Fixing A Hole

A freezer (almost) full of meals...

2012-01-17T16:28:00.000+11:00

...cos that's about as crafty as I get at the mo!

A week or 2 ago I came across a few links about cooking once a month, or freezing a month's worth of food ahead.. I was inspired!

Here's an uninspiring photo of the contents of my freezer -

We did our usual weekly shop on Saturday and at the same time I grabbed another trolley and loaded up. Surprisingly the base meals (without sides etc), cost less than an additional $100 (approx) to our weekly food bill.

As a result we now have in our freezer -
Porcupine meatballs + 2 portions of sauce
4 pizzas
A batch of chicken sausage rolls, frozen individual before being bagged so we can grab as many as needed
Chicken meatballs
Burritto filling
2x pasta sauce
2x pasta bake
2x apricot chicken
4x stirfry
A batch of vegie sausage rolls

About 20 meals worth, not too shabby for my first effort I thought.

I did have ideas about how to make the meat stretch further (by adding extra goodness), but was in such a rush to just get it done that I forgot all about investigating them, oops. Will have to remember that for next time! And next time I will def be doing more vegie meals, mmmm falafel.

A sliver of rainbow

2011-10-22T22:33:00.002+11:00

Today we went up to Dunkeld as part of the Discover Dunkeld festival. They had a market in the gardens, horse and carriage rides, lots of things to see and do!

One of the things we went to see was the 'Every Drop Counts' exhibition at the Off The Rails Gallery, which is in the old Dunkeld railway station. That is where I was last weekend, helping them to set it up.

It was very cool and we had lots of fun looking around the markets, though it was very hard to actually look at anything with the kids wanting to do a million things and cracking it if we stayed still for too long!

There were many stalls with knitted bits and pieces, a stall with alpaca yarn that a man was weaving into a scarf on a loom (kids were not as fascinated as I!), but I was bummed to not see any with yarn or fleece.
But then! Aha! During a quick scoot around with groaning children in tow (they wanted to go to the bouncy castle...) I spied a stall with bags of fleece and skeins and skeins of hand dyed yarn. I would have loved to get some fleece and yarn, but I didn't want to blow all our cashola. (Needed it for horse and carriage ride..)
So I settled for this hand dyed sliver of rainbow... very nommy.

Now I just have to get back to practising spinning so I don't kill it!!

More Juliet

2011-10-21T23:46:00.000+11:00

Yay for progress!

I knuckled down on this last night and got up to the part where I cast off the arms and then...... The smallest woke up cranky and needed me, hence no post yesterday!

Tonight I cast off the arms and then knit 2 rows before whacking it on waste yarn to see how it fit (and zomg I was mentally begging it to fit, cos buggered if I wanted to undo the cast off and do more) and for photos.

Here ya go -

Juliet flat(ish), still on needles.

Juliet on moi, was grr at not fitting it all in the pic though

This is me trying to not scrunch up Juliet too much,
balance the phone in one hand and not make
a stupid face...

And repeat..

I'm very pleased with the fit :-)

Was not pleased at dropping a bunch of stitches off the needle while putting it onto the yarn, and was also very not pleased at Jamie's amusement at me freaking out. Poohead.

I did save it though, obviously, LOL, and yayed at the non-slipperyness of the yarn for helping it not go to hell!!

Now to continue the garter till below the bewbs and then start the lace, yay!

zzzzzz

2011-10-19T21:55:00.001+11:00

Geeeeeeez how boring have I made my blog by joining in Blogtoberfest?! Gah, LOL.

I could show you my progress on Juliet, but it will look much the same as the other photo, even though I've done quite a bit.. Until I cast off the sleeves it's just going to look like a strip of brown.

I haven't even touched the longies since I cast on Juliet, oopsy. And I am fending off thoughts of knitting socks, or thinking up Giftmas presents to knit. I mean, cos clearly I don't have enough going on already without adding a bazillion more WIPs into the mix.

Go figure...

2011-10-18T22:05:00.002+11:00

So apparently you actually get more knitting done if you, ohhh you know, PICK IT UP! As opposed to merely perusing Ravelry and adding millions of future WIPs to the queue in your head.

Who knew?

MMm Monday

2011-10-17T13:36:00.002+11:00

I am doing this now, so that later I can knit without worrying what I will blog about, LMAO.

I don't know why I feel so compelled to put youtube vids in every post at the mo, but here you go...

And now for some sorta kinda craft content, and I apologise profusely if you're not a member of Ravelry because you need to be to see it..., I am currently addicted to this forum thread. I don't usually go to the forum, but I was bored one day and stumbled across it, Your Ugliest FO? There is some brilliantly bad stuff in there and I am working my way through the hundreds of pages, hehe.

My sheet has yonis on it.

2011-10-16T21:37:00.000+11:00

As promised, progress shot of Juliet. It doesn't look like much but I've done ummmm 15/16 rows already.

Yes, that is the sheet that is on my bed, kind of awesomely bad, no? I kinda think those leaf shape things (I think they are leaves???) look like yonis...

And last night I was all Sussudio, tonight I am all Julllllllliiiiiieeeeetttttttttttttttt... Like yk, that bit in Romeo + Juliet when her mum and nurse are yelling for her.

Embedded for you viewing pleasure...

A break in regular programming...

2011-10-15T22:41:00.001+11:00

I am stuffed.

I spent about 9hrs today watching, knitting while watching, helping and doing coffee runs for, 3 artists setting up a gallery ready for an exhibit next Saturday.
My bro is one of the artists :)

They had to tidy the space up, repaint the wall ready to hang stuff on and paint on, had some tense moments while trying to get a hold of a ladder tall enough to reach the ceiling to hang things, assemble some of their pieces.... Ohh so much to do!!

And then there was the 4ishrs driving I did to get there and back, omg. Zzzzzz

Sleep time now! Will post a pic of the progress I made on my Juliet tomorrow though :)

Ju-Ju-Julieeeeeeeet

2011-10-14T23:58:00.000+11:00

(Sung to Phil Collins' Sussudio, cos I am that weird, LOL)

I tried to make Juliet yeeeeears ago, but gave up on it because of A- ugly yarn and B- it was looking huge and it just made me feel like a big fat frump. So I frogged it and gave up.

But I've been wanting to knit something other than a hat for myself for a while and I figure what better time to start than when I am already making a baby shawl AND a pair of longies?!

I am using Cascade Eco wool in latte, which is rather drab, but MUCH nicer than the yarn I first tried it will, a weird shade of grey, which I thought was brown, LMAO. The dangers of buying yarn online!! It's also a bit sheepy, which is interesting, LOL.

I also discovered since that the pattern runs quite large, ah ha! So I have opted for a smaller size this time, shall see how it goes..

Yes! More progress!

2011-10-13T23:55:00.000+11:00

Complete with craptastic photography!!

Almost finished the first leg. Not as newborn sized as I was expecting though :s

More WIP progress..

2011-10-12T23:58:00.002+11:00

Ahhh, Blogtoberfest, you are making me knit just so I have something to blog about, LMAO.

