Regarding DIY gifting

This year is going to be a lean year money wise, with the price of gas and the price of dang near everything going up we’ve been having to buckle down. All the bills are getting paid but there isn’t much left over for “extras” even visiting family is going to become an extra I’m afraid.

In an attempt to declutter my life I haven’t bought yarn or other craft supplies in a while. I still have three Rubbermaid bins full of various fibers and I’m intending on using them for gifts this year. We usually plan to spend 200 dollars per kid, this year I just don’t think that’s going to happen. For one thing we’ll have a three month old at Christmas; new born children do not need a lot of gifts. I will be knitting for the baby exclusively though I did already pick up a set of finger puppets on esty to put away from him/her’s stocking.

My other two kids are still young enough that it’s cool that I make things for them, but up until last year I hadn’t actually made them anything for Christmas. I didn’t realize that my making them things throughout the year that they would actually really like something super special (and handmade) for xmas. I knit each of them a hat for the winter and my son wore that hat to school every single day. He told everyone “My mom made me this”, my daughter, who is three, loves her winter hat so much that she still pulls it on despite the fact that it’s June. She puts it on and tells whoever is around “My mommy make this for me”. It didn’t occur to me that I could use my craft for actual gifts for them. I grew up thinking that Christmas gifts had to be shiny and new and just out of the box when in reality it is actually the thought and effort that counts.

You’d think I’d know that by now, at least I’m glad that my children do!
Last year I made them knit donuts and pie slices to go along with a wooden play kitchen that we did end up buying for them. This year, since we have to cut back anyway, I’ve got a pretty impressive list of gifts-to-knit for these kids. Granted, they are going to know that these things didn’t come from Santa but the pile from Mama (and Dad since he did buy alllll the yarn) is going to be unusually large this year.

I’ve actually already started my knitting since I’ll be giving birth in September, I’d like to have *most* of it done by then since babies require a little bit of a time investment on my part, my knitting time may be reduced ;-)

I’m also interested in doing mostly free patterns for all the reasons mentioned above.