Newly Made

The first (and second) day of our Advent Calendar

2011-12-02T14:34:00.001+13:00

Our Advent Calendar is a series of activities & outings, rather than gifts or chocolate..

The first day - Make our Advent Calendar!

(yeah, ok, that was just because I was too disorganised to have it done in time..)

Each peg has a tiny card with the activity for the day written inside it, and gets opened up & re-pegged each day.

Day 2 - Decorate our Xmas tree!!

(Yes, we have a fake tree... it was $8.47 at Kmart eight years ago.)

We have quite a few homemade decorations on our tree, but making more features quite heavily over the rest of the month (shhh!! secret.)

I'd love to see other people's activity based advent calenders too!!

My baby's baby

2011-10-28T15:20:00.000+13:00

I finished my first proper waldorf doll!

Not the best photo I'm afraid, but here she is-

Since she was for my youngest's first birthday, she has a lovely soft bamboo velour body, with just the head & upper torso fully formed under her 'clothes'. In the traditional waldorf style she is made from 100% natural fibres - cotton stretch skin fabric, the bamboo velour, carded wool fleece for stuffing, and a strange but very cool feeling wool/soy blend yarn for her (immense amount of) hair!

I knit her a little dress to wear, and crocheted a blanket too, which I haven't got a photo of yet.

I'm rather pleased with how she came out, except that the velour has a tendency to 'wick' the stuffing out :(

I'm working on a second one now, for our kindergarten's gigantic Advent Fair!

Oink.

2011-10-15T18:12:00.000+13:00

I made a pig.

Baby food.

2011-10-06T16:03:00.000+13:00

Our youngest girl is at that stage where she is wanting more variety & textures in her food, and eating quite large amounts, but our meals aren't really suitable for her yet.

We're vegetarians, we eat a lot of mexican food which can be a tad spicy for a bubba, and also because of our eldest's allergies we stay clear of the common allergenic foods for approximately the first year. When she was little that tended to mean that we often relied on the limited ranges of meat/egg/dairy/wheat free baby foods available around here, but those were often the most basic mush & quite expensive when she eats a lot!

So our solution is as follows...

She is way beyond 'the icecube stage', so we went for a roasting pan instead!

What we should have done first is to line the pan with baking paper. Turns out cooked rice sticks really well to roasting pans.

I cooked a whole heap of rice, gluten-free pasta, and red lentils (rinse these first!), to slightly past al dente, and spread them over the bottom of the pan.

Then I steamed a bunch of carrots & cauliflower, just using what we had on hand, and spread them over the previous layer -

Then same again with green beans, peas, corn & endamame -

Chucked the whole thing in the freezer, then when it was frozen I tipped it all out (ok, gouged it all out), broke it up, and popped it into little one or two portion containers!

The little containers live in the freezer, and just before her dinnertime I lift one out to defrost (doesn't take long), mix some pureed vegetables through it as a sauce, warm it up & it's ready to go!

It was a bit of cooking initially, but it makes HEAPS, and means your bub gets a good variety of foods every time, it's easier than making a little meal from scratch each night, is much cheaper than just using bought baby food (even though we do use the little 4-6m purees mixed in this), and it means you don't have to think about what to feed them if you are having something unsuitable!!

It's worked really nicely for us, so I thought I should share!

When is too much...??

2011-10-06T13:41:00.000+13:00

THIS is too much!!

For paul's birthday, I made a two layer rich vegan chocolate cake, with this concept in mind, and as such I (rightly) thought that buttercream icing would be a bit much for the filling & icing, so just did a plain cocoa + icing sugar icing... and that is where this started to go a bit wrong.. as we allll know, that sort of icing goes hard VERY fast. Too fast to be able to glue Kit-Kats on easily...

And speaking of Kit-Kats... I bought 3 family sized Kit-Kat blocks to hopefully have plenty to spare. Nuh uh. Turns out family sized Kit-Kat blocks reeeeeaallly don't break nicely. In fact, they don't so much break as shatter. Or rip they base off the bar next to them. So there was a fair amount of chocolate shaving & gluing going on.

And guess who forgot that their ribbon stash has been missing since moving house?

That all being said, it was rather delicious!! Though it was SO sweet and SO chocolatey that paul had no chance of finishing all his portion.. Even the kids had a bit left over!!! Even I had a couple of crumbs left!!!

mmm chocolate.

On a much easier note, but still a little chocolatey -

Chocolate chip Anzac biscuits from this recipe. But with chocolate chips thrown in too, cos that is how we roll.

(hey did you know that you are not ALLOWED to call them Anzac cookies?! There are strict rules about these things. I'm expecting a stern letter about those chocolate chips.)

While everyone else was at school...

2011-10-04T20:37:00.000+13:00

my happy girl was at Lopdell House Gallery doing an art workshop!

The session was called Forest Flags - "Working with triangular brightly coloured hessian, students will use a combination of fabric paints, printed fabrics, wools and felt to make a flag. The theme will relate to the importance of trees worldwide and all of the living creatures that depend on them. The finished flags will be suspended together like colourful Tibetan prayer flags. "

Needless to say, she's pretty pleased with her creation!!

Bath-tub Abuse

2011-09-23T11:17:00.000+12:00

Wow, just uncovered an ancient draft in blogger!! I can't believe how different my kids hair is lol...

So when paul directed his school production involving costuming over 360 kids, whose foolish idea was it to dye plain t-shirts?

oh. right. oops.

80 or so shirts were dyed by the 9-10 year olds who would be wearing them, but the rest..?? Well, our poor bathtub...

60+ orange low-water immersion shirts...

There were 30ish red ones & 8 brown ones too..

15m of calico LWI'ed brown-

(and an assistant)

which we cut & sewed into (custom!!) skirts & loincloths-

and the school kids made headbands and salt-dough necklaces to match-

and this lovely mess..?

purple tie-dyed shirts for all the new entrants!

the big kids used templates made from laminated card to create whatever design they liked, then sprayed with dye-

and another 40ish kids had "Tree Keeper" tees like this-

which paul sprayed with 2 interlocking stencils, this one was for the green-

and then a second for the brown.

And conveniently enough, I don't have any photos on my computer of them actually in use! Doh... But they looked pretty cool, and it was a very cost effective way to create cohesive costumes for so many kids!

The techniques we used are all explained in this post (which also shows the vintage of this project!!)

Instant Organisation Vol.2

2011-09-22T11:02:00.000+12:00

1 fat quarter + 2 small pieces of scrap elastic + this pin = a bag bag.

for keeping all those pesky plastic bags, that even us long-term-fastidious-reusable-bag users still seem to acquire, tidy!

I love really fast projects :D

(worst photo ever, sorry.)

My kitchen smells wonderful..

2011-09-21T10:47:00.001+12:00

but you wouldn't want to eat what I've been cooking!

I've been wanting to try making these beeswax lanterns for well over a year-

I had the wax ready & everything! So when another tutorial popped up on Pinterest, I finally gave it a go!!

The beeswax takes quite a while to melt, but apart from that it was quite simple! Once the wax was melted they only took a couple of minutes to make.

Now I have a couple of drops of sunshine on my kitchen bench, pooling & radiating the light, but I bet they'll look fantastic with a couple of tiny candles in them!

Instant organisation

2011-09-16T10:08:00.000+12:00

Pillowcase + large embroidery hoop + small hook = laundry bag!!

Our laundry is in a smallish cupboard in the kitchen, which doesn't have room for a big laundry hamper/basket/thingy (ok, so if the thing that you carry your clean washing around in is the basket, what is the thing you toss your dirty washing in called in your house??), and I'm trying to curb my delightful children's habit of tossing their used clothes all over the floor, so this now hangs on the back of their bedroom door for them to pop their washing into!!

Because it isn't sewn into the hoop you can just drop it into the machine at the same time if it is getting musty, and you can replace it with any pillowcase!

And the best bit is that it took all of one minute to make, awesome.

(from this Pin)

Pink

2011-09-15T12:35:00.002+12:00

It seems to come with having little girls somehow, even if you don't make a big deal out of it, they still tend towards preferring pink. So a twirly, flowery skirt trimmed with pink is sure to go down well!!

This one is a crochet pattern called Floreala, and this snuggly skirt will definitely last her for a couple of winters at least with it's elasticated waist & good length :)

And something that makes my big girl happy is the path down to our house -

The top half has been carpeted in pink flowers for at least a couple of months now & shows no sign of stopping, and just yesterday the little shrub at the bottom on the right has burst out with the first of hundreds of pink flowers too!!

The 3 Musketeers..

2011-08-24T10:44:00.003+12:00

The walls of our house are a very neutral pale sand/mushroom/chai latte kind of colour, and when they are empty they look EMPTY.

So I made something to put on one of them :-)

Based on this (pinned, of course) tutorial, they're 20x20cm canvases with photographic prints modpodged on. My kids pics didn't really work with the high-contrast treatment in the tutorial though. I chose a green ribbon because since we have those neutral walls (more like the pic below than the photo above) + a heap of timber + charcoaly black furnishings, we decided to use bright blues & greens to brighten the place up a bit, inspired by this palette from Design Seeds!

Lexi was doing her best to be almost ludicrously adorable & endearing in her photo, her little hands clasped together under her chin ever-so-sweetly, until I cropped them off the picture!!

Cushy

2011-08-20T13:43:00.004+12:00

Another Pinterest inspired project, a rainbow cushion for our playroom -

from this Design Sponge pin! Mine doesn't look as smooshy, because I haven't put the central button tuft thingy in.. I'm still undecided about it, but since this is intended as a cushion for the kids, I thought a big button in the middle would actually be not so nice for sitting on!

It was fun to make though, and will look wonderful in our rainbow themed playroom!!

(Disclaimer - having a playroom sounds terribly bourgeois, but I swear it's not lol! Our 3 middle-sized kids share a long single bedroom & the baby is in our room, so that we have a room left over as a playroom for all of their stuff... I'm certain it won't seem so spacious when they are 10-18 years old & still all sharing rooms ;-) but we love the current setup!!! )

Just Pin it! Pin it good.

2011-08-10T13:33:00.003+12:00

I've been rather distracted of late, in no small measure by Pinterest.

If you're not familiar with this new-ish procrastination phenomenon, it's a site where you can make your own virtual pinboards, then whenever you see something on the internet that you like, be it links or images, you can "Pin It" onto one of your boards. It's a bit like visual bookmarks/favourites.

People use it for collecting tutorials, patterns, recipes, party/wedding ideas, blogs/websites they like, or just images of funny things, ideas for their house, hairstyles & make-up, beautiful people, whatever you like!! (as long as it is reasonably polite).

