A new twist on Gift In A Jar!

My mom likes to travel. Not internationally, just around. When we lived out of state, she got over her fear of driving long distances by herself and learned to navigate the open road, and we visited a ton of cool nearby stuff with her- places in Kentucky, South Carolina, and Tennessee, all thanks to my mom and her newfound sense of adventure.

Even though we live in the same state again, about an hour apart, my mom still likes to travel, and so we've kept up the tradition, visiting nearby locations and exploring what's fun. And this year, I'm giving her a Christmas gift that speaks to those trips.

In 2017, we traveled to Traverse City, Michigan, a place I'd always wanted to see. It's a beautiful, charming town and I loved it there. If you haven't had the pleasure of strolling its gorgeous downtown and relaxing on the shores of Lake Michigan, consider making it a goal to get there, because it's absolutely worth the trip. My daughter still had some sand and a bunch of rocks in her sand bucket when we left, and so I took that sand and saved it in a pickle jar. It now sits on top of my bookshelf, a cheerful reminder of the fun we had on that trip, and it makes me smile every time I see it.

This past summer, we visited Door County, Wisconsin, and of course we had a wonderful time. Already thinking of the future, I saved a little bit of sand and some rocks while we were there. They've been waiting for me in a little red bucket, until I had time and materials, and today, as I was cleaning out a few things from my kitchen island, I found the perfect jar.

It's a small jar, but that will work perfectly for my mom. Once I get a detail brush, I'll paint DOOR COUNTY 2018 on the lid. And voilà, a perfect Christmas gift that will evoke memories of a wonderful family vacation for years to come.

My mom will love it, and I'm so excited to give it to her this year. :)

Completed: Heart (a knitting project)

Husbands are so difficult to buy for, aren't they?

Okay, maybe yours isn't, but mine kind of is. He always says he doesn't need anything (which, truth be told, he usually doesn't), and he feels uncomfortable with people giving him things. He likes tools to fix stuff around the house, but I have zero clue how to buy those (and since he doesn't exactly have a system to store things, I'm not entirely sure of what he does and doesn't have). It's rare that I find things at yard sales that I know 100% he can use, and while he likes funny t-shirts, his dresser drawers are stuffed FULL of them.

So that makes buying him stuff for Christmas (and his birthday, which is RIGHT after Christmas) a little challenging. He's a scientist, though, so all things science-related are always acceptable as a gift, which is why I knitted him strep throat. He'll get a kick out of that.

But I wanted to make him something else, too. Something that said 'I love you' but also 'I honor your inner (and outer) nerdy scientist.' Something that he could look at and know that I think he's fantastic and also my favorite geek in the whole world.

What better fits all of that than...

An anatomical heart!

No, really, an anatomical heart!

How cool is THAT??? 

I wish you could all feel it. It's got a bit of heft to it for being just yarn and fiberfill. It's about the size of my entire hand, probably fairly close to what a human heart would be (which makes it a bit weird to hold! Not that I've ever held a human heart before. A human brain, yes, thanks to a science event we went to back in Tennessee, but never a human heart). It's pretty solid, not at all squishy, and I'm ridiculously proud of it. 

Look at the valves!!! So, so cool.

Part of what my husband studies involves heart disease, so this is definitely an appropriate gift.

I used the Heart pattern from Knitty, and I knit it up in some scrap yarn I'd ordered from Knitpicks years ago to make some winter headbands for family members for Christmas. There was just enough to finish this; I probably have five or six yards left, so that was lucky.

The pattern is really well-written and easy to follow. I had to backtrack and rip a bunch of things out, but that's on me, not the pattern. As I mentioned in previous posts, I'm just kind of getting back into knitting after a years-long hiatus after having my daughter. I was never a very fancy knitter; I didn't do a ton of complicated things in the past and tended to shy away from patterns that looked too hard. That said, I had pinned this pattern years and years ago, thinking it looked pretty awesome, and then, like so many other pins, never did anything about it. And since I'm trying to change that aspect of my personality, this went on the needles after I finished with strep throat. I've got another project in the queue that will require me to learn some new knitting skills, so...eep. I'm a little nervous about that.

Knitting the heart was a little fussier than I expected, though. It's knit up on ridiculously tiny needles, and due to the shape of the heart (anyone else hearing Jackson Browne in their heads right now? Just me?), you kind of have to twist and push and move the needles around to get to the next stitch in certain spots. It made that knitting slow going and a bit painful to my fingertips. Binding off was an exercise in not screaming, at the yarn for having so little give, at the stitches for being so tiny, and at the needles for constantly stabbing into my fingers. 

So all in all, despite the challenges of sharp, finger-poking needles and tiny stitches that I felt like I needed to contort myself to get to from time to time, I'm absolutely thrilled with how this turned out. My husband is going to LOVE this. He has a collection of toys on display at his desk at work, and I'm assuming that that's where this will end up as well (since, again, they study heart-related things there). And if it does, I'll be pretty proud to have it on display- but if not, I'm happy with whatever he decides to do with it. My heart is his, after all. ;)

Are you working on anything fun?

Merry Christmas! You're getting strep throat! (A completed project)

No worries. I'm not sick. No one's sick.

But my husband will be getting strep throat.

For Christmas.

"How can you possibly know that?" you ask.

Oh, I'll show you.

Tada!

You remember from your biology textbooks what strep throat looks like under a microscope, right? They're sphere-shaped bacteria, chained together, and they make you miserable. It's like knives in your throat when you swallow. Fortunately, that's not the kind I'm giving him for Christmas; no one wants that!

My husband is a scientist. He loves what he does and he's amazing at it, so what better gift for him than one that is science-themed? The science he does at work is far above my head, and I'm not a scientist at all, but I can at least present him with something science-y under the tree for a bit of a laugh this year, hand knit, of course!

Much more pleasant than the real thing.

The pattern I used came from House Full of Monkeys. She calls for safety eyes, but I just used a bit of black yarn and embroidered a happy face on mine. Because who says strep throat can't be happy while it's making you miserable?

This was a really great pattern. It's super simple to follow and I had no problems with it whatsoever. The only change I might make, if I were to make another one of these, would be to start stuffing it a little earlier than the end. I had forgotten how awful stuffing things is- I'd made a stuffed teddy bear years ago and stuffing that thing, along with sewing the pieces together, was enough to make me want to jump off the roof face-first. But that's it. I hung out on my chair with my two cats and watched reruns of Law & Order while I knit. All in all, it was a pretty relaxing project.

I've even got a super dorky poem written out for when he opens it; wanna hear it?

*groan*

In case you can't see it, it reads,

You didn't need a sweater

And you didn't need a coat.

So instead this Christmas,

I have give you strep throat.

Totally merry, right? 

Our strep throat buddy will reside happily in my gift stash with the other Christmas presents I have stored away. It's not an enormous pile, but it's growing, and that makes my planner heart happy.

So there we have it! A super fun, super adorable project that will make one scientist very happy come Christmas morning. Thanks to House Full of Monkeys for such a great pattern, I really enjoyed making this. 

Onward to the next knitting project, whatever that may be! :)