Just before Christmas a group of us here in Maine got together for your typical Christmas party, but with a bit of a twist: our party was to be centered on the exchange of Christmas sweaters. How did this come about? During last year’s Christmas party the subject of garish, tacky, ugly, over-the-top Christmas sweaters came up… in our drunken excitement my sometime-friend Kathryn and I took this idea to a whole new level and vowed to make each other Christmas sweaters for the 2007 holidays. Much to Becky’s dismay, this pledge was not forgotten as the effects of alcohol wore off and time went by – in fact, our resolve to create the funniest/ugliest Christmas sweaters known to man was strengthened over time. Over the course of the year, others slowly warmed to the idea of hideous Christmas sweater creation, and a small board of advisers determined that we should do a sweater exchange in the spirit of a “secret Santa” gift exchange this year.
Now, what exactly did the “sweater construction” consist of? There were no rules for the exchange except to make the sweaters ridiculous and make them CHEAP!!! We’re talking bargain-basement sweaters from K-Mart/Target/Wal-Mart/Goodwill/Marshall’s/Your Grandma’s closet/ www.uglycheapsweaters.com. Once we got the sweaters, we were to decorate them with whatever we could find: glue, puff paint, fluffy stuff, bedazzlers, iron-on decals, yarn, small stones, cereal, assorted wheelchair parts… nothing was off limits. How did it turn out? Well, you be the judge…
(Becky’s sweater was made with reflective tape so we couldn’t use the flash!!!)
