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 moan, and more knitting...

I'm really struggling with this pregnancy now.  My bp is up (which I've never had a problem with before), my pelvis is hurting all the time despite the painkillers even when I'm resting, and I'm so slow on the crutches it took me 20 minutes to pay for the parking and walk back to the car at the hospital today.  Just as well there's only a few weeks to go now.

Still, I had a lovely midwife at the hospital today, we were discussing genetic syndromes which was very interesting (she has a different one in her family), and they were very nice about carrying my stuff around for me so I didn't have to struggle with coats and bags as well as crutches, which makes a huge difference.  Still no induction though, as, in the words of the doctor, 'it wouldn't work'.  I don't want a long slow labour (or worse), so I'm glad not to be induced, but I do wish Lentil would hurry up and make up her mind to come out - she's obviously still quite happy in there for the moment!

So, to take my mind off things I've started two blankets.  One is the diagonal baby blanket, in a lovely, soft, multicoloured chenille yarn that is horrible to knit with.  I've had it in my stash for ages having got it very cheap (probably because no-one else likes knitting with it either) and was wondering what to do with it - it needed an easy pattern that doesn't involve being able to see your stitches.  It will make a lovely baby blanket though, and if I make a mistake you can't see it at all.

The other is the pinwheel blanket, I love the geometricity (is that a word?) of the pattern and am really enjoying knitting it, though as I'm doing it in sock wool it could take a while.  I might try it again in some much bulkier wool afterwards to see what the difference is, but I chose the sock wool because I just love the colours, and I'm using 4mm needles so it's quite lacy in a way.  It's nice to be back in the knitting habit after the post-Christmas hiatus.

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?

The white stuff

It's snowing.  Again.  Need I say more?  And at 35 weeks pregnant (nearly 36!) with a dodgy pelvis and using crutches to get around, not to mention the car, that's not particularly good news.  But I love the snow.  Especially days like today when the sun shone down and threw the hills into relief.  We even managed to get up the Torside road to see the views - it looks a lot more wild and remote and snowy at the moment than it usually does.  Just wish I could get out and walk.  Friends of ours are off to a cottage in Wick this week, I'm very envious.

We went sledging yesterday, Hannah had a whale of a time going down on her own, very brave of her, and Steffie slept through the whole thing.  Then we came back to tea and mince pies, followed by fish and chips for tea.  It doesn't get any better.

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!

catching up 2: family

So, another post on what we've been up to over the last few months.  Today - family.  Well, children mainly.

Crafty activities, involving paint (lots of paint)...

...and other exciting things (those are pipe cleaners stuck in universal meds bottle bungs, of which we have a lot, and twirled around a pencil with Daddy's help to make great hair).

Not to mention a bit of building...

...and several birthdays (two down, one to go, and that's before Christmas).

 

And finally, hair long enough to go in pigtails - so cute! (I know, I'm biased.)

Catching up 1: apples

Wow, it's been a long time since the last post.  I am a lot more pregnant than I was!  I haven't been feeling great which is why there hasn't been any posting, but I have been squirrelling away the photos ready for when I do start posting again.

So here are the first few.  I've tried to theme them, so today it's...

Apples.

We have two apple trees in our garden, planted about 3 or 4 years ago, and this year (like last) we got around 50 apples off each tree.  They're supposed to be cordons but have gone a bit mad because I keep forgetting to prune them.

These are our first apples, I can't remember quite what variety they are but I think they're Discovery or something similar.  They are an early variety and are sweet with a pink blush to the flesh and the children love them.

These are the second lot from the later tree and they are definitely a variety called Sunset.  I love them, they are very much like coxes in flavour but they are a little sharp after eating the others for a month or so!

We got some beauties off this trees this year, and I am inordinately proud of them (especially considering I don't actually do anything and the apples just arrive - I can take no credit whatsoever!)  I particularly love the fact that for at least two months in the early autumn we are completely self sufficient in apples - we get through a lot of apples most weeks - and it saves us quite a bit of money too.

My Grand Plan (I have a few of these hanging around, they will happen eventually... I hope...) is to remove the privet hedge down one side of the garden and replace it with a fence and fruiting cordons, mostly apples but maybe the odd plum and pear in there too.  The other, slightly shadier, side has fruit bushes down it which are a little overgrown in places but do give us a reasonable crop of soft fruit (redcurrants/blackcurrants/gooseberries/blackberries) and I have a black elder ( variety Black Lace) which I love and which we can make pink elderflower cordial from.  All these were planted back before I had kids, so come to think of it it must be the apples' fourth season because they would have been planted before I had Hannah.  Actually it might be their fifth, I lose track these days.