Okay, so, it has been a hell of a Christmas Season. During the height of all our handcrafting, I fully intended to come back with updates and braggery about how crafty we were, but now, of course, it’s all so distant and who even cares.

Just kidding! I care.

So, we’re still paying off that wedding from the summer. I thought that wedding was so tiny – and yet, still so expensive. Why does anyone do it, huh? Nevermind, that’s a post for another day. Regardless, every year I wish I had the time to do more handcrafted gifts, or just gifts that have more time and heart than money. But every year, Christmas seems to sneak up on me and then I throw money at it (because my deepest fear is failing at Christmas).

So last fall, I think I had a magical moment of thinking, “So we can’t afford Christmas, eh? Perfect!”

And so were forced to plan early and we handcrafted as many gifts as we could.

My first project was a Christmas apron for my cousin – based quite a bit on the Emmeline apron.

I’ve been coveting that pattern for a while – and while I still intend to someday buy and try it, it wasn’t in the budget this fall – so I designed my own.

I liked how that one turned out so well that I had to make a similar one for my coworker for her birthday. Something about this green/white combination and redheads, I guess. Or, something about these two that I know they can pull off ironic housewife chic.

Speaking of ironic housewife chic – that coworker gave me, for Christmas, a set of martini glasses, which proved perfect for showcasing Christmas martinis.

What goes into such a Christmas martini, you might wonder. And I will tell you: remember that recipe for spiced, candied cranberries? I hope that when it came time to drain the cranberries, you kept the syrup because you can store it in a jar in the fridge for at least a month and you can mix a tablespoon or so into your vodka and cranberry juice and it tastes like Christmas. Pictured here with frozen cranberry ice cubes and a candy-cane (the bottom part of which was broken off and crushed to rim the glass. Dip the glass rim in your spiced syrup first and your candycane crumbs will stick better).

In the background of this picture, you can kind of make out the ridiculous piece of quilting that took up most of my december. I don’t have any better pictures of it – pity that. But in spite of its being a very small piece (a dust-cover for my Mother-in-Law’s synthesizer keyboard), it took 200 pieces and drove me slightly crazy.

So, other yet-undocumented accomplishments include my first attempt at cake-decorating because Hannah wanted a Diego cake for her birthday. And this super-sweet knitted pachyderm for Hannah’s Christmas present. And, actually, many other creative & brilliant presents that I apparently failed to photograph before giving away. Dammit.

Also, one of the most beautiful Christmas trees I have ever decorated. (Tragically scarring my children by 1, involving them only minimally in the decorating process and 2, not being interested in showcasing school crafts on the tree. Refrigerators, walls, windows – fine. But not my tree.)

Well, actually, Rachel snuck a penguin ornament with a picture of herself onto the tree in a wall-facing corner and I have left it there because I enjoy the touching symbolism of my little waif sneaking representations of herself into my austere Christmas – like a glimpse of a seventeenth century orphan through your frosted window panes.

Also in December, I was supposed to be sewing wedding cloaks for a good friend and her fiancée – who were getting married on New Year’s Day. I spent one Thursday night cutting and a Friday night sewing the velvet outer layer for my friend’s cloak. Then my friend came over on a Saturday morning and helped cut out the faux fur lining. I continued working all afternoon and evening to get it pieced and sewn together enough that the outer and inner pieces could be joined – though absolutely every edge on it still needed measuring, trimming, folding over and finishing. That was all I was able to do until Christmas – and then Christmas day, her fiancée arrived, bringing with her the taffeta that was to become her cloak (one week out from the wedding. I know, right?). They didn’t get that to me until late boxing day, so I didn’t get any sewing done that day.