BUT, this is where the dangerous part comes in, you can also check out what your friends have been pinning... and then you can browse what everyone has been pinning!!! So basically you can while away hours looking at all the weird & wonderful things that other people find interesting.

I love Pinterest.

Why? For a start, I love being able to see at a glance what I've bookmarked. When you have 20 "Girl's Dress Tutorial" bookmarks, it all gets little meaningless! But by pinning it, you can see which one it is! And, if you "follow" people with similar interests & aesthetic to you, it's like having your own little squad of personal net browsers, providing you with a heady diet of things you might like. Mmmm... megalomania...

AND I have actually been making things based on things pinned on Pinterest!!! So it is NOT a waste of time!! Thus my "Pinspiration" tag is born lol...

Here's something that I made this morning, for a little gift, based on this Pin -

My friend has been working SO hard on an event we're organising, the tickets & posters of which have a pinky-purple 5 petal flower on them.. so i made this on a whim, using scrapbooking paper, so it has a radius of roughly 15cm. It was really fun to make!!

Super Secret Sea Squirrel!

2011-06-09T19:12:00.003+12:00

Not like Sandy Cheeks on a mission though..

A very clever lady I know is running a yarn club this winter!

And as part of the package you get an exclusive pattern with each installment, two of which i had the pleasure of testing in april, ready for the release... i've had to keep them a secret since, so as not to spoil the surprise for anyone getting the yarn club ;)

The first club installment has just been sent out, and has a mermaids & mermen theme, the first pattern of which is Amphitrite-

it's a beautiful little girls vest, with lace & cable detailing on the front

it is completely seamless, using a cunning provisional cast on at the back

and the boys/unisex pattern is Poseidon -

this one has more cables, but also has the option of doing the 'seaweed' lace side panels

and is also seamless, but this time with a full V-neck, rather than scoop...

they're both very cute patterns, especially with their mer-tail themed central panels, and we use these vests a lot!

At the moment they're only available to the lucky few who managed to nab a club spot, but they should be available for general release early 2012!

three....

2011-06-06T14:11:00.003+12:00

(well actually, what i gathered from years of watching sound techs do sound checks is that "three" in "testing, testing, one, two, three" is really redundant, so they don't do it. in reality sound checks often sound more like "one. one. one. one two. two. teeeooo. teeeooo. yeah. yeah. yuh. teeooo. puh. puh. one teeooo..." ad infinitum. no three.)

annnnnyway....

another test knit, this time thankfully an item that i had been intending to knit this winter!

though i was intending to knit it for ME.

it's a Lizette Beret, part of a beanie/beret pattern just released by my friend Sheryl!

it's got a very nice cable & lace combo, but is surprisingly easy to knit!

i'm not normally a hat kind of person, so i'm being a wee bit adventurous! i'm really enjoying wearing it though, so it's well worth it!

two....

2011-06-01T12:46:00.002+12:00

my little china girl..

another test knit - this pattern, tentatively called the Chinatown Jumper (there is a jacket too), hasn't been released yet :-)

it's a seamless, top-down jumper, with a very cute collar detail -

i striped a variegated yarn with a plain one that matched to get a milder variegated look :-)

the matching jacket continues the lace collar section right down the front, with buttons to finish it, and it is also very cute!

keep an eye out for them being released on ravelry!!

Testing, testing... one...

2011-05-31T20:15:00.002+12:00

My crafting life (ok, *whole* life) of late has been dominated by test knitting...

testing knitting is great because you get to try out new patterns, sometimes with very little, or even no, idea what the finished product will look like, you get to help out designers with their new patterns, checking for proof reading errors, technical knitting errors, and checking for how the pattern fits.. sometimes the patterns are pretty much perfect, but the testing process kicks off the nice pattern project gallery bit on ravelry!

and it has the bonus of sometimes meaning that you get patterns for free, that would otherwise cost money ;-)

one recent effort was my Danube Cowl -

it's a great big loop of cables..

i really, really like it, but won't be knitting it again.. once is enough! but i do love it & wear it often :-)

it was what inspired me to invent my own grafting technique, because when you have a big loop of swirly waves, who wants to have to think about where the seam is, and where to hide it?!?!

Rawrrr...

2011-05-24T18:58:00.002+12:00

Eli's 3rd birthday cake!

We got him some wooden african animals for his birthday, so a matching cake was in order..

I must learn to keep things simple in future, cos they always come out better if i don't go overboard with lolly decoration!!

shrug

2011-04-03T16:42:00.000+12:00

another test knit i've just done was a puffy sleeved shrug for lexi!

it's a brand new design & very easy to knit

i used some yarn that i had spun myself from purple & white hand-dyed merino fleece that i was gifted!

i'm very pleased with how it came out, it's very snuggly & soft, and fits lexi well! It used just under 100g of yarn for a size 6 shrug too..

and it has very cute princessy puff sleeves!

(my poor sweet baby was having a particularly bad outbreak of psoriasis, or eczema - as yet undetermined - at the time, hence the slightly obtuse pics!)

Somewhere....

2011-04-02T16:20:00.000+13:00

i get accused around here of everything being a song cue, but really, who can help it with this one?!

this is a "Little Sister's Dress" (seemed appropriate!) that i made for maia!

i used the embroidery charts from the very cool Watermellish website-

since i had a great big blank canvas & a yarn colour called Sky...

it was kind of asking for it really!

unfortunately because i'm not as smart as i think i am, instead of following the pattern & using 4ply (ugh!), i decided to use 8ply + the 3 month size pattern, with the hopes of getting a 6-12 month size....

umm...

oops.

it's more like an 18 month size as a dress, but on the upside i've got a headstart on next winter's knitting, and i know it will work as a tunic top until she's almost 3!!

Crochet Caps

2011-03-31T16:05:00.001+13:00

as cool as that sounds, crochet is (allegedly) having a massive renaissance!

and, well, i think it can be pretty cute when used properly!!

the one is a "Shabby Hat" for maia, using Wool Company "sky" and scraps from my stash

i crocheted a little flower to decorate it too-

paul thinks it looks like a '20s baby hat!

and another for eli-

this time a brimmed beanie, using the same yarn as the babydoll dress i just made maia :-)

see? it isn't all bad is it??!

Let it snow, let it snow..

2011-03-30T15:32:00.004+13:00

or maybe, no...

i'm rather enjoying the last dregs of summery weather we're having, but since i have a deep-seated dislike of being even the slightest bit chilly, i've already got my knitting plans sorted for winter, and my yarn all ordered!!

my yarn stash for projects this winter.

that is 2.5kg of yarn, or roughly 4.7 kilometres that will pass through my hands over coming months!!!

and that isn't including anything that comes out of my existing stash as well... AND that doesn't include any particularly large projects either! crazy when you think about it...

but the first one off the needles was this-

another babydoll, this time in 6 month size, modified to use 12ply for the skirt part

it has a cute lace detail at the hem, which i really like, but must get around to blocking to stop it curling! oops...

it only took me about 3 days, which is the kind of knitting i like best!!

Knit Geekery - Grafting

2011-03-29T23:18:00.004+13:00

I've just finished knitting a scarf/cowl thingy that is essentially a long strip of knitting that needed the two ends joining together to make a loop.

which is just fine if you are using plain stockinette stitch, or at a pinch garter stitch, because you can just use good ol' kitchener stitch...

BUT the scarf/cowl thingy i was knitting had cables, lots of cables in fact, and after much googling i discovered that grafting any kind of rib pattern seemed to be largely in the too hard basket, even plain ol' kitchener stitch seems to land in said basket too!

so i devised my own way to invisibly graft any kind of knit/purl combo, without having to remember any special technique mantras (ie "knit off, purl, purl off, knit" yadda yadda), and without having to risk losing stitches by using provisional cast-ons...

(ok, so someone might have come up with it first, but nowhere that i saw, so meh, here it is again then!)

i'll try to explain-

the easiest way to begin is to start the edge of the project that will need grafting in a contrast waste yarn, knit a few rows in pattern with this waste yarn, then switch to your main yarn & start the pattern properly....

notes

- if you are doing cables like i was, most cables have rows that aren't cabled, just plain k&p.. you want your sewn graft row to replace one of these plain rows, ok?

- you can do this with a provisional cast-on, i did, it's just that when you free the stitches to graft them, you're going to stick them onto a needle & knit a few rows, in pattern, in your waste yarn to guide you through the graft..

when you get to the other side of the graft, switch to another contrast yarn (DON'T cut your working yarn!) & knit a few rows again... feel free to gently drop all the stitches off your needles now ;-)

so now you have two matching edges of knitting, with a few spare rows on either side...

now with a really long tail from where you finished your main knit - i like to leave 4x the width that i'm going to graft - you're going to start following the pattern that your contrast yarns take through the main colour, in this case my scarf is the blue...

so starting on the white edge, i took the yarn down to the red side & through the first stitch, following the direction that the red yarn takes through the first blue stitch, then back up to the white side.. here you can see my needle following the white yarn through a knit stitch-

you keep going from top to bottom following the path of the waste yarn stitches through your main colour stitches, tucking them to the back like they're not there-

it doesn't matter whether the stitch you are grafting is a knit or purl or changing from one to the other, because you are just copying the waste yarn stitches underneath (just like doing duplicate stitch for embroidery, or sewing in your yarn ends!), this pic shows me sewing two purl stitches together-

at first your sewn stitches will be all loose & messy, but don't worry about that, you can fix that later...

once you get to the end of the row you'll have a whole row of faux-stitches, totally out of gauge with your knitting-

you can gently remove your waste yarn knitting from the back now ;-)

starting at the beginning again, you gently pull the yarn through, one stitch at a time, until your sewn stitches more or less match the gauge of your knitting (ie until it just kinda looks right).. here i've done the stitches on the left, but not the right-

once you've tightened all of the stitches, if it looks good, or close enough, go ahead & sew your left-over tail into the wrong side of your knitting!!

ta da!!!!

ok, mine isn't perfect, but that is actually because i stuffed up removing the provisional cast-on, the grafting technique worked fine, and that is why i'd recommend not doing a PCO, just go straight for a waste yarn lead in...

cool huh? give it a go & i reckon you'll find it way easier than the normal method of doing kitchener, AND it works just as well & easily for stockinette, garter, or any kind of rib!!!

feel free to ask questions or let me know if it doesn't make sense!