WIP progress

2011-10-11T21:00:00.000+11:00

Ta-da! A waistband! Very exciting I know.
I'm about to dip into the Ashford Tekapo that I posted a pic of the other day, to start on the body. The longies pattern I am using is from Ladybug Loops.

Birthday Cakes

2011-10-10T17:05:00.001+11:00

We had 5th and 3rd birthdays happening here in September, 2 weeks apart.
For convenience we had only 1 party between them, I don't think they minded, besides, it meant that they got 2 cakes at their party!!

Usually when I do the birthday cakes I use a novelty tin and ice it accordingly, it saves me having to dick around with pieces of cake and the fiddly art of cutting them in the correct shape. But this time I decided to do something different, I dicked around with pieces of cake and the fiddly art of cutting them in the correct shape.
I remembered why I had avoided this all along, because it sucked.

Here are the cakes, from a not very good angle, but it's the only photo I have..
(A dragon, which everyone called a dinosaur and a space ship rocket thing)

They are from a birthday cake special magazine that was part of a Superfood Ideas magazine from last year (I think?).

Despite my not liking them, I was asked, at the party even, if I could make another dragon/dinosaur cake next year for my nephew's birthday, LOL.

Handspun Baby Hat

2011-10-09T21:25:00.001+11:00

I balled up the Handspun yarn today and had a look around Ravelry for a pattern that would suit.

I settled on the 'Trendy Baby Hat', pulled out my 10mm circs and got started.

Only a few hours later I was done! Would have been sooner without those 'little interruptions'.
It didn't turn out quite as small as I was expecting, it's supposed to be 0-3mths, but it looks much more like 3-6mths to me. Ah well, is cute anyway and it is rather satisfying to know that I made both the yarn AND the hat :-)

The ball of yarn weighed 55g and the hat took 29g, so I have less than half the ball left now.. Not sure what to do with the rest, will probably stash it until something comes along.

WIP

2011-10-08T23:19:00.001+11:00

Currently working with this yarn, Ashford Tekapo. Making a teeny tiny pair of longies. Will post a pic when I have some decent progress happening...

Spinnin'

2011-10-07T19:42:00.000+11:00

Today it has been one year since Jamie's mum died. And about a month later his Grandmother, his mum's mother in law, also died.
They were both very crafty women, both helping me to crochet, knit and spin. After they died I got to (well, actually it was insisted upon by Jamie's stepdad that I did, LOL), go through all of their crafty supplies and take whatever I wanted.
They had been collecting stuff for YEARS so it was just a touch overwhelming.. Tonnes of fabric and yarn, beading supplies, quilting supplies, millions of books and patterns.
And my 3 favourite scores - a brand new sewing machine, a near new overlocker and Jamie's mum's spinning wheel.

After I brought them home I looked at them for awhile, and then packed them away. And away they have stayed. Unsurprising for the overlocker - because I don't even know how to use it, unsurprising for the sewing machine - because I'm not so into sewing, but the spinning wheel? Not cool.

So today I pulled the spinning wheel out and gave her some TLC.
I found that the string that goes around the wheel (which was already loose) had broken, I suspect that the kitten had something to do with that. I remembered that I still had a wheel's worth leftover from when I got my wheel and used that to replace it.
The poor thing was dusty and in great need of a wipe down, and when I went to use it I found it reluctant to treadle, so I oiled it up too. It ran beautifully after that.

I pulled out some partially used tops of Ashford Corriedale fleece that I had used to make a Blessingway Square for the Owlet Mumma, coincidentally also around this time last year, knowing that I had nothing planned for it so wouldn't be too shattered if I totally screwed it up. Especially seeing as I can't even remember the last time I spun.

With that in mind I started with the shade I liked the least, LOL, knowing that I would no doubt improve greatly by the time I was onto the second.
Correct -

Nutmeg - lumpy and bumpy

Scarlet - smooth and even, very noice!

And then I plied them both together, skeined it up, washed it and it is now hanging on a door knob in the lounge room to dry.

Not bad if I do say so myself, considering the break I've had from spinning. Was nice to get back into it and I think I will have to try and do it more often.

Now, what to make with it??

Fail.

2011-10-06T23:32:00.001+11:00

I got nuthin today, nuthin! I've run out of projects to blog about, gah!!

Have something planned for tomorrow, shall see how it pans out...

More hats!!

2011-10-05T20:20:00.001+11:00

This year in my effort to reduce the amount of gift knitting I do (erm, lots!) I vowed to craft for one family only (and then failed when my sister and a work friend had babies, heh).

So over the course of the year, each member of the chosen family has been crafted a hat for their birthday.
You can see previously blogged hats here (Space Invaders hat and green/purple hat), here (Transformers hat) and here (both of em).

In August Ms L had her 7th birthday, at the request of her Mumma I used some pink/purple yarn that has been in my stash for yonks, I got it from The Yarn Cafe when Sunny was teeny tiny but never ended up using it (story of my stash....) and as he no longer happily wears woolly things I was more than happy to use it for Ms L's hat.

The pattern is Tebe Slouch, from Woolly Wormhead. I made the adult size to make sure L could get plenty of wear, but it actually ended up being a touch too big for me even. I only made it to the length of the 'medium' size though, because I thought I was going to run out of yarn and I was getting a bit bored of the pattern.

Earlier in the year was Ms P's 3rd birthday, I've not blogged about it yet because I neglected to take a pic of it before I sent it off, and then when I was given a pic of her wearing it, I forgot to blog it, doh!

This is what I came up for Ms P, a red and brown Moriarty.

This hat took FOREVER, for a few reasons - a) I had to learn how to do a magic ring, b) I tend to crochet tightly and it dicks with the gauge and c) because of the gauge I had to kind of abandon the pattern and apply calculations based on P's head measurements that I got from another pattern. Fun. But gorgeous, and I freakin love the pic!

Tiny baby knits

2011-10-04T23:23:00.001+11:00

I have started making tiny things for the tiny babe on board in my belly.

So far I have created only 1 thing, but am working on 2 others (I will blog about them later).

This is a Seamless Kimono Baby Sweater -

It is knit in 8ply Merino that I hand dyed earlier in the year, with food colouring :)

I thought I'd also use this opportunity to show off (again, heh) the things that I made for Sunny that belly babe will have passed down to....erm, it.

Newborn size longies, the first pants Sunny wore *nawwww*

The Cabbage Patch Dolls we have were lucky to score these as clothes until we recently decided to spawn again. They are Picky Pants, made with 10ply wool from Jolly Jumbuck - colourway is cappuccino.

Another Baby Kimono Sweater, this time in rainbow coloured Merino Bambino. And another pair of Picky Pants to go with it, the yarn used for these was given to me as part of a gift swap thingy. It was leftover from yarn that was gradient dyed and made into a bag for me, love that bag!

When I saw this sweater named Sunbeam I just had to make it. I'm not sure that the hand dyed Treliske Merino did the pattern justice, but I think it is pretty darn cute :)

2 gorgeous hats using scraps of yarn I had floating around, including the gradient dyed yarn from the longies.

