The Christmas Tradition That Almost Was

A few weeks ago I saw a great little mitten ornament pattern on the Oliver + S website. Liesl, the owner of Oliver + S, graciously made this pattern available free of charge. On her personal website, Disdressed, Liesl shared that last year she made the mittens into a non-traditional advent calendar -- sewing one mitten each day, with the corresponding number hand embroidered onto each mitten.

Brilliant, I said, wishing that I could whip up a mitten per day until Christmas. With some encouragement and advice from Liesl (she suggested cutting out all the pattern pieces in advance), I decided to give it a go.

I was beyond excited about this project. That very night (back on November 30th), I sat down at the dining room table and cut out all 48 mittens pieces, assembly-line style:

 

Does the fabric look familiar? It's leftover fabric from Dag's jacket! I used fabric scraps to cut out the mitten cuffs and ribbon that I already had -- making this project entirely free.  While I cut, Dagim worked on his kung-fu:

Seriously, I have no idea where he comes up with this stuff.  Nobody in our house does this and he doesn't watch TV.  Boys really are different from girls, huh?

Each day, I sewed a mitten during nap time (I "cheated" and used a machine feather stitch rather than sewing the mitten by hand because I'm lousy at hand sewing). In the early evening, I gave Dagim his mitten for the day, with a small piece of chocolate tucked inside. Then we hung the mitten on the tree.

For awhile.

Well, for 9 days to be exact.

I just couldn't keep up with the mitten making on top of my Christmas presents. Chris encouraged me to let it go for this year. I was sad to stop the tradition-in-the-making but knew he was right. I have a tendency to take on too much (don't most of us?). I don't know when to stop or say no.

Fortunately, Dagim did not care that there were no mittens. He asked once or twice for his "treat" but then forgot about it. I hope to pick it up again next year and finish mittens 10 through 24.

I did finish his Christmas pajamas which is something I hope to do each year.  I'll unveil the pj's in their full Nutcracker glory in another post.  For now, here's a picture from the fitting:

In other holiday news (hopefully future posts will move onto a new topic), this was my first year participating in the Holiday Traditions Exchange through Meg's blog, Sew Liberated. I made a version of the holiday mitten for my partner:

I also wrote a letter with some pictures detailing our traditions, copied my favorite biscotti recipe and made a CD of holiday music.  Sadly, my partner did not reciprocate with the exchange (making it not really an exchange at all).  The  deadline to mail the package was over a week ago so I've stopped holding out hope.  So, I'm not sure if the exchange will become part of my holiday traditions or not. We'll see how generous of spirit I'm feeling next year!