2011-03-29T15:20:00.000+13:00

i knit this well before maia was born, but finally some modelled pics!

it's a newborn size Kaia Babydoll - the pattern was designed, and gifted to me, by one of my friends :-)

she was about 2.5 months old in these pics, and it was already getting a bit small for a dress then, and it now fits her as a little top!

Off the needles...

2011-03-28T14:52:00.003+13:00

I'm still playing catch-up since bub was born!

a few things from the toy department-

a pocket elephant for one of eli's playgroup friends, who just turned 3 years old-

a Spring Butterfly cardi for one of lexi's babies, for lexi's birthday-

and a green "rainbow dress" for another of lexi's babies, as a little present when maia was born!

i'm going through a really busy knitting/crochet phase at the mo, so there will be lots more over the next few days!!

bubble hoooo....!!

2011-03-16T23:21:00.002+13:00

After his run-in with our washing machine - lightly felted, slightly fuzzier, and half an inch smaller!

Just the right size to be a handful of hoot for a 5 year old..

(though the whole household is fighting over guardianship!)

Ollie

2011-03-16T09:25:00.004+13:00

Ollie is a very cute owl that I agreed to crochet as a pattern tester, and he's turned out so sweet!

I'm going to try felting him later on, so fingers crossed he's ok!

Hey Leah

2011-03-15T17:33:00.003+13:00

the queen of rainbows....

the latest addition to lexi's room-

(ok maybe Waldorf Mama would compete well for that title..)

cute huh? :-)

Pancake Day!!

2011-03-08T14:58:00.003+13:00

need i say more?!

ok, i will anyway.. shrove tuesday, another classic example of how us agnostics/atheists have the best of ALL worlds, because we can indulge in the culinary delights of any festival that we choose! Afterlife? well, have to cross that bridge later.... ;-)

anyhoo... we had 5 minute vegan pancakes, with choc chips & maple syrup, for lunch today... yum!! the recipe is in the recipes/tutorials tab at the top of my blog - it's a perfect recipe for when you have almost no ingredients too!

not known for my punctuality...

2011-03-05T21:21:00.003+13:00

Christmas!!!

yeah, i know, it's march... minor detail.

anyway, in a yarn sampler box i got ages ago there was 12 grams of 2ply alpaca. what are you supposed to do with 12g of anything?! what are you supposed to do with 2ply?!

turns out the answer is bookmarks.

crocheted butterfly bookmarks even.

cos we all know that reading is the ultimate in cool, especially reading books long enough to require bookmarking, and crochet has always been known for it's total chic, so the two together is pretty much a flawless combo.

so i ended up making 5 of these wee knick-knacks as gifts for various people! (i think they're pretty cute actually- but hey, i like long books & crochet)

still had some yarn left over too.. who would have thought that 12g of 2ply could go so far?!

(gold star to anyone who can name the book in that photo without googling!)

on a less successful front, the (compulsory) advent fair biscuit debacle.

stained glass window biscuits = fail.

they overflowed & stuck to the baking paper... and tasted pretty blah too.

i bet martha's snow cap cookies never turned out like this either-

note for future- bake sales are NOT my forte. At. All.

and on an equally successful front- how to make an actually quite cool bag look meh in one simple photographic step-

i made it for my 12 year old step-daughter for xmas - it's a Pleated Purse from this tutorial - and she loved it!! managing to please a 12 year old girl is quite a challenge sometimes, so yay ;-)

and cos i'm a total sucker, when i saw gingerbread house kits in the supermarket i HAD to have one for lexi-

needless to say she had a fantastic time decorating it with her daddy on xmas eve :-)

and with me she made simple paper decorations for our tree!

fun times :-)

i wonder if i can get the jump on easter....

it's the thought that counts.. right?

2011-03-01T17:08:00.003+13:00

Proud mummy moment, kind of...

the kids insisted on making me a birthday cake! and not just any cake, a proper themed cake from the original Women's Weekly Birthday Cake book...

an "Old Woman who lived in a shoe" cake. y'know, the one who had so many children she didn't know what to do? yeah. hmph.

anyway, a certain father who was roped into help, on account of children being too young to bake unassisted, was quite convinced that it would be fine to leave cake baking & decorating til around 4.30pm. I can imagine what seasoned cake decorators are thinking right about now...

So they toddled off to the supermarket in search of ingredients & decorations, perhaps losing sight of their vision (goal and possibly eyesight) along the way..

it was a hot day for making buttercream icing that is supposed to function as adhesive AND cladding... and there wasn't much (any) time to let the cake cool before icing it anyway...

and the lolly selection didn't prove particularly useful when it came to authenticity...

ummm yeah-

any sensible woman with too many children is bound to have a couple of sharks guarding the perimeter right?! and a nice brown moat...??!

ah bless.. :-)

luckily i live by the mantra "if it tastes good (and doesn't involve killing anything), then who cares!!" and it did, so yay! and it's the first birthday cake they've made for me, so it's extra special... and uhhh.. memorable too ;-)

on a slightly more unadulterated note- another cakey effort recently was lexi's birthday cake for kindy... the teachers appreciate it if the cakes aren't too over-the-top and, especially, full of artificial colourings & plastered with sugar!

so i made my favourite vegan lemon & coconut cake-

i decorated it by placing some star-shaped stickers around it, sprinkling with icing sugar, then removing the stars :-) i thought it looked quite effective, and with the minimum of fuss!

whenever i make this recipe i also make a tiny star cake as a RAOK, so this one i made to match for lexi's kindy teachers as a thank you-

cute huh?

crafty women

2011-02-28T17:06:00.003+13:00

i'm lucky with our playgroup to be surrounded by a group of very crafty women :-)

last year we embarked on a fundraising mission, using the power of crochet!

so far we've made a cot blanket-

a bassinet blanket-

a super cute doll's blanket (which i think has actually been claimed by the playgroup babies ;-) ) -

and we've almost finished a single bed blanket using hand-dyed rainbow colours! -

there are also these lovely squares, which i don't know what they are destined to be!

they all need blocking before we can sell them, but they're already filled with a whole lot of care & attention!

it's an integral part of our playgroup philosophy that parents/carers be productively occupied, be it cleaning, crafting, mending, gardening etc, so crochet is a perfect way to spend our morning!

Out of nothing..

2011-02-28T16:51:00.002+13:00

comes something...

ha double meaning there, my poor neglected blog, and my poor neglected garden! but amazingly, both have been producing!

i didn't bother with a vege garden this year, since we are planning on moving (it's taken so long that i could have actually, but oh well), but despite being transplanted into pots, we've had a few lovely strawberries-

and have a big stash of homegrown heritage popcorn from last year's harvest!

there is some Miniature Black, Strawberry, and a strange hybrid that i created by growing Silver Platinum sweetcorn too close to the popcorns! and even better still, we have 1 little mini black popcorn plant that has self seeded, providing us with 3 more cobs this year, and without any work from me!!

gotta love it when veges take care of themselves..

Got Knits - pt2

2010-11-23T10:24:00.004+13:00

more knittery goodness....

i knit these rainbow longies for eli when i found out i was pregnant with him, and now maia gets to wear them too!

and i started these for her 4 days before she was born-
they're NB sized "Pimp My Longies"
to go with the little shrug i had made her-

and my longest baby knit EVER... just finished, a NB sized Blossom
very cute, but i don't like 4ply!
the ribbon happened to come wrapped around one of her presents, and was a perfect match for the merino yarn!

and some more precious gifts for her...

a very soft & snuggly shrug (with matching socks!) from my friend serra-
with a little flower window detail on the back-
and a perfect little silky smooth summer vest from sha-

what a lucky girl!

(she seems to have developed a signature pose too ;-) )

Got Knits - pt1

2010-10-22T13:39:00.008+13:00

My baby girl has knits, and plenty of them!

She's been blessed by me having friends who knit & write knitting patterns, friends who know the value of passing on handknits, and friends who have taught me to knit!

for example, some that i've done-
the prem size Blossom that i knit for paul's niece

the gradient dyed yarn Owlie Sleepsack
(highly, highly recommended!! she loves it & settles almost the moment she's popped into it, and it's much for convenient for big sibling cuddles than a blanket!)

a Pebble vest

a debbie bliss baby shrug
(yet to be blogged about, still finishing something to go with it!)

and some from my friends-
a newborn Spring Butterfly, knit by the designer herself as part of a set for twins, one passed on us by the lovely twin mummy

an extremely cute wee dress passed on by another kind friend
(not sure of the pattern, or who knit it?! someone on tnn anyway :) )

and a very special pair of overalls that were knit for Eli by an amazing friend, that i love getting to use again!!

she's such a lucky thing to be wrapped in so much woolly goodness, and that's not even all of it!!

the rare Lesser Hooded Eli

2010-10-18T14:53:00.002+13:00

Ages ago i finished Eli's winter hoodie!
(ie back in winter)

it's the Vestee pattern from Knitty, but using the hood & long sleeves options-
i needed to upsize it for a skinny 2 year old, and wanted to knit it in the round, so i cast on the combined front & back stitches rounded up to a multiple of 3 (to get the right stitch pattern) and joined it in the round, and knit up to the arm pits as one piece, adding quite a lot of length - i find the suggested length to be *really* short. i then knit both sleeves at the same time using magic loop, and joined them onto the body & knit the rest as per the pattern :-)

it's taken me so long to post about it since i was trying to get a good shot of it being modeled... but i failed - this is the best i have been able to get-
oh well...

but it fits really nicely, and i really recommend this pattern for a fast & simple jumper!!

It's been a long time, been a long time....

2010-10-18T13:52:00.003+13:00

been a long, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy time!!!

mostly because of this thing-
Her name is Maia, and she was born at home at 4.01am on Friday 8th of October!

She was born in our bath, weighing a teeny tiny 2.69kg (5lb 14oz), after a quickish & easyish labour, with no difficulties or complications then or since!!

Her timing was pretty much perfect, at 38 weeks + 3 days gestation, because we had spent the beginning of the week checking out geothermal wonders 4 hours away from home in a campervan with a broken alternator (so no battery charge, we drove the last hour to home at night with NO lights!!!!), and then after dropping the van back up north only got home at 10.30pm thursday, with me having had intermittent contractions (20-40min apart) all the way home!
But she also managed to sneak in on the last day of the school holidays, so we got an extra 3 days of daddy being at home than if she had arrived once the term had started!
So an excellent time to make her arrival, if cutting it a bit fine ;-)

but anyway, i've got plenty of things to share that i managed to get done in the lead up, that got delayed with several weeks of school production chaos, and a couple of things that i've even done since!! :-D

going ape.

