One of my brothers works on a cruise ship with his fiancee, Sian, and this means that our family Christmas is dictated by when they can come ashore. This means that this year our family Christmas was held on 28th November. I was very keen to handmake many of the gifts and in between writing for my current 2 writing projects and working on the Sonic Advent Calendar, I made these things.

Colourwork pillowcases for Sian and Fergus. Because Fergus and Sian live on a cruise ship and share only a tiny cabin with no storage or wall space, the only way to introduce artwork and general joy is via the enhancement of existing furnishings. I decided to give them both amazing pillowcases featuring some of my favourite fabrics so that they can enjoy handmade and colourful goodness while they are lying in bed after their shifts. I included some bird-print fabric, some of the beautiful cupcake fabric that Liz gave me a while back, some of the spoonflower fabric we got printed up for the Fantastical Reality Radio Show and many offcuts leftover from the Missability Radio Show patchwork banner that I made. Each pillow got a different woven label from my handmade by Missability or Fantastical Reality Radio Show and was oversewn with joyous, yellow thread. I used a great tutorial online to get the basic dimensions of a pillowcase, and then just made the design my own. Here is Sian holding up one of the finished pillowcases:

I also made Sian a case for her spectacles, as her major Christmas wish was for money towards glasses and I wanted to give her that in something more fun than an envelope:

Baby Chloe (my brother Thaddaeus’s girlfriend’s daughter…) got knitted goodness including this hat which unfortunately came up rather small and needs re-knitting:

and these bootees which I knit with a stocking stitch sole rather than garter stitch, because I wanted them to match the hat:

Here is baby Chloe, unwrapping her gifts:

Other things made for the Family Christmas included:

*Honeycomb (one batch with honey, one batch with golden syrup; some covered in chocolate, some left bare)
*Mixtapes/MixCDs
*A beanbag for my mum to sit her satnav on in the car (her request!)
*And all the wrapping paper

We have decided that in the future since our family has grown to include spouses, cousins, 2 young children etc. it is probably time to move onto the Secret Santa model of gift-shopping as this year was insane with the presents and we all felt a bit overwhelmed at the excesses:

It was really amazing to see everyone; very loud and busy and the house felt completely full, but this is the way of the Family Christmas with my folks and the love and generosity were tangible everywhere.

When we got back to Reading it felt terribly quiet and we decided to continue the festive feeling of the weekend by making up our Christmas Puddings. We had some mixture left over after filling 2 pudding basins, and we put this to the good use of making 2 miniature ‘taster’ puddings, so we could ensure the quality of the main batch.

Mine came out in a perfect little pudding shaped dome of goodness;

Mark’s immediately self-destructed.

But there was much deliciousness and now the list of Christmas knitting and making for Mark’s family must get underway!