Pattern is Rib-A-Roni, a pattern I have used several times.

And lastly, a Seamless Baby Kimono which belly babe won't get to wear, because I passed it on to someone else (and I think they have passed it on and on etc LOL).

It is made in evoke hand dyed Four Bags Full 8ply yarn (though when I bought it they were called The Yarn Cafe) and the colourway is Sunflower. Still one of my favourite colourways. Ever.

So there ya go! Happy crafting :-)

Wrap me up

2011-10-03T22:15:00.000+11:00

At the end July/start of August I had this insane desire to make a wrap, I just needed one, yk?

These 2 wraps have been in my Ravelry queue for ages, possibly well over a year.. (or 2 even, LOL, I just checked and I queued them both in July 2009!!)

Lake of the Woods (click for linky)

Earth Maiden (click for linky)

I was particularly drawn to the Earth Maiden wrap, because I *have* the yarn that it is knit with in that pic and it does look kinda awesome! Buuuuut, it would also take for ever, AND it's knit horizontally - that is just craaaaaaaaazy.
And would I ever even wear it?? I would have to make it into a wall hanging or something to actually appreciate it's awesomeness.

I also passed over those 2 because I felt the need to crochet as well, so ended up settling on this pattern.. Crochet Lacy Wrap.

It took me a whole 2 days to make! And just in time to wear to my sister's 21st birthday party (and I haven't worn it since *snort*)
Scuse the craptastic pics (again! I really need to work on that..) -

My only beef with it is that it isn't really long enough so doesn't really wrap very well. And yes, that is a crochet hook I am using to keep it in place :-)

Yarn used was Moda Vera Mousse from Spotlight :-)

Star Baby Blanky

2011-10-02T18:35:00.001+11:00

Back in March I made a little red Milo vest, for the then not yet born baby of friends. (It's in this post.. scroll down)
I also started a shawl for them as well, but frogged it because I didn't like it, started a new one and realised that due to the weight of the yarn and the complexity of the pattern, it was going to take me FOREVER.
So I set it aside, and it will be (hopefully..) finished for our not yet born babe.

After their baby was born (a boy btw) I *had* to give them something else, other than the Milo vest and the Pinky McKay book I got for them, heh.

So I whipped up a Star Baby Blanket in 9 days, I think that's pretty damn impressive, even if it wasn't full sized because I ran out of yarn. Here are some craptastic pics:

Not that you can tell from my *fabulous* photography, but the blanket is actually circular. The yarn is Bendigo Woollen Mills, Rustic 12ply in Peppercorn.

This is actually the 3rd time I've made this blanket and the 2nd time I have made it in this yarn.
This is the first Star Blanket I made, as you can see the colour is a lot greyer than in the dodgy pics above and it also shows the shape and the radiating star design much better -

This one was also a gift, of course!

And the 2nd one I made (also a gift!) was made with Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 12ply, in Plum, a gorgeous purple -

The pattern is called the Radiating Star Blanket, by Alexis Layton. Unfortunately I think it's only available on Ravelry, but it is free! :-)

Blogtoberfest!

2011-10-01T22:05:00.000+10:00

Late last night I saw a link for Blogtoberfest and signed up, with this here crafty blog, without really thinking about what it entailed..
A blog, everyday, for a month... on a crafty blog when I am feeling most uncrafty. Oopsy.

Ah well, shall be...interesting, eh?
A number of friends are also taking on their own kinds of challenges for October - going without alcohol, sugar, cola etc and so we are all supporting each other
If you're wanting to join in for Blogtoberfest there's a buttony-link over there << up the top of my sidebar :-)

I do have a small backlog of finished knits n bits that I have yet to blog about, so I will be doing them one by one, hehehe.

But for this post, we'll just celebrate my latest WIP, the kind of craft I do best I think... -

1 scarf and 4 hats and continued geekery..

2011-07-10T16:31:00.002+10:00

I love hats.

I love how (usually) quick and easy they are to whip up. They keep my head warm when the weather is crappy and they mean I don't ever have to worry about what my hair looks like when I roll out of bed in the morning.
Hats, bless them.

They also make really awesome gifts.

You may remember the Transformers Hat from my last post...
Well, I decided to up the ante and take my hardcoreness to another insane level.
Hello Space Invaders Hat -

I've been eyeing off the bmp socks from Knitty for ages, not convinced I could knit a pair of socks again, let alone done in colours. So, I took the pattern charts, mashed them together with the We Call Them Pirates hat pattern and added a few extras of my own... A bit lot of frogging back and restarting, swearing and grrrring, then *squee* it was done!

It took me 15 days to make and I think it's pretty freakin awse!

It's made with Cleckheaton Riverina 5ply, in black and Paton Bluebell 5ply in white.

ETA - It was made as a gift, awesomeness not mine to keep *sadface*

I popped out a few more hats in quick succession after finishing it -

Flora, which was supposed to be for me, but came out a little small and was instantly claimed by Sunny anyway... Made in Panda Machinewashable 8ply red and Spotlight Basics 8ply green.

Stellar, crocheted for me, because I *needed* to make something out of the Noro Kuyeon Sock that I had at hand and because the Flora hat didn't fit...

Another Slouchy hat, a (now very belated birthday present) for MrB's 11th birthday.

Made from The Wool Company's Utiku Multi 8ply, colourway is Gems.

After these I set to work on a sideways knit scarf. (ETA - ummm yeah, another gift, LOL) I opted to do it sideways because I knew that a) making vertical stripes on a lengthways knit scarf would be tricky and b) watching the length grow sooo slllloooowwwwwlllllly, knowing that the goal length was somewhere around the same height as me, would quite likely kill me.
It ended up taking far longer than it should have, but sickness and a new kitten distracted me from it..
The scarf is made with Cascade 220 10ply, Black and Primavera Green.

And right now I am continuing to work on a baby shawl that I started way back in April, the baby has since been born and I am less than halfway through. WTF was I thinking? A very tedious pattern, crocheted in 4ply, insanity!
So of course I am looking at hat patterns yet again, thinking I might pop out a hat for the little guy to stop me from moaning about the shawl, or losing my mojo which has been dying slowly over the last week. Damn that baby shawl!

My latest finished projects -

2011-06-06T20:57:00.000+10:00

I've been very productive lately, churning out lots of knits. Probably because most of them have been quite small ;)

A few weeks ago I was asked if I would be able to make some 'pretty' hats for a little girl who has cancer. So I made a hat that I thought was their idea of pretty....

Pattern is Don't Eat the Daisies. Download is free on Ravelry.

And a hat that I liked, to balance it out...

Pattern is Scrappy Gems Fair Isle Hat. Another free Ravelry Download.

'Don't Eat the Daisies' is made from some 8ply yarn I hand dyed a few years ago, to see if I could actually dye in pastels. Turns out that I can, but the colour isn't one that I really like at all. The yarn has been sitting in with my stash for ages, with me thinking that it will never get used.

The 'Scrappy Gems Fair Isle Hat' is made from 4 different 8ply yarns, the green is Spotlight Basics, the purple is Bendigo Woollen Mills Colonial, the red is Heirloom Merino Magic and the orange is Panda Woolbale.