2010-07-24T18:47:00.000+12:00

aaaaages ago one of my friends managed to score us a bunch of merino thermal tops for $10nz, from a factory store, which is fantastic!!

the downside to this particular bargain was that mine was evidently IN the factory store because not enough orangutans were buying thermals from glassons.

no really, look- the neckline is clearly for someone who needs a much lower neckline than the average human, and the sleeves are perfectly suited for "knuckling" across the floor (as Terry Pratchett puts it) -
anyway, inspired by one of my friends who has recently been embarking on all sorts of upcycling adventures, i unpicked the neckline ribbing, chopped the sleeves off, chopped 4-5cm off the shoulders, recut the armpits & back neckline, chopped 8cm off the sleeves & rehemmed them, and attempted to put it back together again!!

ta da!!
thus taking it from faintly ridiculous and decidedly ape-like to actually wearable!!

so if you've got the sewing equipment handy, don't be afraid to attack disastrously fitting clothes & try to make them better!!

home alone

2010-07-23T16:36:00.002+12:00

i had some time home alone, and the house was in reasonable order, so naturally i made a mess all over the lounge floor!

i sorted & re-folded my fabric stash-
that's it in it's entirety, the stuff still in the white basket is all nappy fabrics, so relatively speaking i do not have a big stash!

and whilst sorting the stash, i found that i had some left over black knit from making a baby-wearing wrap years ago, so decided to try out making a couple of skirts using this 'yoga' skirt tutorial!

i call them my fat skirts lol, cos i'm 26-27w pregnant in these photos, but you can't really tell, i just look bigger than i am!

first attempt using the full width of 55" denim-
('scuse the un-prewashed, un-ironed fabric!)
and what actually shows under my mummy-uniform jumper-
and 2nd attempt using some fabric left over from making lexi some pants & a knitting needle case, only used approx 48-50" width + cut it slightly A-line, so it's a lot less puffy-
they're not the world's most flattering garments lol, but since they took under 30 minutes each, including cutting out, it's a great pattern anyway!!

secret.

2010-07-22T16:13:00.002+12:00

i have to keep a secret.

i made something last week that took an outrageous amount of time, with copious amounts of hand sewing, for a present....

the present has been handed over to it's birthday girl, BUT one of my friends is planning to make a bunch of similar style things for sale at xmas, so i'm not going to publicize the idea just in case someone else beats her to it!
but this is the little wooden finger puppet doll that went with it lol..

paul painted her face & hair, and i dressed her in a cute scrapbook paper dress, coated lovingly in layers of Mod Podge, just recently available round here!!

but it's gonna be a while before i can share pics of the background ;-)

nyum nyum nyum

2010-07-22T15:40:00.004+12:00

school holiday baking-
cheesy-mite scrolls, cinnamon scrolls & chewy muesli sultana bikkies!

and you call that a garlic clove?!
THIS is a garlic clove!
heh heh heh, simple joys....

the spirit of winter

2010-07-02T16:31:00.000+12:00

to me winter is all about hibernating - it doesn't get that cold here, but it does get wet, so i like to stay inside - and staying inside, with kids = simple crafts!

inspired by MamaMoontime's Winter Wattle Fairy, i decided to make us a winter fairy too!
i used colours very prevalent at the moment - pale blue skies littered by clouds, and dark, early evenings, and she has lovely shiny silk hair, and barely visible opalescent blue wings :-)
(they're made from bondable Angelina fibre, just to give away the secret - when they catch the light they are amazing!)

and of course a little doll was commisioned by alexis-
and a wee fairy girl for eli too-
(cos he has to be just like his big sis!)

fun, cheap & and very very quick!!

Dyeing Three Ways

2010-07-01T14:14:00.005+12:00

Paul is directing & organising his school's show later in the year, and we thought it would be good to dye the kids t-shirts as an easy way to differentiate between the groups... so naturally a spot of experimentation was in order ;-)

we needed to document the process so that it can be taught to the other teachers, so i thought i may as well share it here too!

We were using Procion MX fibre reactive dye + soda ash, and playing with Low Water Immersion dyeing, Spray dyeing, and good ol' Tie Dyeing!!

Firstly we divided the cotton shirts into different colours/techniques, weighed them, and noted the details on scraps of paper-

We then took the shirts for tie dyeing & spray dyeing and soaked them in a soda ash solution - 1 cup soda ash per 4L water - for 15+ minutes (15 is the minimum, up to an hour is fine)

meanwhile.... the low water immersion-

the LWI fabric DOESN'T get soaked, but instead you crumple it up so that it looks like a brain, and cram it snuggly into bowls-
then you mix up your dye as per the instructions (i was working with amounts varying from 2.5oz-4oz of dry fabric, so was using between 1/8tsp-1tsp of dye powder!) and pour it over your fabric-
i added more of the blue dye than the purple (cos i was too generous mixing up the blue, as per usual), and you can see the difference in effect with the finished product...

leave to sit for 40min or so (while messing around with other techniques!), then add a cup or so of your soda ash solution prepared above-
you don't need to smoosh it or stir it, just leave to soak for as long as you can stand - apparently 8 hours is the minimum, up to 48 is good, but who has that kind of patience?

then rinse, warm/hot wash, and dry!

you can see the difference between the dye effects here-
the purple had room to spread, and split across the spectrum, so there are reddish-plum areas, and some stretching all the way to pale blue - whereas the blue had more dye to spread throughout the fabric, so just created a gentle mottled look-

now... Spray dyeing-

first you need to cut out a template - it can either be a whole sheet with just the image you want missing, or *just* a shape, to create a silhouette... we used plastic clearfile pockets, but i've seen leaves used which is quite cool too...

(we learnt though that we would have got better results if we had weighed/stuck down our template somehow!)

once your fabric has soaked for a while, wring it out, lay it onto a flat surface (we used the bottom of the bath) - if you don't want the image to bleed through onto the back you'll need to slip a plastic bag or something inside.

lay your template over the top, then lightly spray your pre-mixed dye on!
be sure you cover the whole template, and try to ensure the template is snug against the fabric
leave to set for 8+ hours-
then rinse, warm/hot wash & dry!

ta da!
as i said before, we discovered that we would have got better results if our templates were held down somehow, and the pink was a bit wishy-washy really...
but it's a fun technique, and would be an easy way for older kids to decorate shirts :-)

finally tie dyeing-

you don't have to spend long googling to come up with all sorts of different ways you can tie your fabric, but we were after something a bit like crazy tiger stripes, so after our shirts had soaked, we wrung them out, and just twisted them up & bound them with some polyester sewing thread...

i had read that a common beginners mistake with tie dye is to be too sparing with the dye, so you end up with an entirely white middle, so we popped our tied up shirts into a bowl, then added plenty of dye-
and gave them a good squish-
(yeah my hands were purple for about 5 days - and a whole week later my nails are still quite dark!)

after an hour or so i tipped out the excess dye - but didn't squeeze it at all - then left it to sit for 8+ hours...

then just like the others - rinse, warm/hot wash & dry!
the one on the left was just twisted up, but the right one we concertina wrinkled first *then* twisted.

now as i said before, i went overboard mixing up the blue dye, and we had the bowl of soda ash solution left sitting there.....

soooo i dumped one of paul's manky old white shirts in the soda ash, then 15min later tipped the dye in too.... gave it a stir occasionally, then left it like everything else...
still not the world's most beautiful shirt, but a definite improvement on how it was!!
( i could have tossed 1/2 a cup of salt in to make the colour more even, but didn't)

so there you go, three different ways of dyeing fabric using the same materials!

it was a fun experiment, and we've got a few ideas about how we would improve them in future, but if you've got some plain ol' t-shirts or fabric hanging around, then i really recommend giving them a go!

(i've posted about LWI dyeing before - with multiple colours - here!)

Rollin' rollin' rollin'...

2010-06-30T12:54:00.000+12:00

On a whim i decided to hunt out some beeswax... and (despite there being no mention on their website) on one of our journeys we popped into a lovely honey shop (with live bee display that our kids love, and all sorts of delicious honey related products - i want to try the honey icecreams!), and whaddaya know, beeswax! i ended up with a huge 600g blob of golden sweet-smelling stuff, but also grabbed some of the wax sheets to have a play with first :-)

it's very easy really to make rolled candles - i softened one end of the sheets first & sealed the wick in to make it easier for the kids to roll, and then it was just a matter of warming them over the heater (or you can use a hairdryer)-
then when it is quite floppy & turns dark and translucent you start to roll!
just slowly, gently, and remembering to try to keep it straight-
then when you get to the end of the sheet, you warm it again & roll it to seal the end!
i then held the end of the candle over the heater, then gently squished it onto a flat surface, to meld the layers together & make it stand up nicely.

ta da!!
and of course you can decorate them using left over scraps, or modeling/decorating wax :-)

so far ours have been used for making 2D shapes & patterns, and as strawberries, oranges, broccoli, water & cake (obviously struggling a bit to think of something purple & edible!), and perhaps eventually they'll be used as candles too!

Fuzzy

2010-06-29T17:44:00.001+12:00

A tiny fuzzy vest i picked up the yarn from a local temporary yarn store - it's a DK weight 100% wool yarn (8ply in NZ/Oz) but only actually 2ply, and was dyed either in the fleece or as single spun yarn before being plied together - and for a NB size vest it only took 40g, so including buttons (craft buttons were the only ones that matched, but they've held up fine for me on clothing before!) this only cost maybe $4.50!!

A classic 'cheap & cheerful' situation, and you've gotta love that!

A place to call one's own

2010-06-28T17:06:00.000+12:00

one from the archives of forgotten blog content.... at the beginning of the year lexi finally moved into her own room!
(we pretty much follow classic attachment parenting theory, and hey, if you've got a bad sleeper it's much easier to resettle them if they are in a bed next to yours!)

so i decided to make her a sign for the door, using some craft jigsaw pieces (cos she loves jigsaws!) and various scrapbooking bits & pieces!
they're rather *eclectic* for my taste (i'm not a natural scrapbooker - i struggle to put anything much on the page lol) but suffice to say it was very well received by its recipient!

and unrelatedly, apart from the paper bit, check out the basket of window stars that we made at playgroup so each of the children could take one home for the winter holidays! there are at least 40-50 in there i reckon!

"Rabbit Food"

2010-06-27T16:46:00.003+12:00

a chunky pot-pie waiting to have it's top crust on & be popped in the oven-(i don't think i'll ever cease being angry with the mystery auto-rotate thing!)

and a hearty pasta classic-ALL VEGAN!

i think i'll pass on the celery & pumpkin seeds for now thanks.

