Merry Christmas!

Well, the replacement Christmas trees never happened, but we now have our big one back much to Hannah's relief.  The knitted decorations were excellent:

There were all sorts, from fluffy baubles to proper tiny socks.  Very cool.

We have had a lovely Christmas at my mum's, lots of rest and food, and lots of presents to be unwrapped.  We are now back home and I have an essay to churn out by Saturday, so I must get my brain in gear.

Merry Christmas!

The week of elving

I am particularly enjoying SouleMama's week of elving this week.  Today is fabric gift bags, which I love - I did a few last year and hope to do more next year, but this year I just don't have time.  Also there were little trees made from fir branches stuck in clay - memo to self: try this with the kids!  Our Christmas tree has disappeared to be with lots of others at a Christmas tree festival, representing the knitting group and therefore covered in knitted decorations.  I am greatly looking forward to seeing them all at the weekend.  In the meantime, and to help Hannah with her 'we need to get ready for Christmas don't we Mummy?' fixation, we need a substitute, and these look like a great idea.  I'll have to get out and see what branches I can find.  I'm thinking a big one for decorations and little ones for the kids to glitter.  We haven't had the glitter out yet this Christmas, and we need to. I feel a glittery making moment coming on.

The wool, it has arrived...

...and much knitting has ensued.

So the wool for the lacy cardi arrived today and I got very excited and cast on straight away and did 18 rows of the back. If I carry on like this I might even finish in time (it needs to be done by 2nd July but that may be pushing my knitting speed way too far). Tonight I knitted watching a programme about Atlantis on iplayer (it featured Santorini rather heavily and we went there for our honeymoon so it was nice to see it on tv, as well as the programme being interesting in its own right), and then I watched Junior Apprentice. I still think I prefer the adult version but this has grown on me over the weeks, and is quite entertaining. I do wonder what the 'process' might do to impressionable teenagers, but I guess if they've got this far they can't be too lacking in self confidence.

I forsee a weekend of knitting and tea in brilliant sunshine and good company, with (and here we get into the realms of fantasy) lots of sleep. I can but dream.

Musings, and WIPs...

We had a manic (but good) weekend, what with the church open day and Hadfield carnival. At both we were promoting the Glossopdale Food Co-operative, and I've already had one email requesting the order form (thanks Jennifer!). The weather at the carnival was at least bettet than last year, though that's not saying a lot, it was very cold and wet and horrible last year. This year it rained at first but it brightened up later on, and it was warmer too. As we are camping next weekend we are thoroughly obsessed with the weather in our house at the moment.

I've just realised I can post from my ipod and therefore whilst feeding, so there might be a lot more very random posts coming along now. Especially during the long night feeds. It's 6am and this is Rebekah's second feed of the day. In some ways she's growing way too fast, in others (night feeding being one) I can't wait for her to get a bit older. (Actually, I'm not sure I can think of mamy more, four months is such a lovely age. She's watching and smiling and chuckling and chatting and rolling and reaching and grabbing, need I go on? Yes, they grow way too quickly.)

Well, we've switched sides so I'm now typing with me left hand, not nearly as quick. On a knitting front I have been doing a bit to my clapotis of late, but have now started another darkside cowl. I am also going to be making a little lacy cardy for a friend, just waiting for the wool to come to start that, and I'm also going to be making a wedding present for my cousin, so that lot should keep me busy and the needles steaming.

Make do and knit

We had a K1S2 group outing to Make Do and Knit today, and had a great time!  R was very good and slept most of the time.  Oh, there were some wonderful yarns and fibres, in gorgeous colours... mmm... And we had fun trying big knitting with Ingrid Wagner, spinning with Kate from a mill in Halifax,  drooling over buttons and just stroking lots of yarn.  Photos to follow!

Pin wars

I bought myself some new pins the other week, because I don't have enough left in the old box for most projects.  I thought they were pretty much the same as the old ones, a pin's a pin, right?  Apparently not.  These pins are rubbish, the attrition rate per project is astounding.  Worse than slightly bent pins is what happened to these two:

 

That kink went right down between the feed dogs and got stuck.  I've never seen that happen - usually either the pin or the needle breaks.  I've since had one more do this, and then one that shattered, and I mean shattered, the needle (think bits flying everywhere and Chris threatening to make me wear safety goggles).  

So, I've gone back to the old pins.  No problem there, and I've now finished the mini-quilt project I was working on, and yes, it did get finished in time for Saturday.  It was a 90-patch quilt, for my Nana's 90th birthday:

For the observant among you, the other 9 patches are on the back.

Lastly, I managed to get a photo of the pinwheel blanket in progress, as I was transferring it onto the next size cable:

 

It's quite a bit bigger now, each round is over 300 stitches, and I've gone up to the longest cable.  I'm going to try and keep going till I've finished the ball, no point having a small amount of yarn left over now is there?

Currently working on...

Time for the usual (occasional) round up:

Reading - Colour: Travels through the paintbox by Victoria Finlay. 

