Noro Entrelac Close-up

Originally uploaded by kerner

I have discovered the secret to continuing a knitting blog while simultaneously knitting for your snooping relatives… close-ups! I don’t have much doubt that a seasoned knitter would recognize this somewhat classic pattern, but I think it’s safe enough to give a peek without giving away too much.

Christmas knitting is going really well – it’s amazing how much more I can get done now that I have a living room to lounge in after work & on the weekends! (Speaking of which, I know I owe you guys some good photos of my finished house project. Just a few more boxes to put away and pieces of furniture to put into place – it’s getting very close now!)

I am also getting realistic about the amount of free time that I have between now and Christmas, and how I want to spend that free time. I’ve cut out a few projects I had planned, but I am still happy with the number of handmade gifts that I’m giving this year (made by me and others – thank goodness for etsy, right? The link goes to my favorite sellers – it can be hard to find good stuff!)

Instead of spending all my free evenings at home, in a knitting frenzy, I am trying to remember the “reason for the season” by participating in some volunteer opportunities coordinated by my church and other organizations I’m involved in. Last week, several members of my Rotaract Club went to a local children’s shelter (a residential facility for children who are taken away from bad parents by the state) to help them decorate for Christmas. We were assigned to help decorate a “cottage” that was home to about 15 teenage boys. When we got there, all they had was an enormously tall artificial Christmas tree with no decorations. (Seriously, it must have been 14 feet tall.) As we struggled to figure out how to decorate such a tall tree, the boys explained that they had cobbled it together from two regular-sized trees: two bottoms, two middles and one top section! Very ingenious.

Luckily, we brought lots of donated and new decorations, and by the time we left, it was a literal winter wonderland. There was not a single surface that was left un-Christmas-ed. The boys particularly enjoyed hanging Christmas lights in the windows of their communal living room and decorating all the windows with fake snow (the kind in a spray can). I learned to tie fancy bows from another Rotaractor who grew up helping her parents in their floral shop. We attached them to the tree while it was tilted down (so we could reach) then we leaned back upright and the boys went to town decorating with the random assortment of ornaments we brought. Luckily none were too fragile, since the solution to getting ornaments to the top of the tree was to just toss them up there. (Hey, they are teenage boys, after all!)

It was so fun to spend the evening listening to Christmas music, baking cookies, and generally doing Christmas-y domestic things with the boys. From my other experiences at this facility, I am well aware that it may have been the first time the boys ever had an experience like that, and I’m so happy I was able to help out — even if my biggest contribution was a few pretty bows! As much as I love giving and receiving presents (and I really, really do!), it’s experiences like these that will stick with me as I think about how I spent my Christmas.  I hope you find the opportunity to do something to help others this Christmas season. Your own personal version of Santa’s Workshop can wait, I promise.