(edited to add - and both are completely soy free, for those who don't believe in the stuff ;) )

a simple question

2010-06-26T16:24:00.000+12:00

after telling the kids a thousand times not to draw on the walls/furniture/clothes/themselves please, lexi replied "what can i draw on that isn't paper?!"

the i remembered that for some mysterious reason, we have some fabric pens!!

so we cut out some cardboard squares, then a little piece of t-shirt fabric slightly bigger-
folded the excess over & sellotaped it down-
then let them loose!
both kids did a couple of 'abstract' pieces, and then lexi did a couple of mini ones too-
and ironed them to set!

quite honestly the pens were pretty horrid, but since they're such a rarity here (the kids have good quality crayons & pencils instead) the kids loved them!

i'm not entirely sure what to do with these little masterpieces, but it was a fun activity for the kids, and any ideas of what to do use them for would be much appreciated!!

another birthday

2010-06-25T10:51:00.000+12:00

we have a few of them, luckily spread nicely throughout the year, apart from certain awkward people not long after xmas... (one of which would.. uhh.. be ME)

and partially because of that we like to keep them fairly simple affairs, with little touches making them special...

like a decorated chair for the birthday person, our special birthday banner, the shared birthday candle, and the presents wrapped in our gorgeous playsilks!
this year (again) was a birthday away from home, so i needed to go for something simple for the birthday cake, like icecreams!
'cept because i like CAKE, they're cupcakes decorated like icecreams, to match the ones in the book that was one of the presents-
heh heh...
and the birthday was a success!!

confusing the issue

2010-06-24T10:36:00.001+12:00

so it looks like our little one is of the pink persuasion.

but i like blue.

and since i had treated myself to 100g of lovely, silky 80% bamboo, 20% wool yarn to make something for the bubba, this is what resulted!one of my friends is the very clever designer of this gorgeous pattern, and she gifted me a copy when i shared that we are (most likely) having a girl! thank you Rachel!!

and then i had a teeny tiny crap of yarn left (16g!) so i whipped up a pair of cute crochet booties (also by a NZ designer!) to match-
there are so many cute little girl's knitting patterns out there, i'd love to know anyone's favourites!!

the same, but different.

2010-06-23T10:16:00.000+12:00

one long dark evening i let the kids loose with some wet-on-wet watercolour painting-
(soak proper watercolour paper in a bit of water for 5-10min until it's a bit soft, then paint with big brushes & watercolour paints - biscuit trays are perfect for containing everything, if not very pretty!)

the finished paintings-
i then cut circles out of the paintings - a stockpot lid for the big one, cake tin for the smaller - and painted them with cheap canola oil. yes you read that right.
the aim is to make the paper somewhat translucent... Dr Nick's Window To Weight Gain for the uber-geeks out there ;-)
once dry i folded the paintings into star lanterns!
and cos i was in that sort of mood, i made the little scraps left over from turning the circles into octagons into a mobile for lexi's window.
(the sun was too bright this morning to get a decent pic of all the delicate shades, but i'm not complaining!!)

Small amounts, adding up to make a work of art...

2010-06-22T09:32:00.005+12:00

(gold star to anyone who can place that quote *without* googling! and if you cheat & google, no it's NOT Streisand!)

So it's only taken me forever, but i finally got round to trying gradient dyeing!

the basic gist is, you unwind your balls of yarn into a skein, then divide the skein into a series of smaller bundles, one after another....(lesson #1 - tie the bundles up with different colour synthetic yarns & write down the order! this way you know what order the bundles go in!)

then following your favourite yarn dyeing technique you pop each bundle into a separate bowl of dye....(lesson #2 - check that the dye IN the pot matches the label on the pot before you make your plan. i thought i had sky blue, seaspray & navy.. turns out the seaspray was ultra violet! luckily i noticed this before i mixed the dye up & adjusted accordingly.
lesson #3 - also check first that you actually have enough bowls or containers for all the different mixes you need!! i was using procion, which doesn't need heat to set, so thankfully they didn't need to be microwave safe)

rinse, then dry your yarn....(lesson #4 - don't tangle it. how you avoid that i don't know though.)

re-skein your yarn...
wind it into a ball....
then knit it up!the pattern i used is the very cute & snuggly Owlie Sleepsack, knit in 12ply it's a quick alternative to a blanket for little bubs.
heh heh.. owls..

(about those various lessons above... i got the bundles for the 3rd & 4th colours mixed up! so the middle should have gone- dark blue, pale purply blue, dark purple, pinky purple, pale pink, but the pale purply blue & dark purple got switched. doh. and they weren't even the colours i was planning for this project in the first place. doh. and tangling speaks for itself really. doh. but i'm very happy with the finished result anyway!!!)

oh yeah, i've now got a little tab up the top for the various tutorials & recipes that i've shared! hopefully they might be of use sometime :)

Stars, in their multitudes...

2010-06-10T19:39:00.005+12:00

(of course the awesome skatey-beachbabe-katie breaks out movie quotes, and i reach for Broadway. i never claimed to be cool! ;-) )

anyhoo... around these parts it is a time of year known as Matariki (maataareekee), also known as the Maori new year, also known as the time when the Pleiades become visible in the night sky, and in part due to that we've had an abundance of stars cropping up around the place!
Par exemple- our playgroup is undergoing HUGE renovations, and in the long term plan is a beautiful stained glass windows for the tiny babes to stare up at, but in the meantime i decided to make us a biggish window star (each point is half a sheet of kite paper, so the whole thing is approx 25-30cm tall). We then decided that making these was a nice craft for the parents to be engaged in, so we've started a mass campaign of star making, in part so each child can take one home at the end of the term for the mid-winter break (cos who doesn't like a bit of colour injected into grey days?!), and also potentially to sell at our advent fair.... i must get a photo of the big basketful next week!

anyway, there is a good tutorial for these waldorf window stars over at Gardenmama, and i get my kite paper from Forest Folk, which is the little shop run by our playgroup's school :-) (they're a perfect little gift for a new baby or wee kiddo's birthday when you don't know what they've already got!!)

annndd....

after seeing a tutorial somewhere (might have been this one at Childhood Magic) i decided to have a go at making a little star lantern!(this one was too small to fit a candle inside it, but they're still cute as holders for taller candles too)

and then taught a few of the mums at playgroup to make them, using the kids watercolour paintings, which then became little baskets to hold a biscuit for each of the kids at our matariki celebration morning!this is a few of them *just* catching the morning sunlight up on the windowsill....there were all sorts of delicious star-themed treats for the kids to eat- and lexi did a story for eli & one of the little girls (who was singing "twinkle, twinkle" as accompaniment!)and the kids sung star songs and listened to a special story :-)

annnndd...

completely unrelatedly, i saw these on The Magic Onions a while ago, so had to try it out!it's nice to add a little sparkle into these wintery days!!

"Sunshine cakes"

2010-06-04T15:04:00.003+12:00

if you are serving them to kids...

otherwise known as Potato & Carrot Latkes!
(for my friend Shar..)

I found these a bit weird quite honestly, but then didn't have the right ingredients, and they all got eaten, so hey, it's all good overall!

you need-

500g of root vegies - potato, carrots, beetroot, kumara etc - peeled
1/2 a small onion (or a pickling onion)
1/8 cup potato or corn starch (turned out i didn't have either, so resorted to mostly cornmeal topped up with Ogran No Egg, cos that is mostly potato starch - possibly contributed to the slight weirdness)
1/4tsp ea salt & pepper
1 cup matzo meal (again, none of that here, so subbed in plain flour - made these "traditional jewish potato pancakes" decidedly un-kosher)
lots of vegetable oil for frying

* grate all the vegies using a food processor
* in a large bowl mix the vegies with the starch, until the vegies have released some moisture & the starch has dissolved
* mix in salt & pepper
* add the matzo meal/flour, and mix well. set aside for 10 minutes.
* heat a large frying pan over medium/high heat, add 1/2 cm of oil to the pan. the oil is hot enough when you get lots of tiny bubbles forming around a small bit of batter.
* using wet hands, form the mixture into golf-ball sized balls, squish, then fry until golden brown on both sides, drain on some paper towels, then serve!

i never said these were healthy per se, but i suppose if you're interested in getting some lovely vege-based minerals & vitamins into your kids, and a little bit of greasiness is acceptable (we like rice bran oil), then these are a good option!!

thumbs in the thumb place...

2010-06-03T13:29:00.006+12:00

we have a little song that we sing at our playgroup during the winter months that goes-

Thumbs in the thumb place,
Fingers all together,
That's what we do in mitten weather.
Hats on our heads,
Scarves round our necks,
Warm boots, warm boots,
So we don't get wet!

and since i am evidently one of those "why do i have to wear a jumper just because my mum is cold?" kind of mothers, it was definitely time for mittens!!

luckily for me, two very talented ladies i know have just released kids mitten patterns! Both are for fingerless mitts, but it's pretty easy to adapt :-)

The first is-
Shortly's Milo Mitts!
i knit these in double stranded 4ply sock yarn, in size 4. the mods on how to do the closed in fingers & thumb are on my rav page.

the second is-
Sam's Easy Kids Hand Warmers!
these i knit using yarn that i dyed oh so very long ago, using the last scraps, and added a tiny twisty cable, closed in the fingers to match big sis' ones, but just crocheted around the thumb hole.
the kids are very happy with them, and i'm very happy that my kids are toasty hands!!

thanks guys for writing such awesome, easy & FREE patterns!!!

the "Miss You" dress

2010-05-25T18:10:00.000+12:00

On our last trip up north Lexi left one of her two precious babies behind.

Oh doom and disaster!!

So to stem the tide of tears somewhat (because 2 weeks is a very long time to wait to see your baby again!) i immediately set about making a little welcome home present for Melie (inspired by amelia)
i started off with the doll size rainbow dress mods created by the very clever Megan (of Little Rocket fame) and twiddled them slightly to make it into more of a party dress (details on my rav page)

Needless to say, pink party dress = happy little girl.
(the absurdly observant amongst us will have spotted that it was 'borrowed' for a recent birthday party)

Returned baby (a week early even!) + pink dress = VERY happy little girl!

the forgotten files

2010-05-24T17:32:00.005+12:00

the Kids Clothing Week Challenge reminded me that i had a pile of sewing done previously that i hadn't added to the archive!

firstly, a little cape & crown set-
on a forum that i occasionally frequent (so should that be "that i occasion"?? ;-) ) one of the members was having a rough time, so a whole bunch of people got together to put together a package for her & her kids!
so these went winding their way to a wee 3 year old boy, who i hope has enjoyed them since!

and for lexi-
a tie-top summer dress

some stripy 3/4 pants-
(ironing?! pfft.)

some peasant tops, i particularly like the ladybird fabric-
(blogger/picasa sigh..)

another summer dress-
covered in butterflies, and with a *zip* in the back! i'm so proud every time i have to use one of those..

and a couple of pairs of dress pants for my little guy-
and now i'm just working on a stack of winter knitting, and finishing off the list of to-do sewing left over from KCW!

the Real Reason why doll play is good

2010-05-21T16:12:00.000+12:00

because they have birthdays too.

