Last Christmas I had the idea that Jillian and Wesley needed their own special stockings. We looked at some while Christmas shopping, but didn’t find anything that we fell in love with. So in January I made a note to remind myself in August that I was going to have get to work making them myself. Because I loved the latch hook stocking Grandpa Joe made me (and the other Hunter kids) I wanted Wes and Jillian to have the same kind.
In September I ordered two kits from Shillcraft: A snowman for Wesley and a teddy bear for Jillian. The kits came with almost everything I needed: the pattern, yarn and mesh. I bought a latch-hook tool and set to work. Here is what the snowman kit looked like when I unpacked it.
Once I had it unpacked I realized I didn’t have a clue what to do. So I hopped on YouTube and found a few videos that were rather helpful. One key tip: count out your yarn for each row before you start. Following the pattern on the mesh is asking for mistakes. The actual process is pretty easy and you get much faster at as you go. Which is good, because I was very slow at first. When I calculated how long it was taking me to do each knot and that I had 1700 to do on each stocking, I got a little concerned that I wouldn’t be able to finish. In fact I posted this to Twitter:
“math can suck. at the rate I’m going it may take 22hrs for each stocking. about 1700 knots each. ignorance is bliss.”
I decided to share the process with the kids from the start. This was a very good idea. They were very interested in the whole thing and their enthusiasm kept me motivated. Another way I kept motivated was by tracking my time for each row of the stockings. Yes, I know I’m a geek. But I did it and it helped. I used a great free application called Klok to track my time worked which is how I know it took me 14 hours and 54 minutes to latch hook Wesley’s, but only 12 hours and 43 minutes for Jillian’s. I started onWesley’s first and that 2 hour difference is the learning curve for latch hooking (at least for me).
Being the kind of person I am I also took pictures of each few lines. This is the time-lapse movie I made.
The only problem with the kit was putting their names on the top. My stocking from Grandpa says “Josh”. Of course mine is twice as big as theirs (and due to its enormous size I realized this year it has probably fetched me thousands of dollars of extra stocking-stuffers over the years. Thanks Grandpa!). And it didn’t take long for me to figure out I could shorten Welsey to Wes, but Jillian was going to be tough to fit on there. Just not enough little squares to make it happen. So after some back and forth I decided on initials. I’m still not thrilled with them, but they are stuck with them now. Sorry kids.
Yes, despite the fact that Jillian will likely get married and change her name someday. She’ll just have to limit her choices to people with last names starting with “H”. It worked for her mom after all. This limited space is the reason Adrianne as called “Dri” for a bit there. I thought the stocking said Dri because that was her nickname, but no, her nickname was Dri because it fit on the stocking. Who knew? (Maybe everyone knew this. I’m slow on this kind of stuff.)
Once the pattern and initials were finished I kind of panicked. Now I had to sew. Not a skill I actually possessed (or do now). So I basically did nothing for two weeks. Then panicked some more because I’d wasted two weeks. What to do? Back to the internet of course. I found this page and this page to be really helpful with types of stitches. Then the kids and I bought fabric. Amber said nope and we went back and got some different fabric.
A mere 11 hours and 20 minutes of hand sewing later and Jillian’s stocking was done. Another 7 hours and 12 minutes and Wesley’s was done. An even steeper learning curve on the sewing. I had to redo multiple parts of Jillian’s as different stitches didn’t work the way I thought they would. In the end I ended up using whipstitches and backstitches for the visible parts and for the inside parts a whole bunch of stuff that I made up that would make people who know how to sew cringe deep down inside.
I am so glad to be done! And I’m done before Christmas! When I was ordering I asked Amber if she wanted me to make her one to match the rest of us and she said “no”. Thank you, thank you, thank you! If I had to do another one I’d probably break down in tears. Which would probably ruin the holiday for all of us, frankly.
I’d hoped to have included a bunch of nifty graphs using Open Flash Chart v2, but sadly there doesn’t seem to be a plugin built to make charts for WordPress that isn’t really lame. So instead of being able to show you all kinds of nifty data I collected while making these things I just have this one sad chart I made in, embarrassingly, Excel. The big flat stretch there in October was when we went to my Mom’s wedding and then again in late November early December that is when I was pretending I didn’t have to learn how to sew to complete the project.
The past 2 years we have gone to see Santa and then we walk around the park to look at the luminaries and the Christmas lights, 2007 & 2008, but this year… we decided to just do Santa on Friday and then the rest on Saturday.
We got there right at 6, but Santa was a bit late…
Sitting in Santa's Chair.
The kids were really excited while we waited in line. But as soon as they got up close to him… that was a different matter.
So I showed them that Santa was nice.
Then Joshua told Wesley that, THIS was his chance to tell Santa what he wants for Christmas. But he was pretty nervous and a bit terrified. But he really managed to pull it together an conquer his initial fear and sat with Santa like a champ.
