Cracking Christmas Giveaway: Day Five

Onto Day Five of the giveaway - hope you're enjoying it so far!

My thoughts often turn to crafts at this time of year.  I like to make a new beaded bauble or two for the tree each year - look above to see one I made earlier - but I'll give anything a go.  If you're anything like me, today's prize will be perfect for you!  It's:

An incredibly cute Scruff the Dog knit kit from Gift Horse Kits

If you're a knitting novice, don't worry! This kit is designed especially for beginners and is super easy and satisfying to make. It comes with absolutely everything you need to make your very own Scruff and all you need to do is pick your preferred colour, then get out the needles. It's even easier to complete than the bunnies kit I made, and frankly if I managed that then anyone can!  If you remain unconvinced by your level of knitting ability then it'd still make a fab present for someone - the kits are beautifully packaged.

Pop your details in the box to enter - you know the drill by now.

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The Odd Socks Christmas Gift Guide

There are a lot of Christmas gift guides floating around the internet at the moment.  I love them.  I adore buying presents anyway but with gift guides, someone else has done all the hard work and found amazing things and shops for you.  What's not to like?  If I have a slight beef with them (and I do), it's that they tend to be very specific in their categories - "For him" "For her" "For the kids" "For your mum".  That's not my approach to present buying, or to life in general.  Why categorise things and people?  Just buy good stuff! I got my dad the Adventure Series by Enid Blyton for Christmas last year (which he LOVED btw) and I highly doubt that would have appeared on any of these "For Your Dad" lists.

I hereby dub this The Odd Socks Guide to Shiny, Marvellous Things on the Internet.

Catchy, huh?  Basically, these are amazing things I have discovered. Not your obvious things from places like ASOS and Amazon (although I do very strongly recommend the waterproof mp3 player from my last post cos it's brilliant) because you're bound to come across those yourself during the course of your mooches around the internet. These are just things I've found that I like. If they match the taste of someone you need to buy a present for, get them.  Or just buy them for yourself.  I won't judge.

The beauty of craft kits is that you have a choice: either give a crafty person the kit as a present or buy it, make it yourself and give the finished item to a non-crafty person instead.  I came across Gift Horse Kits on Twitter earlier this year and tackled Project Bunny as one of my summer things to do.  The kit was absolutely wonderful - very nicely packaged up, contained absolutely everything and had some brilliant, clear instructions.  I'd definitely recommend buying or making the Little Red Ted, Love Cats and amazingly cute Robins.

I went on holiday with Heather, the lovely and very creative person behind Custard Bean, earlier in the year.  Look, you can see her larking around in this post! She makes the most beautiful quilts and bunting, some of which decorated our holiday cottage in fine style.  Her etsy store is stocked up with fab handmade festive goodies at the moment, including this tweed stocking and a range of handmade tree decorations.  Or if you know someone with a Kindle, I'm sure they could do with a good Kindle cover.

Book lovers may drool at this one.  It's the Delightful Reading Spa at Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath.  If you live in that part of the world then frankly I don't know why you haven't bought this already.  For the rest of us, it's worth going all the way there just for this.  It's got to be worth every single penny of the £55 it costs.  Book heaven.

Cat fans, feast your eyes upon The Cat Gallery.  One of the volunteers at work introduced me to this website after I went a bit mad at the sight of her brilliant cat earrings one day.  She'd been to the actual shop in York but the website is just as much fun.  They sell pretty much everything cat related that you might ever need.  I'm sure you know a person (or cat) who'd appreciate the Crazy Cat Lady mug, glow in the dark collar, LED miaowing keyring or black cat roll holder.

I like a good papercut.  No, not the incredible painful yet minor injury, the craft!  Rob Ryan stuff is beautiful and readily available but it's worth seeking out some of the other online alternatives, such as Folk Art Papercuts on Etsy.  It's full of stunningly intricate designs available as prints or cards - the above picks are the Folk Art House, Long Necked Cat with Birds, Hillside Village and Horse prints.

My main beef with buying things from the USA is that, unless the total cost is very cheap, you get clobbered with customs and handling charges before the Royal Mail deigns to let you have your parcel. Threadless were awesome anyway but now they are straight at the top of my Hurrah List (yes, there is such a thing) for giving you a postage price which includes pre-paid customs so you know exactly how much you're spending. Also, their sale has been extended until this evening (28th Nov) so you can get loads of their tshirts for $9.99 (about £6ish) each. BUY BUY BUY!

I recommend Toile About You (aka my favourite print in the history of the world EVER), Bunnythmetic and Paper Zoo totes, the Runnin' Rhino iPhone case, and Oscar's Hideout and Captain Obvious tshirts.  But the beauty of the site is that you can pretty much pick your favourite design and you've got a whole array of tshirt sizes and styles to choose from, plus quite often there are other products (phone cases, bags, socks etc) in that design as well.