Vegan Chocolate Banana Cupcakes

prep time: 10 minutes | cooking time: 20 minutes | makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients
3/4 cup sugar
5 Tbsp vegan margarine, softened
1 tsp vanilla
1 banana, mushed well
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup soy milk

Directions
Preheat oven to 180°C

Combine first three ingredients in a large bowl, mix well.
Add banana, stirring well to combine.

Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cup and level with a knife. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt, stirring well with a whisk.

Add flour mixture to sugar mixture alternately with 1/2 cup soymilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix after each addition.

Spoon the batter into 12 muffin cups lined with paper liners.

Bake for 20 minutes or until cupcakes spring back easily when touched lightly in the center. Allow to cool, and frost if desired.

Recipe from the awesome Post Punk Kitchen, the people behind our much loved Veganomicon, and such other fabulously titled books as Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar!

end of the summer weather

2010-05-20T13:26:00.000+12:00

it's definitely getting much colder here now!

so as a reminder of nicer weather i thought i would share pics of some of the treasures from our garden this summer-

some of our solanaceae haul - the nightshade family contains potatoes, tomatoes, datura, belladonna (deadly nightshade), mandragora (mandrake- the screaming baby plants in harry potter ;-) ), capsicum, nicotania, and sweet little petunias.
so now you know.

taters are definitely my favourite of the bunch, and these lovely specimens are Agria taters.

and some yummy wee Chocolate Capsicums-

Corn-
the good - Strawberry Popcorn, an accidental hybrid white popcorn, Rainbow Inca Sweetcorn,

Miniature Black Popcorn,
and the bad.
sometimes growing four different varieties within a 1sqm patch isn't a good idea. sweet corn shouldn't have pointy spikes! (it's the same accidental cross between strawberry popcorn & silver platinum sweetcorn that produced the white popcorn above, but these are the other side of the coin. oops.)

i'll confess i have given up on our vege garden for now... we're hoping to move to a new house sometime in the foreseeable future, and i can't be bothered fighting our horrible soil any more! I'm already laying mental plans for the New Garden though ;-)

my little big boy

2010-05-19T14:14:00.000+12:00

my little guy was about to get a whole year older (it happens overnight you know) and so i decided he needed to join in on our first proper family birthday tradition - the felted crowns.

so i started with some wool-
(yes it's pink & purple, it was left over from lexi's so-long-ago Tigger Cardi (look how little she is!), and the only feltable stuff left in my stash!)

some food colouring & vinegar,

and some of this stuff-
and.... ta da!

the butterfly theme was because we inherited a couple of monarch caterpillars a month or so ago from our playgroup, and we've had a constant stream of them to look after ever since! Eli absolutely loves them, and has been finding the process fascinating, so i thought it would be a fitting theme for his crown :-)
i think he likes it!

i was incredibly proud of lexi too, who was inspired by my efforts to make eli a present herself as well! she decided to make him a toy horse, which turned into a unicorn, so i cut the basic shape out of felt (i like minimum 70% wool felt), showed her how to do a whip stitch, and off she went! I did the eyes for her, and threaded her needle, but the rest was all her work, even choosing the colours (it's red on one side, purple on the other ;-) ).

(there was a minor controversy on eli's birthday when she decided she actually wanted it to have a short mane, so hid behind the lounge curtains to give it a haircut without asking first, but really since it was her project she had to be forgiven!)

and of course there was birthday cake... not one of my sleeker efforts to be sure *blush*
but it tasted good & the kids loved it, so i'm happy!

Kids Clothing Week round up

2010-05-18T10:46:00.005+12:00

ugh i seem to be incapable of achieving a halfway decent photo of any of my stuff at the moment, it seems to be a combination of too bright and too dark at the same time, so you either get dim colours or glare *sigh* so we'll have to just imagine the nice colours ok?

3 pairs of pants for lexi-
two polarfleece in red wine & rich purple colours, and icy blue cords (see what i mean about the colours? :-( )

two merino PJ tops for lexi-
and two for kadyn-
two more pairs of merino baby pants, this time just with the cuff option-

and lexi 'modelling' her new PJs-
they look pretty comfy!

so that makes my tally for the week...
- 1 dress shirt for eli
- 3 pairs of pants for lexi + one pair mended
- a pair of PJ pants each for lexi & kadyn
- 2 merino tops for lexi
- 2 merino tops for kadyn
- 4 pairs of baby merino pants

i also knitted a tiny party dress for one of lexi's favourite baby dolls that got accidentally left behind on our fortnightly custody visit up north, as a consolation present for a very distraught little girl... pics of that to come soonish when we get her back. the doll i mean, not the little girl.

i still need to do another pair of PJ pants for each of the big ones, some winter pants for kadyn, and probably a couple of merino tops for eli (he already has a couple of lightweight thermal ones), but some of those require a trip to the fabric shop since my winter stash is getting low!

One for my Dad...

2010-05-17T12:47:00.001+12:00

déjà vu at all?

kids clothes week day 2ish

2010-05-12T15:47:00.002+12:00

two pairs of PJ pants for the big kids(lexi's pair have the friendliest wee dinos you've ever seen on them! which you can't see because of our incredibly sullen winter weather light.. no shiny, bright reflected snow light here!)

the plan is to team them up with merino tops, whenever that happens.

i cut them out last night, along with a couple of pairs of winter pants for lexi.. evidently it takes me the whole hour to sew up two pairs, so i guess that'll be me for tomorrow!

in other news, due to this sewing challenge i also discovered My Sewing Circle.com which is rather like ravelry, but for sewing. if you sign up i'm "novanz" if you wanna be my friend ;-)

paved with good intentions.

2010-05-11T15:51:00.004+12:00

ha well i spotted this on a few blogs that i visit-so i thought that it would be a great idea to join in, since i desperately need to get a bunch of things made for the kids before winter really kicks in. the idea is that you spend an hour per day for a week sewing kids clothes, and see what wonderful things you end up with at the end of the week, simple huh? the details are all here....

i had a few things languishing in my to-do drawer- a pair of lexi's pants that needed the waistband fixing, two pairs of merino pants that were never finished before eli was born (!!), and a short-sleeved shirt that i had cut out for eli.

problem one. my overlocker threads had all been terribly tangled by somebody...

(clock is ticking for my 1 hour already)

problem two. my sewing table has been invaded by a colony of monarchs. see-um, ok a close up then- 5 chrysalises and 5 caterpillars (subsisting on butternut squash). see? invaded.

so i had to deal to those first, and then managed to get sewing! i figured since today is day two of the challenge week i would have 2 hours to play with to make up for missed time...

3.5 hours later....
two little pairs of yummy merino pants, one pair with 'proper' cuffs, the other using pale purple fold-over-elastic.. i thought prior that i'd prefer the FOE method, but turns out i like the cuff look better.

and a wee zipped short-sleeved (rotated grr) shirt for eli-
it has cute tiny piggies on it :-)

lessons for the day- when sewing on a mission, a) don't use stretchy fabrics, b) don't choose shirts cos they have too many pieces, c) DON'T do anything with a zip.

anyone care to join in? lol...

hiatus

2010-05-10T15:10:00.004+12:00

i confess, it's been 3 whole months since i last blogged!

3 months in which i have done nothing... well, not really true, just nothing within my usual métier.. well that's not strictly true either, since my usual métier includes housework (we have kids, so that is never going to go away, sadly) and reading...

so basically i've done pretty much nothing but those two things. oh and looking after the kids of course.

but the reading i've been doing pretty spectacularly! since xmas i've chomped my way through.... (in no particular order)
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
The Witch of Exmoor - Margaret Drabble
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
Visible Worlds - Marilyn Bowering
Flying Under Bridges - Sandi Toksvig
Magician - Raymond E Feist
An Instance of the Fingerpost - Iain Pears
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres

and am currently up to page fifty zillion out of two hundred zillion of the Asimov Chronicles!

but the past few weeks have seen a wee resurgence of craft activity going on around here, plus i've got some stuff to share from before my awol adventures, so i'll be back with updates soon!!

Lexi's 4th birthday!

2010-02-11T17:03:00.003+13:00

within a month doesn't count as late blogging!

due to unforeseen circumstances we had to cancel lexi's party, but we still had a little get together with lexi's aunty, uncle & baby cousin, which lexi was more than happy about!

i made a few things for it, firstly a Little Rocket (designed by a very clever friend called megan!)
(auto photo rotating grumble grumble)
made out of scraps of yarn from lexi's earflap hat & felted slippers (not bad value for an $8 200g hank from the titirangi markets!)
and a special new birthday dress (two years running now!)
i'm rather happy with the detail, the buttons are the same as her Spring Butterfly
modelled with the crown & cape that were handmade for her birthday by her nursery teachers(!!!)
and a very silly alien cake-
i think she enjoyed her birthday!

vegelicious

2010-02-08T19:12:00.002+13:00

I dug up a haul of self-seeded potatoes a while ago, a beautiful purple heritage variety called Urenika-
not bad for a free potato plant!

and yes, they're even more purple inside than out-
people often seem to wonder what vegetarians actually eat on a day to day basis, well this is an example of the sort of meal that makes me happy...
a "token pasta dish", as one of my vege friends puts it, purple taters with cream cheese, green beans, and a salad with homegrown carrots, tomatoes & cucumbers (plus a bunch of other stuff) with way too much mayo.
simple, but tasty, fresh, colourful (before i added way too much mayo ;-) ) and with plenty of protein, for those that obsess over the stuff!

and speaking of home grown tomatoes & cucumbers, these are some of my Deka & Port Albert (respectively) heritage cucumbers-
and a few of the pretty Red Russian & J.Walsh heritage toms we've been harvesting... i've got some black toms ripening too, but they're obviously a later variety.
also dug up the garlic, and i'm very pleased!! i had a much smaller patch this year, but ended up with larger, plumper bulbs, which taste a thousand times better than the imported chinese stuff!
it's a shame i couldn't get a photo to capture it, but they had a gorgeous pearlescent purple quality to them, which made them all the nicer to have hanging up :-)

february isn't too late...

