fabric: pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}: On Christmas gift philosophy

This time last year, the boy was having very challenging taste in scarves. We picked yarn, I bought yarn and then he decided he wasn’t so keen on that yarn anyway. We picked one pattern, I started that and he decided he wasn’t keen on that either. I started again with the idea that he liked and ended up with a scarf that was twenty-seven feet long. So I started a third time and came up with something that wasn’t marvellous but it was okay. In the right light, it might even have been nice. But mostly it was okay.

Bless him, challenging taste and all, he wore the scarf and lived through the Dr Who jokes. In fact, the Dr Who jokes seemed to endear him more to the garment and he then rarely left the house without it.

Until I was out of town and got a call. The scarf had accidentally taken up residence on a train, along with other necessary items like a back-pack and an umbrella. And really, he really, really wanted me to know he hadn’t done it on purpose.

Please keep in mind that I am far easier to make fun of than the boy. He is immune. He tells me this is because between the three siblings, they teased each other enough that nothing sticks anymore. I, on the other hand, turn bright red at the smallest thing. I seriously have some days where I am just embarrassed to live, really. I am that easy to wind up. With this in mind, I have wasted not one single opportunity to tease someone about leaving his really-ugly-really-scratchy-but-handmade scarf on the train.

It must have worked. When we were in Victoria I agreed to knit him another scarf, but he had to pick the yarn. And he did finally succumb to going into a wool shop, and having learned his lesson from last year, went for something that could never become scratchy. And since then I have been knitting baby alpaca into 2×2 rib whenever I have a few minutes to sit down. It’s far more lovely (and simple) than last year’s scarf. And I am considering stitching it to the back of his coat so it doesn’t get left on any train.

So that is half of this story. The other half is that when you move, you realise you have a lot of stuff. Everyone out there will tell you to purge your belongings before you move so you have to move fewer boxes. But as we had basically a week to pack everything, and we were both working at the same time, we had a hard time with that. We mostly boxed up everything in sight, with the plan to purge as we unpacked. Which yes, is backwards. But in the end, we ended up with more to purge than we thought, as we accidentally put some boxes of recycling into the moving van and brought them with us. It was just a little freaky to open a box and think ‘But I’m sure I got rid of that!’ only to realise the box just went to the wrong place. {And no, so far we do not think we accidentally put any boxes of good stuff into the recycling. Hopefully.}

So anyway, those who helped us move and those who have been here since can tell you in no uncertain terms that we have too much stuff. And then we started to think about Christmas…and where would we put all our new stuff, and it just about made us fall over. There was this little plea from the boy that he really didn’t need me to buy him lots of stuff for Christmas.

But I really like giving people stuff at Christmas.

We talked through a gazillion options that I considered writing out there, but honestly, you are getting nearly to exhaustion point with reading this anyway. So here’s what we came up with: we will give handmade. It’s that simple. Since handmade ends up being more about time and thought than what the stack of presents looks like under the tree, this will work. And we hope the people who receive our handmade goodies will appreciate them. And in cases where we couldn’t handmake things ourselves for everyone on our list (because really, we should have started this earlier, but what else is new?) we hope we can support other people who make things by hand.

And you know what? I haven’t stood in a single Christmas shopping queue. I haven’t stressed over a sold-out item. I haven’t counted things up to see if they will look like a suitable stack of gifts. Of course, it’s a little early to know if everything will be well-received, but so far, so good. We’ve given those jars of cocoa and this stripey quilt, and they went over well. In fact, I can see the traffic jams from here of people cramming the main road that heads to shopping nearby…and while they are doing that, I’m sitting on the sofa with knitting needles, supersoft alpaca and hot chocolate. Which I think is pretty much okay. Even more than okay.

May you give presents you love, receive something that makes you smile and have a place to put all of your stuff this Christmas.

xlovesx

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