Getting my gear in gear

It's hard to believe that it's been almost a year since I decided to make every staff member at my school a hand-made present. The months have ticked by and the stitches have added up by the hundreds, then thousands, and now probably hundreds of thousands. I'm so itchy to blog about them all, but I have one week and two days until I can hand them out, so I've had to make due with holding an official photo session with my after-schoolers who have now been sworn to secrecy that they won't run to their respective teachers and describe all the wonders they have seen.

It's even harder to believe that amidst all the knitting for co-workers, I've managed to make things for a few friends, a few family members, and even a few things for myself. And as far as I know, I haven't failed out of grad school yet. We won't talk about the things I did have to let slide... Let's focus on the pretty, pretty knitting!

Something I can show you now:

All the hats, get together now!

We had so much fun doing the photo shoot. I had to explain that the point of shooting knitwear is not to focus on the model, but on the knitwear. Thusly, I would be chopping off a lot of their heads... in the photos, of course. Almost everyone wanted their twenty seconds of modeling fame, and it was really fun to designate a "props mistress" (a highly cautious 5th grader with clean hands) and a bouncer (a loud, bossy 2nd grader) to keep things running smoothly in the library. It's times like these that I'm really glad I have a supportive assistant who is content to watch the footballers outside while I take the artistic types on these crazy crafty journeys.

One of the things that has kept my impatience at bay is the designing and ordering of my MOO minicards: you can design up to 100 different fronts, and they all have the same backs, and they're just so glossy and smooth and the colors are so saturated that I just want to pet them:



The fronts are all variations on "made by me for you," and the backs have places where I can write in the recipient's name, the materials I used (i.e., superwash wool) and how to take care of it (i.e., throw it in the washer! but probably lay flat to dry!). I love, love, love them. And you get 100 cards for under $20. Rock and roll. I bought a fancy Martha Stewart brand hole puncher to make tiny holes at the corners so I can string them like garment tags. Surely, that will get me through another week... you better believe there will be a big fat blog post after our staff holiday party next Friday.