'd like, but I feel like the gift counts as handmade because a) i took and edited the photos b) all creative decisions were made by me and c) I MADE THE CHILDREN. 

If you were really super make-your-won-soap crafty, you could actually cut and paste a calendar together, and it would really count as handmade.  But I've got more than one of these to make, and we never print off photos.

I'll throw some thumbnails of the calendar pix up, or post a photo of the calendar itself once they're picked up.  (I'm currently agonizing over the selection of the *last* photo.)