2010-02-02T01:05:00.002+13:00

for xmas stuff, surely?

just a couple of things that had slipped through the blogging net... first, an Elefante-
pics taken on xmas eve, hence the shocking lighting!

seriously fiddly, but pretty cute, and all from stash!

and a funny little activity i did with the kids, making xmas felt wreaths!
i simply cut some holly, or xmas trees depending on who you ask, out of green felt and marked two holes on each leaf... then the kids threaded some thin elastic through the holes in each leaf once, in from the front then from the back, then through again, forming a loop, this time going from the back first, then in through the front, threading red buttons or felt circles occasionally as they went. if that makes any sense.

some peoples looked slightly more haphazard when worn...
but it was a fun & easy way to keep them happy for a while, and have been a welcome xmassy addition to the dress-up stash!

sucker

2010-01-02T15:13:00.000+13:00

yes i am.
after the previous complete disaster, for some mysterious reason i decided to have another go at the cake balls.

yup.

but because i do have a modicum of sense i used my favourite quick chocolate cake recipe, and (a lot less) chocolate icing, and dipped it in melted chocolate drops for good measure.

a VAST improvement!!

and this time there were only around 40 of them, which is a much more manageable amount!

and another...

2010-01-01T15:04:00.001+13:00

just because he's cute.

oh yeah..

2009-12-31T15:12:00.000+13:00

happy new year everyone!!!

the neighs have it.

2009-12-31T14:43:00.002+13:00

3 hobby horses for the kids for xmas!

two horses for the big kids

and a wee pony for the littlun!

They're made from mens socks (the thicker sport type one for the pony worked better than the business socks for the big ones), stuffed with wool fleece, and finished with felt, yarn & ribbon details :-)

The idea is from a book called "Creative Play for Your Toddler; Steiner Expertise and Toy Projects for 2-4 years", and is a lovely, simple craft project, albeit with quite a lot of hand stitching!

Smaug Jnr.

2009-12-16T21:08:00.003+13:00

he's a Baby Snow Dragon, except with adapted Golden Snitch wings...
and a hoard, of course.
one more xmas pressie done!

the 4 weeks of advent

2009-12-15T16:19:00.003+13:00

This year we've started a new tradition - the four candles of advent!

Admittedly we've probably divorced it from it's original meaning, but so have many xmas customs, so i figure our focus is more about acquiring & adapting customs to create our own xmas traditions!

and i like this one more than the chocolate filled advent calendars available in chain stores ;-)

Each sunday (or in our accidental case - tuesday, monday, then finally a sunday, luckily the kids don't keep track of the days very well yet!) of the four weeks prior to xmas, you light another candle, and that candle is representative of an aspect of our world...

The first week of advent
"The first light of advent (as we light the first candle)
Is the light of the stones
Stones that live in crystals
Seashells and bones."

and the children decorate around the candle with crystals etc that they have chosen...
(i take issue with shells being stones & not beasts, but hey)

The second week of advent
"The first light of advent.. (etc etc while lighting the first candle)

The second light of advent, (lighting the 2nd candle)
Is the light of plants.
Plants reach up to the sun
And in the breezes dance."

and add some leaves & flowers picked from our garden

the third week of advent
"The first light... (as before)
The 2nd light... (as before)

The third light of advent (lighting the 3rd candle)
Is the light of beasts
The light of hope that we may see
In greatest and in least"

and the kids choose a sandstone animal (or whatever you have to hand of course) to place under the candle..

then the forth verse for the fourth week is
"The fourth light of Advent,
It is the light of man.
The light of love, the light of thought,
To give and understand."

and i've still got to find something suitable for that ;-)

and then on xmas eve we have a rainbow candle, that lexi dipped, to light as well to finish it off!

we also do a little xmas countdown with little activities planned for some of the days ie-
going to carols or a santa parade
this year we're visiting a nativity drive-through play, the telecom tree, a xmas storytime at the library, and our city's famous street of decorated houses...
crafty stuff like making paper chains, xmas biscuits, felt holly crowns, printed wrapping paper & cards etc etc..

what do you do in the lead up to xmas?

great balls of...cake.

2009-12-14T12:15:00.003+13:00

paul has had a few morning tea type events recently, one for staff & a kids class party, so i thought the previously spied red velvet cake balls (the precursor to the oh-so-cool cake pops) would be an interesting & festive option....

i was kind of right....

i started with this recipe for red velvet cake... oh my goodness it uses a WHOLE BOTTLE of red food colouring!!!
and almost no flavouring. ??! it tastes to me not unlike generic pancake with no topping...??
there is a hint of vanilla & 2T of cocoa, which i can only hazard is just to add the depth of colour rather than having a pink velvet cake...??

then i mixed it with the required amount of cream cheese icing, which honestly seemed like too much, cos they were pretty gooey (starting to see a trend here?!), and as much as i love cream cheese icing, it tasted like a slightly odd combo..

but hey.. i mixed it up & started making little balls, which paul tells me are about the size of an unshelled macadamia (ie with shell on), because i had read that smaller ones hold together better... instead of the 50-60 it supposedly yields using the box mix + 16oz of icing (and remembering that i used 16oz of icing & it seemed too much) i got around 140. umm...

so we started the task of dipping them in white chocolate... note for future: do cake pop version, the built in stick would really help, especially not having to take it out.. we used all kinds of combos of spoons & skewers...

and gave up after 111 balls. a little after midnight.

once chilled they were pretty enough.. the white chocolate with bright red filling was particularly impressive...
but.. ummm.... perhaps it is some kind of ginormous culinary cultural difference between us and the US.. but geez the flavour was spectacularly unspectacular, to the point of being Rather Dull, with touches of Kinda Weird, and the texture seems to vary between Meh and Ugh depending on who you ask.

Doh.

so yeah, spectacular failure.

so if you are thinking of doing these this xmas, don't. Or at least choose your favourite cake, and favourite icing, so at least they taste good, add *just* enough icing to hold it together, no more, and definitely do the cake pop version both for ease of dipping & cos they're cuter.

however, mysteriously, lexi & eli really like these cake balls, so they aren't ALL going to waste...

Xmas swaps!

2009-12-14T11:12:00.003+13:00

a wee group of friends of mine sometimes organise little craft swaps, and, being xmas time, we decided to do two - a secret santa swap, and an ornament swap!

i've already been outed for both, even though it's not even xmas yet, but that means i can finally share what i've been up to!!

first up for the secret santa, my recipient was the 9 year old son, of an incredibly (scarily) creative woman, who is really into reading, harry potter, science experiments & constructing things...

sooo.... i decided to make him a harry potter scarf-
but there are fifty gazillion plain old gryffindor scarf patterns out there, but i wanted something a bit more *magic*... and then i came across the Gryffindor Illusion Scarf!

It looks like a normal stripy scarf from the front, but if you look at it from a different angle-
the two gryffindor lions heads appear! cool huh?
(shame about the grubby camera lens! doh..)

then i added the all important enrollment letter from Hogwarts, including equipment list-
and a cool new NZ book called "How to eat a Huhu Grub; Plus a truckload of other mad, cool & dangerous ideas for kiwis who like doing stuff" and hopefully you've got a pretty happy boy!

and for our ornament swap i made 10 little crocheted snowflakes!
they're nowhere near as fine as many out there on the internet, but it was my first time trying something like this, and it was fun!
(i flatly refuse to take the next step in this ladder however - crocheted doilies!!)

this was the original pattern design-
but i wanted them to be a little less snowflakey (yay for antipodean xmases), so adapted it to more of a star shape-
they're stiffened with a 2 parts sugar to 1 part water syrup, which is rather sticky but does work quite well! i would take a lot more care in blocking them in future though...

i tried to take a pic to show how translucent & crystalline they are... but don't think i really captured it..
but they were very fun to make, and if i have some spare time next year (ha!) i might even do some for us!!

last minute gifts

2009-12-03T14:19:00.002+13:00

i received an email yesterday informing us that our gifts for the kindy teachers are expected in by friday, so they can be packaged up nicely together... eeek!!

luckily some friends had been checking out the Cowgirl Cookies at Bakerella, and extra fortunately i had been gifted a few large Agee jars a week ago...

so i made a xmas version!
it has red, green & yellow M&M's (which you can barely see - early morning, running out the door photos aren't the best!) to make it festive lol..in case you're thinking of doing some, it took a 200g bag to get barely enough of the three colours for each jar, i think i would have been wise to get at least one more! and to make it look prettier than i did make sure you put the M&M's just around the walls of the jar & fill the middle in with choc chips, rather than a flat layer like everything else ;-)

with it's M&M's, choc chips, pecans, oats & lashings of brown sugar, it sounds like a very nice cookie mix indeed!

finish off with some labels - mine were printed with the red circle, then cut out & matted onto some green paper, and a little silver star added - a 6" square of fabric, some ribbon & a handmade card (in this case a white card inside a green one with a star punched out of it, bound with shimmery yarn), and you've got a pretty cute, useful, and most of all quick xmas gift!!

On the 1st of december Nova made for me...

2009-12-01T14:20:00.004+13:00

.. some bunting for with our xmas tree!
My long ago alluded to pointy secret has finally reached fruition! At last I have a collection of lovely xmas buntings ready for sale!!

These Christmas buntings are handcrafted here in NZ, by me, out of quilting cotton and satin ribbon. They have four prints & three colours.
(small disclaimer- due to the nature of the process some of the prints occasionally appear upside down, but extreme care has been taken to negate any visual impact of this)

They are double sided so are perfect for hanging across a room or archway, or even outside in fine weather!

Each point has hidden overlocking on all three sides, before being stitched into the ribbon, making them much more durable than fabric finished with pinking shears or paper buntings. Looked after properly these should last for years and years!
(Our birthday bunting, made in an identical fashion, has been pulled out & hung numerous times & is still looking perfect)

Why have bunting you ask?!

They're essentially an almost instantaneous way to festively decorate a room!
Whether strung up against an otherwise drab piece of wall, or hung across a room, it immediately injects some energy and christmas spirit!
They're perfect for hanging up outside if you're having a barbeque, because they can be removed super fast if the weather goes bad..
And because they are hanging up they don't clutter up surface areas, and are out of reach of all but the most crazily ingenious children! ;-)

and they look cute.
I have three sizes available-

12 of the "18 Pointers" - approx 3.16m long, including ties
$30

3 of the "16 Pointers" - approx 2.90m long, including ties
$28

and one lonely "17 Pointer" - approx 3m long, including ties.
$29 lol..