I really love this hat, I think it is cute and fun and I hope it helped cheer up the little girl.

I've also made a few things for my sister's baby, yet to be born, expected to arrive earthside in about a month or so.

First up was this crocheted blanket, yes, a black baby blanket -

Pattern is Lion Brand Yarn's Purely Square Baby Throw

I started it with the intention of using up as much of the 28 (I think?), 25g balls of 5ply black yarn I found in amongst the things I had from my MIL's craft collection. However I soon got bored of the repetitive pattern and didn't even make it to the size of the pattern. Oops. The yarn is Cleckheaton Riverina, which is no longer available.

I also crocheted this teeny tiny baby sweater -

Pattern is Kelly's Baby Sweater

Made from Heirloom Merino Magic with a trim of Cascade 220, the crappy photo doesn't do it justice at all!

After I made the hats for the girl with cancer, my sister suggested that her baby might need a hat too, LOL. So I banged this one out, really fast and easy -

Pattern is Scalloped Lace Baby Hat, free download on Ravelry

I had some tiny balls of WOOLganics 8ply leftover from a previous project and mistakenly thought that it would be enough to make a hat, nope, had to finish the top with a tiny bit of Heirloom Merino Magic.

The most awesome project I have done recently, (other than the one that has yet to be received, which means I am unable to reveal it's awesomeness just yet) is this Transformers hat -

Pattern is Transformers Toque

This is the hat that I wanted to make, when I made Jet's birthday hat as a practice run to see if I could figure out how to do colourwork.

The spunky son of an equally spunky mumma, a wonderfully awesome friend of mine ;-), told his mum to ask me if I could make him a red and blue transformers hat, that featured only Autobots, for his 5th birthday. So I did :-)

I love this hat soooo much, I had a very hard time letting go of it to send away!

It even has the words 'More Than Meets The Eye' worked into the lining, so cool.

I made it in Cleckheaton Merino Bambino and for my second ever attempt at stranded colour knitting, I am so stoked with how it came out. I really can't say enough how much I love it!! LOL

Dyefest!

2011-05-06T13:02:00.001+10:00

I've been umming and ahhing about crocheting a granny square blanket, but I always cringe at the cost of buying more yarn when I already have quite an ample stash... Just that my stash consists of many different plies and either there's not enough of a particular yarn, or I've already got something in mind for particular lots.

Then I remembered my undyed stash, and the Knittery 8ply Merino that I've been hanging onto for ummmm years?? 200grams worth...
While I was digging that out of the stash I found another lot of random undyed yarn that I forgot I even had, yarn that I inherited from MIL and her MIL's stash last year.

There was some tiny little scraps and a few complete balls and most of it was unlabelled, so I wasn't completely sure about whether some balls were even wool, or if they were acrylic.

So Jamie and I did the burn test to see... I've never done it before, and let me tell you now, if you haven't either and are about to - DO IT OUTSIDE!! Because, OMG, the smell!! Not to mention the fact that acrylic melts and drips. so don't do what I did and hold it up in the air over the kitchen table, fascinated by it melting, only to look down and realised it's melting and dripping all over the table... Oops.

Anyway, after all that I skeined the yarn up with my niddy noddy, soaked it overnight and the next afternoon I went to town on it with Kool Aid and bottles of food colouring.

While I was doing it I tried to remind myself that white is an okay colour and that it's okay to leave some white visible when dyeing yarn, but when I saw the finished result hanging up later I wasn't so sure that it looked any good....

However when I balled it all up last night, I soon changed my mind, it looks SO much better and totally awesome in the ball/cake!!

And here's a bunch of close ups, just because I can...

I think the last one is my fave :-)

ETA: I forgot to mention that after I had dyed it I wasn't so sure that I wanted to 'waste' it on a granny square blanket... LOL

Not sure what to do now, Sunny is refusing to wear anything woollen, sigh. Something for the bigger 2 maybe? Or maybe just suck it up and make a really awesomely coloured granny square blanket?? LOL

Undergrowth aka my first colourwork project

2011-03-29T13:37:00.000+11:00

For a long time I avoided colourwork because it scared the crap out of me.

But then I came across a beanie which I knew a certain little person would LOVE. So it was time to give colourwork a bash.

I decided to make this hat called Undergrowth, for Jet's 6th birthday as a practise run for the more intricate design that the other beanie features.

In true apwool style, I jumped straight in, struggled, soldiered on, pulled it apart and started again. And didn't check my tension at any stage. Hmm. I did think about the tension...thought, oh yes, I will measure it in a minute to see if I am on track.. That minute never came, LOL.

But I did finish the hat -

And then I thought, crikey, it looks a bit small! Managed to squeeze it onto my head (almost cut the circulation off from my ear lobes, but it was on goddammit!) and reassured myself that Jet's head is much smaller than mine.

But then he tried it on and I realised it is not. Bum.

It does however fit 2.5yro Sunny perfectly -

I knit the adult medium size (and really should have checked the tension!) in Patons Bluebell 5ply. And it took a whole 49g.

It took 5 days, though there was at least one day in there that I didn't work on it at all and I the braid around the bottom took up a large chunk of time because it was so fiddly and tedious. If I was to make the hat again I think I'd just do a ribbed edge and skip the braid.

Birthday hats.

2011-03-20T22:04:00.000+11:00

Last week I whipped up these hats as gifts for 2 special peeps, and found it hard to hand them over because I loved them so much!!

Looks great slouchy...

First up was this slouchy hat, The Boyfriend Hat, for a 9yro with a good sized head. I knew when it fit me and still had room to stretch that it would fit him too LOL.
The yarn is 8ply Utiku Multi Colours from The Wool Company in NZ, the colourway is Bazaar. And it took a mere 53gm of yarn to make this!

...or folded up for a tighter fit

...and extra warmth around the ears.

The other hat, another slouchy one, was for the Mumma of the 9yro and her birthday just happens to be today :-)

It didn't turn out quite as slouchy as I thought it would, but I still LOVE it. Again in 8ply Utiku from The Wool Company, this time though Perendale in Merlot. And the hat pattern is called Pasha.

I hope they love them as much as I do :-)

Gift knits

2011-03-11T21:47:00.000+11:00

I've made a few gift knits the last few months, totally sucking at my resolution to knit selfishly, but coming to terms with the fact that I get much more of a kick for randomly gifting woolly shit onto unsuspecting peeps who don't knit or crochet and actually appreciate the time and effort that go into it.

(I also struggle to even decide what the hell I even want to make for myself, so that's a problem too LOL, but I'm working on it!)

So I started this way back in November with the intention of gifting it to a certain special little girl for her 1st birthday, but then I cut my finger (sigh) and couldn't knit for a while, so it didn't get finished until January. And then because I was making stuff for her sisters as well she didn't get it until this week, oops, hehe. This is Cassia, made from WOOLganics in the Kyoto and Kundalini colourways.

I forgot to get a pic of the hat that I made for her big sister who had her birthday at the end of January *hint hint* ;) but this is what I made for her even bigger sister....