Sweets!  None of your cynical "oh aren't we retro, lol" packaging here.  This is proper stuff, sold by people who know what they're talking about.  A Quarter Of is my go-to website when I want something delicious and sweet.  Candy necklaces, Christmas Pud sweets, Iron Brew humbugs (zomg, they are truly amazing), vampire teeth... if they don't sell them, they probably aren't worth buying.

The Literary Gift Company is a truly glorious website.  I can browse through it with quite a number of friends in mind and immediately find about 96 things they'd love.  It's that good and that full of fab, quirky items.  I know exactly which people would like the procrastination pen, I Capture The Castle earrings, Go Away I'm Blogging mug, Penguin cufflinks and Shhh mug.

If you're buying for people who are a bit more academic than literary, check out their sister site Present Indicative. We all need a Votes for Women teatowel...

Jezebel Charms is one of my very favourite Etsy shops.  Some Etsy jewellery shops can be a bit samey but this really isn't.  It's full of wonderfully designed and unusual items that span the genres from Austen to Shakespeare to music and steampunk.  The Jane Austen quote necklace, Sherlock Holmes cuff, Regency dancing earrings and antique London map cuff are all fabulous.

This Summer Redux

I challenged myself back at the start of the summer to undertake some fun things. No dull to-do lists for me! As autumn is drawing in, it seems time to look back at the list and see how I got on.

Watch some outdoor theatre

DONE - Macbeth and The Importance of Being Earnest.  Very different performances and theatre companies but they were both absolutely brilliant.

Book an autumn break with the girls from work

DONE - I am very excited.  Only a month or so to go!

Go to the Edinburgh Festival

DONE - Oh it was fantastic. We squeezed in 12 shows in two and a bit days so it was somewhat hectic but there was time for cider drinking in the sunshine and we even found time to go and see Chris Hoy's gold postbox.

Make a complicated cake - possibly Dobos Torte. See here for a mega review of someone else trying it!

NOT DONE - unfortunately the only real opportunity I had for this was the mid August for family birthdays but I ran out of time and the moment passed.  I still want to make it but it seems a bit pointless to make such a big cake just to take into work.  Hmmmm.  Someone have a birthday please.

Complete Project Bunny

DONE - and I am fricking pleased with myself.  I am still a wibbly knitter: I panic and then get hysterically giggly when casting on (seriously, why do I do this?) and my tension is terrible (probably cos I'm tense) but I made them and they look awesome, even if I do say so myself.

Have a smashing time at the Olympics

DONE - see this post for more thoughts and pictures.  What a truly amazing day it was.

Take my lovely new tent camping again

I took no photos of the tent: it was too wet. This was in a cafe in Church Stretton.

DONE - it was ridiculously rainy. We got drenched.  We then had bits of tent draped over the bannisters and dining room table for a week.  Still had a cracking time though!

Go to the football - either a pre-season Liverpool game or keep it local and go and watch Marine

DONE - I took the menfolk to see Liverpool vs Bayern Leverkusen as their birthday present.  Then someone crashed into the back of the car on the way home.  Fun eh?

Try a Zumba class

HA! You think you're getting a photo of me in exercise gear.  Think again.

DONE - I went by myself and everything.  This may not seem much but I get a bit panicky about doing things like that for the first time so I'm impressed I actually went.  It wasn't too bad either! I managed the whole thing and didn't ache afterwards so perhaps I'm fitter than I thought. 

Have a picnic with Shell and Baby Jack because I just don't see the two of them enough

NOT DONE - bad Alex.  I have basically had no free weekends since about June and besides, have you seen the weather? The one nice period of weather we've had and Shell is on holiday in Turkey - lucky thing!

Go on a Ferry 'cross the Mersey! Would you believe I've never been on it?

NOT DONE - Yeah, I've still never been on it.  Stupid busy weekends.  I am hopefully I can go at some point this month.

Do or buy something a bit frivolous and not feel guilty about it

DONE - Wheeeeeeee!  I bought this fine gentleman.  I did not need a new bag, I just wanted one.  Plus I used a voucher so it's frivolous, yet moneysaving at the same time.

Chill out.  I am becoming increasingly incapable of not checking my phone for texts/emails/tweets/Instagram updates/blog comments every 5 minutes.  I know it's a terrible habit.  I'll have to lock it in a box or something

SORT OF DONE - I'm trying.  Not entirely sure how I measure success on this point but I'm better at ignoring the phone and concentrating on tv/a book instead.

Write 15,000 more words of The Second Novel 

REALLY NOT DONE - Oh god, total and utter failure on this one.  I've done about 850 words.  I've been plotting out bits of The Third Novel but it would probably help if I finished this one first.  Autumn task!

Finally, if I can fit it in (cos my weekends are quite packed!), go to the zoo.  I've never been to the zoo.

NOT DONE - have still never been to the zoo.  Waaaah.  Someone take me to the zoo please.

Hmmm, nine successes, one maybe, five failures. Not too bad. Here's to an equally fun filled autumn!