Found this in the Oxfam bookshop and am enjoying it a lot, especially as I've just finished indigo and am now on violet (my favourite colours).  Very interesting, even if it is more about pigments than dyes.  Next up is the reading group book, The Family Tree by Carole Cadwalladr, which will probably be a breastfeeding book, if I can remember how to read while feeding.

Knitting - Pinwheel blanket, as blogged earlier.  I've finished the squishy baby blanket, which has turned out very soft and squishy and worth doing even if the yarn was a nightmare, so I can now concentrate on the pinwheel.  Currently it measures about 12 inches across, so a fair bit more to go then.

Sewing - currently in between projects, I've just finished felt monsters (had the craft workshop today, and had lots of kids making monsters - they were brilliant, loads of creativity and perseverance and quite a bit of good sewing!) but there is another project in the pipeline, though as the deadline is next Saturday and the baby is due on Wednesday, I may have left it a bit late.  Ooops.

A plastic-free Christmas?

It occurred to me this year just how much we use plastic in the disposable bits of Christmas - namely wrapping.  So I determined to try to reduce the amount of it I used.  So, how did I do?  Well, I still used sellotape (sorry, sticky tape) and paper to wrap up most of the presents.  A few got wrapped in homemade fabric bags, tied with a fircone glued on to a pipe cleaner.  The beauty of this system was that the tag could be threaded onto the pipe cleaner, and it made a nice Christmas decoration once off the present. 

The fabric bags themselves were an attempt to find an alternative to cling film in which to package sweets (homemade fudge and the like).  In the past when giving these sorts of gifts, each piece has been individually wrapped in cling film, a very tedious, and plasticky, process.  I thought about boxes, but didn't have time to make that many.  So fabric bags it was.  I think I made six in all, out of red gingham material so they could be reused for anything (plus its cheaper than Christmas material).  I think they looked pretty cool (eco-chic maybe?!) but I think some in the family were a bit bemused!  I stuck to paper for the kids, after all, what's Christmas if you can't rip the paper off presents?

Next year my goal is to abolish the use of sellotape so that the paper can at least be recycled, or even (horror of horrors) reused if it's big enough.  I have abiding memories of my mother assiduously cutting the sellotape off wrapping paper on Christmas afternoon so that the (usually very crumpled) bits of paper in the middle could be reused the following year.  How come it never occurred to us not to use sellotape in the first place?

catching up 3: craftyness

And now for the third installment: what we have been up to on the crafting front.  Well, me mainly.  And this might be more than one post...

Firstly a couple of presents for friends' children's birthdays:

A cross between fuzzy felts and Mr Potato Head.  The recipient liked it though.

And a crayon roll, I love these and H has already put in a request for hers.  I particularly like the flowery/fruity fabric, so much so that I used it on another project:

This is a sandwich wrap, something I've been thinking about for a while now and I finally got around to making one (well, two actually, otherwise the kids will fight over who gets it).  I'll go into it more another time.

 

My birthday present from C was a day's dyeing course with Debbie of DT Craft and Design, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I'm now hooked!  The top picture is a sample I bought home from the day and knitted up into wristlets - I'm very chuffed with the double x pattern that's come out, couldn't do that again if I tried!  The second picture is some wool I dyed the other day for a Christmas present - excellent fun and even more personal than buying ready dyed wool.  I love it.  I love playing with colour - just need to buy some more dyes now... and some more wool... roll on Christmas!

Current knitting WIPs

I'm still trying to find the fingerless mitts so that I can a) count the rows and see if its the tension that's the problem (my sister reckons it might be as she had something similar happen), and b) take photos.  I've obviously put them away from prying fingers but I cannot remember where.  Ah well, they'll turn up eventually.  But I'd really like to take them to Greenbelt this weekend.

I have started a lace scarf which is interesting, but the yarn is horrible (it's squeaking on my needles - yuk!) so I think this might be a swatch rather than the full thing.  I'm not sure if I like lace yet or if I need something more mindless.

So I'm working on the marble jumper, which is just getting to the interesting stage.  I have spent some of this evening working out what size I want the kangaroo pocket to be, so having done that I can go ahead and knit it now!  I think this might be the holiday project to take with me.  Pictured is the back which I finished last week - I love the colours in this yarn.

Fingerless mitts again

Ok, so I finished the second fingerless mitt last night - only to find that I can't count and it's quite a bit shorter below the wrist than the other one. I counted rows and everything. Must be being pregnant. So now I have the choice either to wear them as they are, and the bit that shows the most is okay, or frog the second one and start again, which I'm not sure I can be bothered to do. Gutted.

Fingerless mitts - nearly not a WIP

I've nearly finished the fingerless mitts I started a long time ago - the second one has taken a while to do. I got to the exciting part of binding off and casting on for the thumb hole while waiting to see the midwife this morning - I'd just finished casting on when she called me in! Had to bundle everything away quickly.

I like knitting while waiting for appointments as I can still hear my name being called and can put it away quickly, plus you get some great comments sometimes. My best one was whilst waiting in antenatal clinic last time (lots of knitting gets done in antenatal), a bloke from Africa (he did tell me where but I can't remember) came up and said how nice it was to see someone knitting, he used to do a lot at home and they were all taught in school, plus apparently the boys were very into it. I keep telling Chris he should try it...