Totally shit photo I know, I'm hanging out for a pic of it being worn....*hint hint again*
This is Sorello, yup, another tiKKi pattern and it is the 'girl' pattern from the Mystery Knit A Long that I joined in with late last year.
As with the Cassia, this also got hibernated for a while after I cut my finger and was finished in mid February.
It's made with Panda Machinewash 8ply which I found at Spotlight.

I wrapped up the Pay It Forward I started over a year ago, finally, and this is one of the gifts I sent off -

A crocheted Tic Tac Toe game, cool huh?
I used up scraps of yarn that I had at hand... The brown squares are Cascade 220 that I had left over from boob hats from last year, the pale blue borders were done with hand dyed handspun that I had left over from making a hat for Jet last year. The back is Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 10ply in Koala. The 'noughts' are made from Spotlight basics that I bought a few years ago to make a Christmas Tree decoration and the 'crosses' are made from remnants of Cascade 220 that was used to make hats at the start of last year.

And finally, this hasn't been gifted yet, because I only just finished this morning, but the recipient doesn't read my blog (afaik...lol) so I am safe to post away about it...

A teeny tiny newborn sized Milo vest (tiKKi again, LOL). How adorable is it!?! It used up a mere 50g of Heirloom Merino Magic 8ply.

I'm currently working on.... more gifts hehe. I discovered 28, 25g balls of black 5ply yarn that I inherited (and pure wool too, fuck yeah!) so I am using as much as I can on a baby blanket for my little sister who is having a girl later this year. Yes, a black baby blanket, it'll be awse!
And I'd like to make Jet something for his birthday at the end of the month, but I'm not sure what yet... Obviously not something too large or intricate because I probably won't have enough time LOL.

Get your craft on!

Fratello and an Owl beanie

2011-03-06T12:35:00.000+11:00

Last year I joined in with a Mystery Knit-A-Long, there were 2 patterns, a 'girl' pattern and a 'boy' pattern. Just for the hell of it I did both, with the 'girl' one being gifted away (can't show it yet because they haven't received it quite yet LOL) and the 'boy' one for Sunny.
I hit a snag when I cut my little finger in December and couldn't knit for a little while, both projects were packed away into hibernation until I could bear bending and flexing my finger.

For some silly reason I had it in my head that I still had miles to go on the boys knit so I kept putting off pulling it out again because I couldn't be arsed yet, I begrudgingly pulled it out a few nights ago because I had nothing else on the go other than a baby blanket which I was sick of working on. And of course all I had left to do on it was the ribbing around the bottom and the sleeves...not much at all!
2 nights later, Fratello was finished!

It took 161 grams of Monster Knits BFL 8ply in the Golden Sun Colourway :) Pattern is here!

A quick knit I recently finished is this Owl Beanie-

Made with Bendigo Woollens Mills 4ply, double stranded, Flame colourway.

Pattern is here.

Something for me, finally!

2011-02-21T14:38:00.000+11:00

While I was trawling Ravelry looking for something to make as a gift for someone else, I spotted this Beret pattern and ended up making it for myself.

Mine isn't as 'poofy' or slouchy as the one in the pattern pic (probably because I tend to crochet tight) but I still really like it anyway!
It was made with Bendigo Woollen Mills 4ply in the Flame colourway (not sure if they still have it, I've had this wool since I was pregnant with Sunny and my MIL brought it back from the Bendigo Sheep Show for me. They've since changed their Baby Wool.) and I held the yarn doubled to make it thicker - more like the yarn actually needed for the pattern. LOL.

Hot Cross Buns

2011-02-11T16:05:00.000+11:00

I've never been much into Hot Cross Buns before, but for some reason the appeal and subsequent addiction for them kicked in a few weeks ago.
They are so expensive to buy from the supermarket that I suggested to Jamie a few weeks ago that we ought to give making our own a go, but never got around to it.

Until today that is.

I chose this recipe from the Taste website, because it was the highest rated and it looked okay to me.

Waiting for the dough to rise was the hardest part, 45min of temptation for small fingers and hands... Of course at the end of those 45min I cam back to the bowl to find little holes poked through the cling wrap and gouge marks in the dough, sigh, LOL.

Here they are fresh out of the oven -

They didn't brown up a lot, but that could just be because of our not so great oven. I think in the future if I made them again I would make them smaller too...or at the very least work harder on having a consistent size, oops.

They weren't quite as spicy as those from the supermarket, but they smelled the same and they were delicious! We didn't have the patience to allow them to cool before we dug in and started eating them, so apparently the best way to eat them was with a fork!

Did I mention how delcious they were? Highly recommend giving them a go :)

Booby Hats

2011-01-28T11:28:00.001+11:00

Things have been quiet here in regard to crafting, I have a few things I am working on at a ridiculously slow rate as my mojo sits at a very low level, but am unable to share the progress on those as they are gifts.

I can however, share these pics of a set of 3 booby hats I made last year for Sazz and her girls -

Pattern is this hat, I did the roll brim and just switched to the areola colour when I thought I was close enough to the top, then did a few rounds of icord for the nipple.

The yarn is Cascade 220 and the hats took between a few days and a week to make, very quick and easy!

Wiggles cake!

2010-11-24T22:30:00.001+11:00

(Scuse the craptacular pics, they were taken with my phone)

A few months ago my stepmum asked me if I had seen any Wiggles cake tins around, or how I thought it best to go about making a Wiggles cake. I trawled Google and was inspired, if they wanted a Wiggles cake for my nephew's 3rd birthday, then I was the woman to make it!

I pretty much copied some cakes I'd seen on Google, I cheated a little - I printed out the circles for the wheels and the logos for the bonnet and sides of the car, and to add that special touch, I bought some Wiggles figurines as my nephew's present and incorporated them into the cake.

I started off by making a car shaped cake (I have the Wilton 3D Cruiser tin) and when it had cooled I started to cut little bits off it in order to make it the shape I was looking for.

It was a little nerve wracking, I half expected the whole thing to fall apart on me, thank goodness it didn't!! There was a lot of Google searching to double check the shape of the car and I also harassed Jamie for his opinion on the shape.

I had treated myself to finally buying a piping syringe, prior to this I have been using on disposable piping kits from the supermarket, which while they did the job quite nicely were too expensive for my liking.

I made a double batch of butter icing and divided it out into quantities ready to be coloured, the amounts differed by how much of each colour needed.

I used Wilton's colouring gel for the red and yellow, I still wasn't entirely happy with the red colour, but it was close enough, I used liquid food colouring that I already had on hand for the tiny amount of blue that I needed. And the brown areas were chocolate flavoured, coloured by adding cocoa powder.

To stand the Wiggles in the car I actually cut out slots for them, just short of the whole width of the car and just big enough to put them in. I filled the slots in with the brown icing and then smooshed the Wiggles in there, I figured the icing would help them stay put LOL.

