The C Word

OK. So, I do kind of half despise myself as some kind of terrible low-rent Martha Stewart-Kirstie Allsopp hybrid, but, today when I went out to buy a fondue burner (seriously, I am a martyr to that fondue), I just happened upon one or two things and I may have bought them

I am suspecting very strongly that Martha Stewart would have got the marks out of that formica

to make Christmas presents with. Because, readers, this year, we are having a homemade Christmas. If you are wincing right now, then, rest assured I am wincing with you, because I am entirely 50-50 on homemade presents. On the one hand, if I get into the swing early enough that I make bits over the months leading up, it isn’t that much trouble, it is fun, and means I avoid the terrible Christmas Eve Shopping Trip of Doom, which always finds me standing despairingly in Waterstones at 3:59pm wondering whether to pay £14.99 for a calendar with hamsters on it. On the other hand, if I don’t get into the swing, the same time will find me in our spare room crying tears of neat brandy over a sewing machine and a bit of ric rac.

The pride of Lakeland Plastics. I love Lakeland Plastics and I want the kind of life where you know what to do with an egg poacher and put cedar in your wardrobe. I think Pam has cedar in her wardrobe

Have you noticed, in any book on thrift/ handmade living/ general eco-y-ness you ever read, they will tell you you will save money making homemade presents? Readers, here is the truth: it is generally not cheaper to handmake anything unless your normal point of reference is Harrods. Yes you can possibly save money if you craft things regularly and have equipment and lots of leftovers (and then use them rather than thinking, it is for xx! Xx is special! I shall buy cashmere!, even when xx is the window cleaner and you have only exchanged 3 words in the last 6 months) or start saving jam jars in March, but, if you get to November and suddenly have a yen to make people something where you have to buy equipment and there is a learning curve then trust me, it will cost you just as much money as if you had just gone straight to John Lewis and bought one in a packet (and then to the pub after).

It has always been my experience that to make something nice, you must throw one or more of the following at it: skill, money, or time. So, if you are going to knit someone a giant garter stitch scarf and you do it in cashmere, it will be beautiful and well-received but it will be extortionate, although, some people (and my own loved ones actually don’t think this, or if they do they disguise it well, well done family) think if you handmake anything you are cheap. Or you are doing it as a strange perversion of the competitive instinct which you should have satisfied by climbing the corporate ladder, not putting feminism back 30 years by floating about knowing one end of a knitting needle from another (no I don’t think this is the standard feminist view. But yes I have encountered it!). And to make things worse, we will soon be getting a slew of mad articles that will tell us to make things for Christmas presents that honestly no-one wants and which will require enormous initial expenditure on things like glue guns. So you see my moral dilemma.

Why, could that really be Stylecraft Special DK in a rather challenging colour combination? Might someone be in for a treat?

But, this is why I do it (when I have the energy). I genuinely like giving people things. I think often with the gifts we give it’s not actually about giving something someone needs (although, I am going to call out my own hypocrisy here, because for my birthday my parents gave me part of a shed. So, sometimes people do really need part of a shed), it’s a token to say, hello, Merry Christmas, I have been thinking of you. And with handmade presents you really have been thinking of them, and not for the 10 minutes it takes you to buy the hamster calendar in Waterstones and swear. And you know I love handmade things and think they are better, so if I am feeling generous I would rather give someone something that would be a treat for me. But does that mean it is a treat for them? You see, it is difficult. Anyway, homemade Christmas it is this year, for better or worse, and I have made a list and everything, which I will hide from Partner as if he found it he would be quite sarcastic. And if you will excuse me, I am off now to google food colouring paste because you would not believe the price of it. (At least I don’t need a glue gun).