holiday gift/ornament exchanges

I've decided to participate in a couple of holiday exchanges this year, in honor of Astin and Ember. The first one I found out about is an ornament swap hosted by Jenni at Demeter's Feet. The second is a gift exchange over at Faces of Loss. Neither are specific to any particular religion or holiday--they are both open to anyone who wants to participate. The one at Faces of Loss is a little more flexible--you can make or buy a gift as long as it costs less than $20. The Ornament Swap is a Secret Santa style exchange of handmade holiday ornaments.

Finding these gift exchanges reminded me of something I wanted to do before Christmas this year--I wanted to make tiny stockings for Astin and Ember. I made them up today. I'll post pics on the projects page, soon. I know it's still quite early, but I'm at a standstill in my afghan project, since I ran out of the color yarn I'm using on the border, and I wanted to knit something. I ended up using some hand spun yarn I got last summer at a tourist spot while visiting family. It's un-dyed wool of varying shades of gray/brown, from a light, almost white, to quite dark. I used two different skeins, but there were still points in the project where you could barely tell the difference between the two "colors". Still, I'm quite happy with the results, as each stocking has far more personality than they would if I'd used store-bought yarn.