The logos and wheel circles were stuck on before the red was piped on, I used icing to stick them on and as you can see by the pics on the white table, the moisture had seeped into the paper by the time of the party (which was the next day). The other figurines that weren't in the cake were stuck down with icing around the cake....although that icing melted in the car on the way to the party and they all fell down, oops!
Fixed them up and put the cake in the fridge and all was good.

Am very pleased to say that my nephew loved his cake and the little figurines, it was totally worth all the effort!! He really is Wiggles mad!

So there you go, the Wiggles cake that I made for my nephew a few months ago... His birthday was at the start of October but because my MIL died a few days later I completely forgot about blogging this, until this morning when I was going through the photos in my phone and thought it was about time I shared it with you all!

Blessingway Square

2010-10-28T23:10:00.000+11:00

A month or so ago a fellow homebirther and all round wonderful woman put the call out asking if people would like to do a square that would be used as a birth flag and later made into a quilt. The 'catch' was that whatever medium was used, had to be red.

Although I had a lot happening and life was a fraction chaotic, I jumped at the chance without a second thought. I've never done a birth flag before and I do love trying new things and challenging myself.
Unfortunately mojo disappeared as my MIL got sicker and sicker and it was only that time was running out to get the square back in time for the blessingway that I finally pushed myself to get a wriggle on.
Did I want to do a yoni? Nah, Sazz will do that. Did I want to do an owl? Nah, it didn't feel right.
What am I drawn to? What do I think of when I think of birthy things? Of course! Placentas and the Tree of Life, duh!

I trawled Google looking for the perfect image to inspire me, something to get my creative juices flowing and maybe something I could yoink to transfer onto the square somehow.
I managed to do all 3!
I was drawn to these 2 initially, but they didn't feel right, though I suspect one may feature on me as a tattoo in the future LOL.

From here

The next 2 that I was drawn too were these, the first I felt was too 'pretty' and the other I felt wasn't pretty enough and not placentay enough LOL.

From here

And then I found this pic, pretty and placentay, it was perfect!

From here

I already knew I wanted to needlefelt, the fleece feels so nice and plush, very nice to pat! How to get it onto the calico though?

I enlarged it as much as I could without distorting the image too much (as well as adding an owl), making sure that it would still fit on the square when it was printed though. (As it was my enthusiasm saw me take it right to the edge, oops)

I had to chop the image in half to get it to fit onto a page and then I inverted the colours. At the time I had intended to only do it in one shade of red, and thought I would do the parts that were white in the image with the red and that by making that part the coloured part when I printed it I would know what I was doing easier...or something like that.

The next day I had to get a paper knife, it was also the day that MIL died, so it was a messed up weird day. I used to run into her at Spotlight all the time, she helped me learn to knit, crochet and spin, was a bit strange that I was there on that day. It also meant that the project was delayed again. And then again when I realised that not only did I not have fleece in the shades of red I needed, but I also couldn't source it locally and it would take too long to purchase it online and have it posted.

Clare so awesomely was able to buy some for me and post it, it arrived the next day, yay!

So I set about getting the picture onto the paper, fyi kilometrico pens work awesomely on calico...for a short time... I ruined 2 of them in the process of getting this down.

Pinned out ready to start filling it in.

On and coloured in as much as the pens would allow. I coloured it in so that I wouldn't get lost in the maze of lines when I began the felting process.

And then I was ready to felt! I started with the darker shade first, which Jamie pestered me about, insisting it was brown, increasing my anxiety about the project even further.

This was taken on my phone so is a touch blurry.. Darker shade is done, I'm halfway there!

Many hours later I was done! I started working on the bright red felt at around 10am on Tuesday morning and worked on it until around 1:30am, taking a few breaks during the day, but keeping at it as much as the boys would allow.

This pic is a touch blurry but I think it shows the plushness of the felt.

Very cool if I do say so myself ;) Can you see the owl?

Here's a not very good close up LOL

And that is the story of the blessingway square that I made!
It was heaps of fun to make and I will most definitely be doing more if I ever have the chance, though I'm not sure I can top this one!

Finally, a finished project to show!

2010-10-17T22:54:00.000+11:00

I have had Sunny's vest on the needles for nearly 2 months, this week I finally got it out and got cracking on it, wanted it finished so all 3 of the boys can wear their vests to their Nana's funeral tomorrow.

She was the reason I learnt to knit, crochet and spin, she also helped me to learn how to do all 3.

Here is a very awful photo of Sunny's vest, a better pic to come soon!

Cake!

2010-10-04T23:06:00.000+11:00

Poor neglected blog, I have lost my knitting mojo so badly that I have barely touched the needles for something like a month, oopsy.
I haven't spun in over 3 months either I don't think, sigh.

I have however made a few cakes. I know that peeps who read my other blog will have seen these already, but tough titties ok ;p

A month ago (wow, was it really that long ago?!) it was Sunny's 2nd birthday, so we made cupcakes. I cheated and used a packet mix, but the main thing was that the boys liked them and had fun making them -

Indy's birthday is 2 weeks after Sunny's so in the weekend between we had a little party with their 2 cousins, this is the cake that I made for them -

Pretty cool if I do say so myself!

And then more cupcakes again for Indy's birthday -

I also made a Wiggles car for my nephew's birthday last week, I was told it was fucking awesome :D
Unfortunately I don't have any pics to post of it at the moment, they are on my phone and I don't know where the cord is! Hopefully I can share them soon.

Déjà vu

2010-08-29T21:00:00.000+10:00

After finishing Indy's Rainbow Milo I was left with the question, what to do with the rest of the rainbow?

I remembered some purple I had in my stash and decided that pairing that with the rainbow to stretch it out and ensure there was enough to do at least the body section of a Milo for Sunny would be the way to go.

Jet however had other ideas, I hadn't even got the purple wool out yet and he came to me and asked if I could make him a purple vest, it was a little eerie! Obviously it was meant to be a vest for Jet.

I had something like 70grams of the rainbow left and knowing that it had taken 130grams of it to make a complete Milo in the 4yro size, without using a contrasting yarn, I wasn't at all confident that the rainbow would stretch... but it did!

I was 1 measly row short of squeezing the body section out of the rainbow yarn, but you can't even tell that I switched to the purple on the last row anyway... Sweeeeeeet!

Indy's Rainbow Milo Vest

2010-08-20T18:58:00.000+10:00

The photos really don’t do the colours justice, but Indy doesn’t want to take it off at the moment so better photos will have to wait!

I bought this yarn yonks ago from Jolly Jumbuck because it was pretty LOL, and then stashed it away waiting for the perfect thing to make it into and here we are!

My boys LOVE rainbows and I recently made a ‘30 before 30’ list and one of the things on it was to make a Milo vest for each of my boys, Indy was the lucky first with his special rainbow vest :)

He absolutely loves it, more than it looks in the pics, LOL, he is sick at the moment and the vest is keeping him snugly and warm.

The yarn was sold as a second (Black Rainbow Gradual Gradient on Freya), I’m not sure why, I really can’t remember and I can’t pick any obvious faults in the dye job (though I am very much of the ‘it was meant to be that way’ mind frame anyway heh), my only beef with the yarn is that it tends to be a bit splitty. But other than that it is lovely and soft, and looks great!

