I started my Christmas knitting last night.
Right now: a Hitchhiker scarf. If I get really ambitious I might do another one for someone else. But I might not be that ambitious. I also have to decide whether to go through with my first idea of knitting a couple of facecloths and pairing them with nice soap and maybe a nice hand cream as an anonymous gift-exchange gift, or if people might thing that was a cheesy gift.
I don't know. I'm always happy to get nice soap, but I know that's me and not everyone feels that way, and there is an old taboo about giving soap as a gift (the implication being that the person needs to use it), so I'm not really sure there. (I might just buy the gift-exchange gift this year. It's supposed to be $10 or under and some people in my group are incredibly good at finding stuff on good sales and squirreling it away. But I guess I don't like shopping that much because I find it really hard to do that, I'm not good at just going out with nothing in mind to buy.).
Maybe do like I did one previous year and get a couple of nice coffee mugs and pair them with fancy teas and coffee and maybe a little box of cookies.
(And why should I care anyway? The person or people that I suspect might find it cheesy are people whose opinions I probably shouldn't hold in high esteem, anyway. I don't know what it is with me and wanting to please people who have said snarky things to me in the past. It's like I want to convince them they were wrong or something, and really, with the "mean girls" of the world, it's very hard to do that.)
I don't know. It's going to be like 100 degrees again this weekend. It's too hot to start thinking about the holidays. September has to be survived first. (Despite that, I might still do baked beans this weekend. I do have a packet of bison meat to try to make into tacos (I think that's my plan) but other than that, I don't really have any food "ahead." And I lost the crab salad I had made last night....I dropped the bowl this morning and it smashed, broken glass and crab salad all over the kitchen floor. Ugh. And it was my small glass mixing bowl, which I used for lots of stuff. I guess I have to go see if I can find a new one to buy.)
5 comments:
Instead of soap and washcloths, what about a potholder and some spices or some other interesting variation of food (tea?)? The same amount of effort but perhaps a bit less 'loaded' in terms of the 'you smell' stuff (which until you wrote about it I never thought about).
I may have just left three of the same comments. Argh.
I like the washcloth/soap/handcream idea. I also like the potholder/spices idea. AND I like the mug/coffee/tea idea. I think all of these are excellent gifts. I think that people understand that with a money constraint that giving a gift made yourself like a potholder or a washcloth adds a special touch to a rather humdrum gift.
I also started buying fancy soap b'c I realized life is too short for crap soap. Really nice soap given as a gift means a lot to me.
I've never heard of the no soap gift prohibition. Wonder how the folks who think that way explain all the gift baskets on sale with soap, bubble bath, lotion, etc. I like getting those although I find it hard to actually use them ... I'm "saving" them for who knows what occasion.
Ooh....the spices idea. maybe next time I order from Penzey's I should add on a few commonly-used, commonly-liked ones, and do a potholder/small kitchen towel/spices gift bag.
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