Crochet Chores

"Would you ever change your blog post?" my mother said. "I'm sick of looking at a picture of knickers with a question mark on it."
As many of you might have suspected by now, my parents believe that this blog is for them and that they ought to star in it on a more regular basis. Sadly I have to disappoint them this evening, because today we're going to talk about the one time of the year when crocheting becomes a chore: Advent.

Advent is not that much of a deal in Ireland, but it certainly is in this part of the world. Not least because the fourth Sunday before Christmas marks the traditional opening of the Christmas markets. Much of the profit made in pre-Christmas Bavaria is probably generated by shoppers buying their seasonal presents with a couple of beakers of mulled wine (Glühwein - literally, glow wine) inside and the Christmas markets are to blame/thank for that. Anyway, the opening of the markets makes me shudder because it usually coincides with an avalanche of pre-Christmas exam correction and a tsunami of crocheted gifts.

Oh, handmade gifts. Sigh.
I hate buying presents - I basically want the giftee to tell me what they want and I'll just wrap it up - but making gifts is even hairier. For example, I thought I'd give my sister-in-law some nice cushions for her dark red sofa. Her apartment has lots of wood and bright, quirky colours, so I made some nice granny square cushions in bright, quirky colours:

Fortunately - I say 'fortunately' now, but at the time, there was a lot of inner teeth-gnashing and fist-shaking - I showed her photos of some of my cushions the last time we met in a casual, "Oh-what-do-you-think-of-these?" way. She thought the above cushions were nice, but she thought these cushions were lovely:

So I've gone back to the drawing board - or, in this case, the teeny-tiny hook and the super-skinny sock yarn. And I have two more of these to do by Christmas Eve.
Sob.