Now what to do with the leftovers?

Handspun Hats

2010-08-01T20:09:00.000+10:00

I've had these little beauties finished waiting to be blogged for a while but unfortunately our house has been taken over by illness.

So far 2 of my 3 skeins of handspun have been knit into hats, the first for Sunny -

Its impossible to tell from these pics, but I actually ran out of the red and had to dip into the purple. The yarn was quite bulky and has made a very thick and heavy, very warm hat!
Seeing it all thick and thin in the skein, looking lumpy and bumpy I was very pleasantly surprised to see how good it looks knit up, feels delicious too!

Same goes for hat #2 as well, which took up the remainder of the purple wool. This one is for Indy but as of yet I've not managed to get a pic of him actually wearing it...

I'm in the process of knitting the blue skein into a hat for Jet and even though the first 2 skeins were nice as they were, you can really feel the difference in my spinning skill with this one. Its more finely spun, much more even with less slubby bits and feels beautifully soft.
Hope to have it finished soon!

No longer taking orders...

2010-07-18T12:00:00.001+10:00

I have always been happy to (when able to) knit on request for people, however I have decided to no longer do this. I have been umming and ahhing about it for a long while, careful to time 'the announcement' when there hasn't been any recent requests so no one feels responsible LOL.
I wish I could give an adequate explanation, say that I'm stopping because I hate it, but I can't, because I don't!! I LOVE knitting for other people. I do however think it is time to be selfish and knit only for myself (or gifts!).
To those still waiting for their Pay It Forward gifts, do not despair! I fully intend to complete this PIF, but I don't think I'll be doing another for a very long time.
This also means that I am taking an indefinite break from making felt placentas, possibly permanent, only time will tell...

Rippled Wrap

2010-07-17T23:09:00.000+10:00

This FO has been a long time in the making... I started it just under 2 months ago!!

It has been picked up, put down, put away and brought out. Finally this last week (because yarny stuff is an AWESOME stress reliever!) I really got stuck into it, tonight I wove the ends in.

The pattern is called Rippled Wrap (I can only find a Ravelry link, sorry!) and I made it with 1 skein of Noro Kureyon Sock. I have a love hate relationship with Noro. I have a scarf made from Kureyon that I LOVE, but it was knit by someone else... I tried to knit with it and it killed my hands!

I picked this Kureyon Sock up last year I think? It was supposed to be a different shawl, a knit one, but the feeling of it while knitting, ugh, I hate it.
Thankfully I found I was able to tolerate it while crocheting and I do LOVE the colours.

So now of course my dilemma is....what to make next??

Yarn cakes!

2010-07-12T19:32:00.000+10:00

Finally, the dyed handspun

2010-07-07T13:01:00.000+10:00

I won't bore you with the details of why this has taken me so long to blog about, let's just say...dial up, sick and leave it at that ;)

And now to the wool!

As I said in the last post, it didn't quite go to plan. I did it a different way to how I usually do and I did it with the kids around... I was also making tea at the same time, very silly idea in hindsight, but what can I say, I am very impatient LOL.
Usually I lay the wool out on the sink, or on cling wrap and squirt/pour the dye onto it. This means I get to see how the dye is going in, make sure its getting under the parts where I have tied it etc. But I had decided that I was going to dye them solid colours, so I opted for mixing the dye up in a container first and then putting the wool into it.
There is only one skein that is noticeably not great, the larger of the 3 and also the last one I was 'cooking' while tea was being served. I had put a LOT of dye in the water and after cooking it for what felt like 10 minutes (2 minute intervals in the microwave with time to rest in between) and seeing the dye barely budging out of the water, (I'm sure there is a proper technical way to describe that...perhaps its exhausting? I dunno, I'm sick and it hurts to think and I can't be arsed googling LOL) I decided that surely the wool was done, that I had obviously just put too much dye in the water and the wool couldn't take it all in.
Ummm nup.

All 3 skeins came out of their dye with noticeable patches under where they had been tied and the big skein is a bit patchy.
But hey! It's supposed to look like that ;)

Pay it Forward and a Placenta :)

2010-06-28T00:37:00.001+10:00

A little while ago Jen asked me to make her a placenta...okay it was quite a while ago mkay, life is kinda mental LOL. She graciously accepted my plea for more time so that I could complete and send her 'Pay it Forward' gift along with it.

Here is the placenta -
Jen requested a purplish one because Jack's, which was careless discarded by the hospital grrrr, had the cord clamped before the blood had all been allowed to leave the cord. Because delayed clamping is bollocks yk *rollseyes*

It was actually difficult to do for a few reasons, the first being that I wasn't entirely happy with the only purple fibre I could find. But in addition to that it was incredibly confronting.
I had this placenta sitting on the mantle piece of my lounge room for a few weeks and I felt like it was haunting me...it reminded me of Jet's birth and placenta and when I looked at it I saw his placenta...
I know it sounds bizarre, but it doesn't look like a happy placenta to me, it looks like sadness and grief to me.

And here are Jen and Jack's gifts -
I had planned it so that she would receive them in between their birthdays...but it ended up being the week after, oops.
I had this hat picked out for aaaaaaaages, knew I had to make this hat. Very nearly kept the hat for Sunny LOL.

And Jen's, the wool jumped out at me at Spotlight begging to be made into a hat!

I dyed up all of my handspun wool yesterday and while it didn't go entirely to plan (that's what I get for doing it while there are children around and tea is nearly ready...) ummm my excuse is always that it's supposed to look how it turns out ;-) LOL.
It is still drying in the shower so will hopefully I will get some pics of it up soon, and then I can make it into something, yay!

More handspun :)

2010-06-22T22:12:00.000+10:00

I am so proud of my latest lot of handspun, here's some pics, then it up against the last lot to compare (its the one on the right) :)

Spin spin!

2010-06-12T20:13:00.000+10:00

About a month ago I blogged my first lot of handspun wool, it wasn't great but hey I made it... Though I look back at it now that I have spun more and think, hmmm that looks crap hehehe.
Last week I ply-ed (plyed? plied?) my last 2 lots of spinning together and you can already see the how well I have progressed with it, I'm very chuffed :)

No idea what I will do with it yet, although it seems the people around me are all too keen to make suggestions of things I should make them, hmmph!

I have been meaning to get a pic of me in action for a while now but always forget to take my camera along to Spinners, but last Tuesday I actually remembered! (Because I already had the camera out taking pics of Jet's newly lost tooth)
This is me trying not too look goofy and not stuff up what I am doing LOL -

And this is what I spun that day -

Even Jamie commented on how much better it is looking!

I have also finished a few projects, but have no pics to show.... Firstly is the Star Crossed Beret, it turned out way too big (I think I stuffed up my row count somewhere) and the yarn had so many knots and joins in it that i just turfed it... So am half heartedly looking around for another hat to make.

I have also made another placenta, but I am not sharing pics until the recipient has it...as with the final project that I have finished this week, a Pay it Forward gift.

Can hopefully post pics of those next week :)

Happy Crafting!