Postage will be $5 around NZ (it's a bit late to post overseas sorry!), and they come with care instructions & a little ziplock bag to keep them safe!

SO, if you would like to buy one, please email me at newlymade@hotmail.com

Merry Christmas!!

Project Monday #11

2009-11-30T17:26:00.002+13:00

the alleged turtle / green peanut.. finished!!it's Sheldon from Knitty, but knit in 8ply... it's actually fairly easy, if rather time consuming & finicky...

and now i'm working on a xmas ornament swap, and a small knitted elephant.. still also got three hobby horses & a dragon & a bunch of baking to do before xmas, but hey.. i'm sure the remaining 3.5 weeks will absolutely not fly by.....

*gulp*

worst blogger... ever.

2009-11-28T10:59:00.003+13:00

but firstly, a massive thank you to the lovely Kat at Family of Girls, who sent me these lovely dishcloths in a giveaway on her blog!
heh heh you know me well kat!!

other than that, i've been busy with a variety of different projects, i've finished one of my secret things, but can't share that til after xmas!! and i'll have a few other things finished over the next couple of days too.. but in the meantime....
our garden is going quite well, our strawberries have started ripening, but it's a fight between us & the ants as to who gets to eat them!

we've got quite a few boysenberries popping up on our plant, i ate the first one the other day even...
should have waited until it was *properly* ripe first though!

we've got radishes, beetroots, kale, silverbeet & rainbow chard, cabbages & another cauli all ready to eat, flowers on the potatoes, cucumbers & feijoa, and the first tiny tomatoes & mandarins are shaping up, and the pumpkin, peas, beans & garlic are all growing nicely.. sometime in the next few days i need to plant out our corn, more cucumbers & the sunflowers too...

it's quite impressive how much you can squeeze into a small space (we've got an 8.8sqm/94sqf patch, plus have bordered the front lawn with trees & dug up some of the tiny lawn), and ours is by no means optimised, but i'm fairly happy with how it is progressing! oh for enough space to lay down some decent beds though!

beauty and the beast

2009-11-13T14:16:00.002+13:00

as proud as i am about our beetroot, it really doesn't compare to the good looks of a new first-time-attempted radish!
(though quite honestly the radish tasted really blah...)

and our first cabbage!this is from the same little bunch of brassicas that our first cauli came from, that i nearly pulled out not so long ago! and sure enough, after harvesting that cabbage yesterday i was going to pull its stalk out along with another one that hadn't been doing anything... but something made me check right in the middle... and there was another teeny tiny cauli head forming!! one day i'll learn to just leave them alone!

(we've had a crazy few days, including a planned hospital trip, so i'll be back with more bits and pieces soonish!)

late night Project Monday #10

2009-11-09T22:19:00.003+13:00

it's a turtle. allegedly.

we'll see....

i've also accidentally designed a small, girly, doll's party dress! i need to get around to making a second, with a few tweaks, and then i might even share it!

or just get embarrassed at my designing ineptitude & hide lol...

Cupcakes & competitions

2009-11-05T15:36:00.004+13:00

firstly- absolutely awesome (vegan!) chocolate banana cupcake recipe found here - super simple & fast, delicious & moist, and best of all we have all of the ingredients in our house 90% of the time. except for cupcake papers, but one must take responsibility for forward planning sometimes...

and secondly, if you haven't discovered GardenMama before, go check out her blog now! it's not actually all to do with gardening or anything like that either ;-) just beautiful, wholesome, old fashioned without all the downsides kind of living.. with lovely photos & competitions.. like this one!

Lesson for the day

2009-11-04T13:31:00.002+13:00

Knitting, to a deadline, whilst angry..bad idea.

(for the non-knitters- follow the pink edge from 12 o'clock around.. all good, all good, all good, oh wait where is it going?! it's gone! oh and there it is again... it's NOT supposed to do that.)

160 stitches, 2 hours work. "oops."

(if you were wondering about the angry part, roughly 70% of the kid's 'in circulation' toys & stuff, plus $15 of wholemeal spaghetti, has now been removed from the floor of the lounge, kitchen, dining room & hallway, and are now OUT of circulation. at least until the other three rooms they have destroyed have been cleared of their books & lego. might be mean, but less stuff = less potential mess... sadly compared to many families we didn't have all that much potential mess to start with, but this lot could make a mess out of even the scantest of materials it seems. and that would be fine if they would *just tidy it up again!!!*)

early morning harvest

2009-11-03T08:47:00.002+13:00

woohoo!! our first decent cauliflower!!

it was from a bunch of mixed brassicas that i planted last autumn, that largely didn't amount to anything, so this is a real surprise! a couple of the cabbages look like they might be firming up a bit, so fingers crossed.... patience really is virtue with these things isn't it?

Project Monday #9

2009-11-02T19:32:00.005+13:00

Ok, so as per usual i still can't share pics of any of my current WIPs....

BUT

i have actually finished some things!!

firstly, the penguin skittles for eli's xmas-
they took a lot longer to make than i expected, but in reality if you were only working on these, had kids who actually went to sleep before 8.30-9pm, and then *stayed* asleep for the rest of the night, then they'd mostly likely only take a beginner-intermediate crocheter 1 evening for each penguin body, 1 for the ball, 1 for the tummies, and 1 for the rest, at most.

these were all knit using stash-burn yarn, stuffed with wool fleece & a disk of wood in the base (just used a hole saw on our drill), with embroidered eyes :-)

i knitted the beaks cos i just wasn't winning with the crocheted version, and it was much simpler to do a basic turkish cast on style..

pretty cute huh?!

and i also spent the weekend painting the toilet-
(excuse the dimness, it was too bright for my poor little camera earlier! the photo below is a better indication)

it used to be sponged in various shades of blue, which in such a small room had begun to get a bit much after 8ish years!

so we stripped & sanded it all back, did all the necessary filling, sugar soaping & undercoating, then i painted the bottom half with left over paint from our bedroom, the top half with a slightly warmish white (but NOT cream!!), and added a polished metal trim along the border...

then it just took the addition of a new, smaller cistern, chrome toilet paper holder & door stop, and some 'commissioned' art by alexis-
it's looking rather nice i think!
it's a shame the toilet is now by far the nicest room in our house, (it's making the rest look decidedly shabby.. good thing i bought extra paint!) but i'm very pleased with my work!

Spring basket

2009-10-28T09:54:00.000+13:00

Our little spring nature 'table' basket
Pinecones from the local park, assorted stones in spring colours, our felt geodes, beeswax eggs in their felt nest, our spring gnome (who has misplaced her hat!) with her tiny watering can, and a selection of little flowers lexi picked from our garden (all weeds!)

Our nature basket lives on our dining table, and gets played with a lot!

you can check out our previous summer & autumn baskets too! (i'm in denial during winter ;-) )

Project...umm... "Monday" #8

2009-10-27T09:33:00.003+13:00

you know, it's really hard to keep a public record of your WIPs when they are mostly secret.

cos you end up with posts like-

two almost used up balls of wool-
i can't show you what they've been used up with, cos it's secret.

pretty gripping stuff really.

but anyway, i'm still chugging along with the penguins, and another of my (unseen) secret projects, but i also snuck in some time to make eli some new nappies-
his ones (size small!!) were getting a bit low in the rise, but were still ok around the leg, whereas lexi's old ones are good for him in the rise, but much too big in the leg, which necessitated the drafting of an almost-medium skinny leg size pocket nappy lol... happy to say they fit perfectly!

Hidden treasures

2009-10-23T09:18:00.006+13:00

Looking for ideas for our spring nature table display, i came across the idea of felt geodes!

so with lexi's help, we picked out some spring-ish colours - various shades of green & assorted blossomy colours-
(we stayed away from whites & yellow/red fleeces because they're more winter-autumn to us)

and taking a little hunk of each we formed our geode like this-

you need-
a little bit of carded wool fleece in various colours (i get most of mine from Forest Folk - it's 20g/1m for $1NZ, and 1m goes a long way when you're not spinning it!)
lots of hot soapy water, the hotter the better, within reason.
more soap, i find liquid soap is the easiest for this
a towel
rubber gloves are nice if you're a bit delicate like me ;-) or if your kids are helping with the felting

-starting with a small tuft of your first colour, form a little ball in your hands, then *very gently* holding it between your palms, dunk it into the hot soapy water... DON'T squeeze!!

- now pretending that it is a tiny fluffy animal of your choice, very very gently start to move it around in your hands, very very gently massaging it between your hands... remember not to crush that poor little baby bunny or whatnot that is in your hands! (the dunking it in hot water is another issue entirely)

- gradually increase the amount of agitation as the fibres begin to knit together.. if the fibres stick to your hands a bit, smear a little soap onto your hands & that should help

- once your first little ball is holding it's shape, dry your hands on the towel & wrap a layer of different coloured fleece around your ball, then repeat the previous process, remembering each time you add new fleece that you have to handle it very very very gently!

- keep repeating, adding more layers until you have a decent size geode-
- once the outer layers are fairly firm you can begin to give the whole thing a good, hard squeeze to compact the fibres throughout the geode, and felt them up thoroughly

- once you are happy that you have a nice firm ball, give it a good rinse under cold water, a gentle squeeze out & pat dry with a towel, then leave to dry for a few days in a warm place, like a hot water cylinder cupboard.
- once you think it should be dry, or just can't wait any longer, chop it in half!! i've heard electric knives do the job, but we don't have one, so i just gradually cut round & round it with my sewing scissors!

ta da!!

(as with any of my tutorials, please let me know if any of it doesn't make sense!)

Cheesy Biscuits

2009-10-20T18:41:00.004+13:00

or cookies, if you're that way inclined. alliterates better too, i suppose.

(any american types out there, *what* are what you call biscuits?!?!)
anyhoo....

1Cup Flour
1Tbsp Icing Sugar
1tsp Baking Powder
1/8tsp Salt
pinch Cayenne Pepper
2Tbsp Butter, softened
75g Grated Cheese
some milk

Sift the flour & other dry ingredients together.
Rub in butter & add cheese.
Mix to a stiff dough with a little milk.
Knead and roll out very thin on a floured board (ours were approx 3-5mm), cut into fingers, squares or shapes
Bake for around 10min at 200°C
and munch!

we had ours dipped in tomato & BBQ sauce ;-)