The Crafting Asylum: Crafty Christmas Corner

It’s time for Crafty Christmas Corner, The Mom Edition!

I will be the first to tell you I get my crafty skillz from my mom, she has always encouraged me to learn new crafts and helped me excel in them when she could. I wanted to brag on her wonderful xmas decorations that she has made for me over the years. Unfortunately I had to pick and choose, because she has made me a lot of decorations!

I’m going to start with my stocking, she has made a cross-stitch stocking for each of us kids, I like that mine is not too busy, just a simple carousel horse with a teddy bear

I can’t remember what year she made this one, but it was for my American Girl Doll (I had mine before they were cool; no really my doll is older than my baby sister, who is 16) Her name was Kirsten, but that wouldn’t fit on the tiny stocking (the background is inch squares for size comparison

I still hang it on my tree.

This one is one of so very many of these she made (I think I have 2 on my tree…)

It’s even smaller than Kirsten’s stocking, which is impressive. I’ve made a bajillion small ornaments and the tiny detail that goes into them will always be impressive to me.

This is a wonderfully whimsical ornament, another cross-stitch piece, it is actually a pocket that you stick a candy cane in and that becomes the cats tail (I need to get a candycane…) All the girls got these one year and the boys got hobby horses of a similar design

This is one of my very favorite ornaments EVAR and it’s a fairly recent one too. The technique she used is called smocking, it is not a technique I ever picked up, I tried at one point and after breaking 5 or 6 needles and popping a few threads and having to start over I called it quits.

But this is a gorgeous ornament and I love it

This is a lap size quilt she cross-stitched for me (notice a theme?) I think the date is 2006 and this is the first year I’ve gotten to display it, this is really the first year I’ve had a place to decorate.

It is actually a combination of cross-stitching and embroidery stitches

Those are all the pieces I’ve chosen to show, I hope you enjoyed looking at them as much as I do.

Now for Spartans!

Well first some Spartan news; I have decided, in order to preserve my sanity Iwill be reducing the number of Spartans I make each week to only 2, beginning in January, I will be going back to school in January and I don’t think the added stress of trying to crank out 3 soldiers is smart. So all but one week a month will be only 2 Spartans, there will be one week I do 3 (probably the last week of each month) this is going to add about 7 months onto this project, which made me cry a little on the inside, but I think the over all preservation of my sanity is worth it (and I’m sure Matt is sick of hearing the many versions of “GO**@MN MOTHERFU*#!NG SPARTANS! I HATES THEM!!!” fo reals yo) I think I’ll be able to get them done faster and even get a head some if I am only making 2 of everything at a time. We’ll see how that goes once class starts…

Anywho, here are this week’s boys!

#52 is going to my dear Sami (featured in the Cloud 9 post) his name is Trouble and he has his own cloud