Merry Christmas to me! (And to all of you, too ;-) )

This Christmas I am giving myself a special present.

When Candles Go Feral

And not just the joy of cleaning the wax out of the carpet because the Yule Candle went quite wild, although it did go quite wild (Partner said, ‘are you going to try to use this candle to prophesise something or other? Because it’s looking very funny. I can’t think it can be a good sign’. I have, however, decided to take it as a sign that 2011 will be delightfully complex, and will have lots going on. Hooray!).

No. I thought I would do something different. Now, you may be like me, or you may not, but I will tell you something I do. I make lots of things: I knit, I sew, I crochet, I am always making something. And everything I make is either for the shop, or for someone else, or a sample. I never make anything attractive for myself. I am like the cobbler’s children who had to go barefoot. I practically take things off my back in my eagerness to give them to other people. (‘You like this? Have it. No, no problem, I can get home just in my pants. I’m fine. You want the pants as well? Hmm. Perhaps if I run’). I am producing pretty things (not these slippers) and wandering about myself in my tracky bottoms or pre-pre-pre samples and weird experiments with threads hanging off them. God knows what the man who delivers the veg box thinks (although, veg box disaster this week, folks! The cauliflowers were frozen in the soil! They had to hack them out!). So for Christmas I am going to make myself something lovely, out of lovely yarn/ fabric, not out of something at the bottom of the wardrobe that needs using up. It may take longer than Christmas to come to fruition because even I don’t think it would be quite the thing to spend all of Christmas hunched over an overlocker, swearing, and if I knit something, obviously empires normally rise and fall before I have finished. So it may be begun, it may be finished, or it may just be chosen. I have not worked out the details. But, whatever, it will be just for me. And it will be beautiful (I hope).

I will try and take some pictures for you over Christmas, but I have started a silk patchwork skirt (out of tiny scrappy leftovers – you know if I see a proper length of any kind of fabric it makes me have a hot flush) of which I have high hopes, and I have also purchased, gasp, this pattern. For my three beautiful skeins of Malabrigo lace, which I feel I should do something with apart from occasionally getting out of the bag and laying thoughtfully against my cheek. I am not convinced I can knit it and make it look like that, but, I am going to try. So, so far my Gifts To Me have cost me the price of the pattern and a zip. Ha! Ker-ching. Merry Christmas, Susie!

But that is not all. I have had this in my favourites on Ravelry for a long time. A long, long time. A long, long, long time. Now, knitting lace makes me want to chew off my own ears, knitting anything laceweight ditto, and long rows actually make me hyperventilate. Also, lace shawls are not my personal style: every time I see a lace shawl on someone’s blog I admire it without exception and think it looks stylish and wonderful on the person who has knitted it, but I always doubt whether it would look quite as wonderful on me. But, I think this one would: I think it is the shawl for me. And I wonder if it might be possible for me to end 2011 with this shawl in my possession (i.e. by knitting it. Not by pinching someone else’s. Although...). I just wonder. What do you think? Shall I keep a thoughtful weather eye out for laceweight in the sales, or shall I accept that it is possibly too ambitious and go and knit something functional and rugged out of garter stitch?

What would you do? What do you have on your ‘to knit/ sew/ create one day’ lists?

Do you think that day has come?