Crafting and cars

I've been doing quite a bit of crafting since my last post, but since it was for gifts they went out of the house before they could be photographed! I made some bunting with her name on for the birthday girl of a party Hannah was invited to - it was made out of felt with some ribbon from my stash across the top, felt letters on it and decorated with some flower gems. I also made a crayon roll for a very sweet little boy at Hannah's nursery who has been looking after her since she started back in January. He will be going to big school in September so I made him this with some blue material lined with acid green, and we put some pens in it too. Hannah made a thank you card to go with it. Hope he liked it.

On a completely different tack we've been looking at cars recently and today we went to Bolton to look at our first one 'in the flesh' so to speak. It was an enormous van-like thing with seven seats, we liked it generally and the ride/drive was good, but this particular vehicle wasn't for us. Poor Hannah was distraught when we didn't buy it and came back home in our old car.

Very exciting...

Another long gap - we have been going through a time of sleeplessness, and I haven't had the energy to do much. There is however an exciting project on the horizon - more about that another time! It has been occupying my brain quite a bit lately, but now I need to actually do some sewing and therefore I need to go to a fabric shop. Oh dear, oh dear, what a shame.

The latest project

Okay, so this was me set up for an evening's sewing last week. Table free of stuff (it's piled on one of the chairs), makeshift ironing board (two towels), iron on, and inspirational flowers in the background. And what you can't see is that the kettle is on as well. Ah, bliss.

And what was I making? Well, this:A blanket for my freind's little boy, who was one two days before Steffie. (Not that his present was ready on time. But near enough.) I couldn't resist that fleece when I saw it in the shop.

Palm Sunday

We had a great time at church this morning waving palms around, and then making Easter bonnets. These were my team's efforts - the one I was working on ended up with blue furry ears (on the left) which were very cute, but thankfully I didn't have to wear it.
This was the winning creation:
There were some fantastic bonnets, and it was great seeing the kids and the adults all having fun together. Even better was the little ones being taken off and having their own fun so that their parents (ie us!) could join in with the general crafty mayhem. Though Chris did take advantage of the time and slope off with a friend to play on the computer for an hour.

And also - couldn't resist this one of Hannah modelling the bunny ears she made on Friday at nursery. She wore them for the rest of the day.

Very nice to have the camera up and running again - turns out it was an issue between the card reader and Vista, so having found the cable I can download (or is that upload?) pictures to the computer once again. I was a bit worried I was going to end up with a card full of pictures I couldn't do anything with.

Mothers weekend

We've had a great weekend celebrating my mum's birthday (yes, a BIG one!) and Mothers Day with all my family. Hannah and Steffie have hugely enjoyed playing with their big cousins, not to mention Auntie and Uncle as well as Grandma and Grandad. So many relatives in one weekend! And we have a new record for the largest number of people we can seat in our kitchen - 10 (including Steffie in her highchair).

My sister and I had made Mum a pair of cushions - one knitted (by her) and one sewn (by me). We couldn't finish them until they came down on Friday night so it was a long evening of sewing, but we got them done. We are very pleased with the results, but as usual I completely forgot to take photos before they disappeared to their new home. (And I'd bought a new card for the camera specially.)

I am now laid low with the sickness bug that is doing the rounds at the moment - great for Mothers Day huh. At least I am getting to lie around all day.

Spring colours

I'm currently really into this colour combination - the leafy spring green with a beautiful bright red. A couple of times recently I've found myself stir-frying leeks and red peppers, a gorgeous combination and pretty tasty too! I think it's that promise of spring that is in the sunshine right now, coupled with a bit of a longing for summer. I don't usually go for green but I'm finding myself more drawn to it lately, especially the acid/leafy shades.

Knitting circle

This morning was a knitting morning. I arrived at the church coffee morning to find not one but two friends already there and already with their knitting out! So our two small ones roamed around and (in Steffie's case) nicked other people's toast while we knitted. What's more we were all knitting with dpns much to everyone else's amusement. It was interrupted only by a quick dash to save Steffie from falling down the chancel steps, and by the eating of cake. Magic.

The Library, and the joys of a glue gun

Steffie and I spent some time in the library this afternoon. The library in our village is tiny, one room that would be big-ish if it were my living room, but is small, sweet, for a library. And yet there are all sorts of books in there! Steffie spent the time pulling books off shelves in a very determined, how-many-can-I-pull-off-before-Mummy-notices-and-feels-she-ought-to-put-them-back kind of way. And as I was engrossed in books, she pulled off a lot before I noticed.

On the crafting front, it should have been knitting night at a friend's tonight but she had to cancel, so I have been playing with some pegs, some felt shapes and my new glue gun, just experimenting to see what kind of things look best. Not sure any of them do, but I'll keep trying. The glue gun is great fun though, I haven't used one since I was at school, how have I managed this long without one? I can stick anything!