Drying his tears...
This is right before he said he wants a FISH TANK from Santa.
We really wanted to try a picture with Jillian too…
I was really surprised that she even sat with him.
This was after about 10 seconds, she had really calmed down. If only we had 10 more, she may have even smiled.
I promised the kids cookies, to try to get them to cooperate with Santa, so we went over to the rec center and had cookies and hot chocolate.
Enjoying their snack.
Yummy!
He just did not want to smile for me!
Time to go home. But first, a few more pictures…
It was about 50 out tonight. It felt pretty good. But we (When I say we, I mean the kids and Joshua. Of course I was in a jacket. I even had a scarf on too.) were the only family without jackets on. And most kids had on mittens and a hat!
It was a good night. We are looking forward to walking along the trails tomorrow and looking at the luminaries and the Christmas lights. The tractor train will be out tomorrow, so I can’t wait to get photos with Joshua and the kids!
Tags: Amber, Christmas, Jillian, Joshua, Wells, Wells Branch, Wesley
This year we got our Christmas tree at Home Depot. Which makes me a little sad because I really enjoy the hours of agonizing over which of a thousand identical trees is the just the right one. Unfortunately the trees in Texas are terrible and Costco wasn’t selling, so we went to the hardware store. On the upside it came with a 90 day return policy which might come in hand if we don’t need a Valentine’s Day tree.
The kids had a great time decorating it just the same. They were almost busting at the seams to get the ornaments out of the boxes.
We let them do nearly all of the decorating.
So we had a little bit of bunching …
To encourage a more even distribution Amber and I got involved.
And of course we needed our traditional tree topper, a large glass snowman.
While Amber was up north we added some chains with the “lick-and-stick” paper that YaYa sent. The kids liked putting them together better than I would have expected and I really like how they look on the tree. Wesley wanted to send a photo of the tree to YaYa so we took this one (J was asleep).
After the chains we did tinsel. I don’t know what we were thinking. The kids loved it of course. We’ll probably need to buy a new vacuum cleaner after sucking up all the extra from the floor.
And of course the final product:
In the Urgent Care, Avery Ranch, Austin, TX
Medically speaking, the last week has been kind of traumatic for Wesley. We started out last Saturday with Wesley taking a tumble and cracking his head on the door jamb. There was a lot of blood (but we managed to get it out of all the clothes!) and we just couldn’t get it to stay closed even with butterfly bandages. We weren’t sure if he’d need them, but we took Wesley to an urgent care and sure enough he ended up with three stitches. Amber was babysitting for a friend so Wesley and I drove out to the nearest place open (about 25 minutes away) and actually had a pretty good time. We talked and goofed off, looked at fish at the Chinese restaurant next door, drove around looking at Christmas lights and of course had ice cream when we got home. He did really well, by which I mean he screamed bloody murder when he was getting the stitches and anesthetic (two shots), but didn’t struggle.
Looking at his stitches the next day.
On top of the stitches we also had Wesley’s four year checkup scheduled. Wesley hates going to the doctor’s office because he hates getting “pokes”. At four years there are a bunch. In all he ended up getting 5 shots and two flu spray mists up his nose.
Wesley’s checkup went fine. He is growing well and aside there were no concerns.
- Weight: 38.75 lbs (75th centile)
- Height: 41.25 in (75th centile)
- BMI: 16.0 (65th centile)
We were surprised to learn that at 4 they also do urine and blood work. If you think getting a shot is terrifying, getting blood drawn is much, much worse. At first Amber tried to hold Wesley in her lap, but he was struggling too much so I had to hold him. He is getting so strong! I was a little afraid he’d snap a bone the way he was struggling. Imagine the shots for that. Again he screamed like you wouldn’t believe, but once it was started he actually watched the blood being drawn and had lots of good questions. And it wasn’t all bad. He got to pee in a cup!
We made a "Not at home" rule for peeing in cups.
On Friday we had to go back and get the stitches removed. By this time Wesley was terrified of going to the doctor. He even started begging me to take out his stitches at home, which I probably would have done had Amber been home to help hold him still. Plus one of his vaccines (DPT we think) had caused his leg to swell up so I wanted to have it looked at. His poor left thigh is about 1.5 inches bigger around than the other. It is stiff and quite warm. The doctor looked at it and said it occurs in about one in thirty vaccinations (though it is getting less frequent since they have changed the composition of the shot). I had the same reaction in my arm to the same shot a few years ago (a booster I got while working at the UW) so I guess it’s genetic.
So for those of you keeping track:
- Shots: 7 (5 vaccines, 2 anesthetic)
- Sprays up the nose: 2 ( 1 per nostril)
- Blood draws: 1
- Stitches: 3 (six pokes in all: in one side, out the other)
- Unusual and painful reaction to a vaccine: 1
- Pees in a cup: 1
Tags: Wesley