Yarn yarns pt3

but wait, there's more!

An ombre Potae -

A Pink Orchard cardi for Lexi -

A Fierce Little Dragon for a little boy's birthday -

A pair of Zigging hats -

A Kaipara shawlette for the ravellenic games -

and a Zagging skirt -

and there's still a couple of things that I haven't got finished photos of yet!!

Yarn yarns pt2

MORE forgotten knitting..

A Kaia Babydoll for Lexi - 

A pair of Doodlepants longies that I was meant to make while pregnant with Eli..

Yttrium for the knitted periodic table project - 

(Y? Because I could, lol!! *groan*)

A Pinny for a playgroup Dolly -

(plus new denim pants & shirt)

Mini hotshots -

Chunky beanies for sale -

A Dolce Beret for Lexi -

A Spring Butterfly & Poppy hat set for a friends baby -

A Little Winifred tunic -

still to be continued!!

Nuts for Knits

I confess, I'm scared of knit fabrics.

But I got "Growing Up Sew Liberated" from our library, and it had some cute, simple patterns in there, which I thought I should have a go at!

I've got a wee bit of precious merino fabric to use for the kids this winter, but I thought I had better test the patterns, and my skills, on something a little less important.

Enter the $1 remnant bin PJs!!

 I got the pink cotton knit fabric in a remnant bin years ago for $1, and was given the white cotton rib by a friend, also years ago, both have been sitting in my stash with me too scared to touch them! Despite it not being a tragic investment if it all went disastrously wrong, go figure. Add in a free pattern = cheap, happy girl PJs!!

I think I need to stretch the ribbing a bit more when I'm sewing it, so that it doesn't waver as much, using a twin-needle made it quite easy to actually attach too..... 

but hey, they're functional & don't look terrible!!! That's all I ask lol..

The first (and second) day of our Advent Calendar

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!!

While everyone else was at school...

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!!

*shrug*

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!)

Off the needles...

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!!

Hey Leah

the queen of rainbows....

the latest addition to lexi's room-

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

cute huh? :-)

it's the thought that counts.. right?

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?

A place to call one's own

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!

thumbs in the thumb place...

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

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

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!