Filching (McGamma, Sarah Nye, Wendy, and Luke & Jae-Ryong Are Not Allowed to Look Until Your Packages Arrive)

I started a few Christmas gifts during the Twelve Days, as is my bad habit.  You should know that I also have the nasty habit of stealing good ideas from friends, and this year dawned no differently. Do you know how many bathmats I've sewn appliques on in the past few years?  It's laughable.  So many bathmats!

I may be moving on, though.  The same friend who introduced me to bathmat applique has now introduced me to decorating wooden things with a wood-burning pen.  And by "introduce," I actually mean, "She posted something cool she made, and now I'm shamelessly stealing the idea."








I'm clumsy and discovered the initial pencil sketch is a lot easier than the actual wood-burning, but I'm still finding it a bit addictive.  Maybe the weird chemical coating on these bamboo boards that melted and wafted into my lungs as I worked, though, has something to do with that. After I started in ignorance, I looked stuff up on the internet to discover that bamboo is not the optimal wood for wood-burning, nor, I assume, are chemicals the optimal fumes to breathe.  Ah, well.

My poor mother-in-law gets another hen item from me, but it's her own fault for having a theme in her kitchen.





Kind of funny-looking spoons for my sister-in-law, who also is probably sick of me giving her penguins, but, again, I blame her for a lifetime of loving the funny creatures.  (I have no one but myself to blame for the funny spoons.)

A salmon cutting board for my brother and sister-in-law in Alaska, because, well, Alaska.  When you can see something in real life, catch it fresh from the water, and pan-fry it in your kitchen an hour later, why wouldn't you also want it etched into a cutting board?







And, then, instead of going ahead and burning the more graphically-styled mountain design I planned to put on Luke and Jae-Ryong's cutting board, I first asked them what they would like...which turned out to be a pig!

Easy peasy piggy pie.







Psst. And finally, because I'm a loyal person, I blundered ahead and sewed animals on another bathmat. Bathmats are harder to abandon than they have any right to be.  For Bryan and Sarah, love birds of a sort...