The rest of the week was intensely rough. For the last little while at work, my team has been working on new development that’s needed for a couple of projects that are starting up (and some already started) and just before Christmas we had reached the point of getting oriented on our next project – meaning that all this stuff that still isn’t ready for new projects is hanging around, competing with our focus on new projects. Also one of my teammates was gone on holiday the week between Christmas and new years. I kept thinking, “it will be a quiet week at work with few distractions, I’ll just see how far I can go to get this stuff wrapped up for when everyone’s back in the office” – only it was a short week, and also, every hour spent at work, was an hour I wasn’t working on a cloak that needed to be done for Saturday. On the 27th, my aunt VagabondQueen spent most of the day helping me cut out fabric. That night I stayed up well past midnight. The next night, after a big, loud, nervewracking family supper and final holiday gift exchange, I came home and stayed up again past midnight, also keeping Ian up and putting him to work ironing taffeta & pinning things in order to get the second cloak to the point where it could be tried on its owner Thursday so it could be hemmed Friday to be worn Saturday. Turns out that was ridiculously optimistic. By Thursday night I was feeling totes ill and burnt out from going to work at 7 to get extra quiet-time (aside: huzzahs for the work though, I finally had uninterrupted time to finish a giant chunk of work and tackle a bunch of lingering little things) and then staying up until 1 sewing – so I stayed home from the wedding shower Thursday night to relax and do a little sewing with my mum’s help — only to stay up until 1 again sewing. I had Friday off, so I got up early to go to the hotel and get Bride #2 to try on her cloak over her dress so I could pin the hem. The first cloak had got through its hemming, but had sleeves much too short, so I left with promises that I would get the first cloak fixed and the second cloak hemmed and have them back at the hotel at 1:00 for their 2:00 pictures.

I had entertained thoughts of putting in appearances at some parties I had been invited to – not major appearances since we didn’t have childcare, so they would have been Ianless appearances. Still, no. My aunt Apple helped with pinning and hand-sewing all afternoon. Ian helped with pinning and ripping out sleeve seams all evening. At 11:55, while sewing a seam, I noticed, at the end of sewing it, that it had been pinned wrong. I sat there cussing for a bit before finally deciding to finish off the last few inches and see if that seam could be salvaged – and in those inches, my needle broke – the second needle of the night and I had no more of that gauge. I burst into tears and looked up at the clock and it was midnight.

Sigh. I guess if you’re into all that symbolism and reasonings about fair things and omens and crap – then I could say, “2011 can only get better.” Or something.

But I don’t believe in those things very much. And also, a bad week aside, my life is already pretty good.

Over our brief supper that night, I had invited Rachel and Hannah (Ethan was asleep in his room) to make some New Year’s wishes for the family . I can’t tell you specifically, otherwise, the kids assure me, they won’t come true, but most of them amounted to “let’s have more of the good things we have.”

Oh, also, Hannah wished for us to get married on the boat again. I can tell you that one because I don’t want it to come true. Sorry Hannah.

Anyhow, insane as it is, even though we stayed up until 2 that night, we still had so much to do that I was up and sewing again at 9, I had Ian working with me constantly. My aunt and mum arrived at 11 and the four of us worked constantly & feverishly from 11 to 1. At 1:00 I whipped them off the mannequin and the sewing machine, threw them in a tupperware container, texted my friend that we were running late and ran to the hotel with their cloaks. The cloaks were beautiful and the brides were grateful and I hear the photos were amazing, but I haven’t seen them yet.

That was a long saga, eh?

TL;DR version: Worked crazy hours while sewing crazy hours, wildly burnt out and exhausted. Accomplished so much (yes I am fucking amazing) and had a good Christmas, but So Glad it’s over.

And the subtext, really, is that I guess I just wanted to acknowledge a little bit how fragile I am right now, and how unsurprising it is. In my experience, whenever I put myself through a period like this, where we are hanging on by a thread and telling ourselves, “just have to make it to X”, as soon as we make it to X, with all our resources exhausted, something kicks us in the ass. Even though I have been saying I could relax at this point, I am still braced for impact.

Maybe this is a reminder to myself that a good new year’s resolution would be to conserve more of myself – to gas up at a quarter tank instead of driving until empty.

Well, lastly, and more upliftingly, here is a picture of most of my Christmas presents.

Speaking of conserving – I think a really lovely thing about this Christmas is the amount of thrifting, garage-saling, regifting, recycling, upcycling, hand-crafting and just “found in my house for you” gifts there were. And, as you can see, they were quite, quite lovely. I love it and I want to do more of it.