Birthday bits and a new WIP (or 2)

2010-05-22T22:47:00.001+10:00

So a while back I blogged about the hat that saved my mojo last week I cast one on for myself, yay!! I don't have a progress shot yet, oops. But here is a link to the pattern (seems to be available only through Ravelry, so apologies to peeps not on there), it is called the Star Crossed Slouchy Beret.

Another WIP which I started yesterday because I was just reeeeeeeally in the mood to crochet, is the Rippled Wrap. Again it seems the pattern is only available on Ravelry...
I do have a progress pic for this one, yay! Here she is...in Noro Kureyon Sock, yarn that was intended for another shawl but that I didn't feel the love for....

It was Jamie's 38th birthday last week and as you can probably tell from previous posts I love making and icing birthday cakes, even a 38th birthday is not going to pass without a special cake!
As with Jet's birthday (and I get the feeling it may continue to happen for future birthdays, yk one of those weird but cool traditions that start..) the cake tin was bought and sent by our cake tin fairy, as a birthday present to Jamie.

The photo is a bit crap, because I forgot to take one when it was still daylight...

It wasn't the best icing job I have ever done (forgot to make sure I had enough supplies, oops), but Jamie loved it and that is the main thing.

I also whipped him up a beanie as a present, he has mentioned now and then over the years that he would like another beanie...but he always insists on boring black, so I had opted not to make one until now. (Nice aren't I? hehe)
I managed to work clothing colours into conversation about a week before his birthday and he told me that he likes dark green as well as black, there was another colour but I can't remember it now LOL. Even better than that he happened to come into the room while I was rummaging through my stash and I showed him some yarn and asked what he thought of it, he liked it!

The next few days I had to knit like a crazy woman while he wasn't home (which wasn't too hard considering I he works nights over the weekend and I cast it on the Friday night before his birthday...the first day of his work week). I ended up finishing it the day before his birthday while at Spinners and Weavers. I probably could have finished it the day before that, but a sick child interfered with those plans!
The pattern is Rib-A-Roni, again only available on Ravelry, a great pattern with sizes from baby to adult...

Jamie loves his hat and Sunny doesn't mind it either, he likes to wear it like a rasta hat LOL.

Hope to blog again soon featuring some finished Pay it Forward gifts that are formulating in my head but haven't hit the needles yet.

See you soon!

Secret news....

2010-05-15T23:24:00.000+10:00

A year and a bit ago I was asked if I would somehow create a handmade placenta for someone who had theirs carelessly discarded against their wishes after transferring from a planned homebirth into hospital.

I accepted the challenge and this is what I came up with -

After it was gifted I was overwhelmed with requests for more and I ended up selling them on Etsy for a short time and am still asked for the odd one now and then.

Last year sometime I was informed by a friend, hesitantly, that I had been featured on some craft blog that I can't remember the name of now, and that they were talking the piss out of me. I went and had a look and they were actually reposting something they had seen on the Regretsy site.

Within a few days of being featured on Regretsy I sold the last placenta that was in my store and thought nothing more of it all. It was a bit eeeeeekk to see people making fun of something I had made, but I guess placentas aren't to everyones taste LOL.

So late last year I got a convo on Etsy, from the Regretsy people! They were making a book and wanted to feature my handcrafted placenta in it. I apprehensively cooperated and went ahead with what they were asking for, kind of worried what the book was going to say exactly.

And then I heard nothing more... We moved house and I saw somewhere that the Regretsy book had been published and I thought, yeah I should probably have a look at that one day...but didn't actually attempt to LOL. I had moved past being worried about what it said to thinking of it more like free advertising, a bit funny and hey, I'm in a book!

And then last week I received a package in the mail...my very own copy of the Regretsy book, courtesy of the Regretsy peeps themselves. I had no idea I was even getting one, heh. It's very cool and I am very stoked to be featured in it.

Here is the book cover, back and front, and the page featuring my handcrafted placenta (posted with permission from the Regretsy peeps)...

You can click on the pics to see them bigger :-)

Cool, eh?

Handspun nommy goodness!

2010-05-15T22:57:00.000+10:00

Okay, okay, I am under no illusions that this is perfection or anything, but I made it, so it's awesome ;) LOL

A few giftmases ago Jamie bought me a spinning wheel, I played with it once or twice and then it was forgotten in the garage. Well, not forgotten, but I lacked the time and opportunity to put into it.

My inspiration to learn to spin came from tagging along with my MIL to her Spinners and Weavers group for a while just before getting pregnant with Sunny. Almost all of the women there could spin, my MIL included, and it just looked like so much fun!!

So last Tuesday and the Tuesday before that I made the trek over to Spinners and Weavers again, the first time I have been in about 2 years. They wasted no time in getting me and my wheel set up and off I went! They were full of encouragement, and praise which is always nice hehehe, they told me that my first attempt was the best first attempt they had ever seen :-)

Tuesday just gone I managed to fill a second bobbin so it was time to ply it together! And this was the result...

Sadly this yarn met an unfortunate end when I attempted to felt it and so it is gone.....

But that means I get to spin more, woot woot!!

Secret knitting...and crochet!

2010-05-12T17:12:00.000+10:00

In the last few days I have finished gifts for 2 dear friends, one had a birthday a little while back and the other's is coming up (and they are also married to each other LOL)

Both were in need of hats to keep their noggins toasty warm in the now very chilly weather, and so hats they got!

For Sir -

A 'Skater Beanie' - crocheted in 8ply Heirloom Easy Care. He has an ummm...large head, LOL, so when the hat was done this is how it looked on me -

And some close ups...

This is how the hat was when I finished, but it has since occurred to me that it is possibly inside out??

Is this the right way??

As someone who has been crocheting for yonks I should probably know ROFL, oh well, I say its reversible!

And for Madame -

A 'Beaufort Hat' - knit in Cascade 220, colourway is Palm. The hat used less than half a skein so I made a cowl as well, and still had some leftover!!

Foody snippets

2010-04-25T00:13:00.000+10:00

Yesterdays cheesy scrolls and cheesy vegemite scrolls -

And today's Yo-Yo biscuits... (I tried to be all arty farty playing with my new camera LOL)

YUM!

Birthday cakes :)

2010-04-20T17:31:00.001+10:00

Cooking is crafty, no? I reckon so LOL

Last month Jet turned 5 and we made 2 cakes for his birthday...he made and decorated one on his actual birthday and then I made and decorated one for his party.

Having the boys make a decorate their own cake on their birthdays has become a birthday tradition for us and the boys love it :)

It's also become a tradition for birthdays for me to do a fancy cake. It started last year with Jet's 4th birthday party...

And then Indy's 3rd birthday party...

And my nephew Zakai's 2nd birthday last year...

And then Jet's cake this year...

It was my birthday Sunday just gone, last week we met up with some friends at an indoor playground and I took along a birthday cake for myself, just for fun :)

Jamie's birthday is next, in May, so I am already thinking about what kind of cake I will make him....mmmm cake!

The end...

2010-04-06T23:44:00.000+10:00

This is the last post of past projects I will be doing....

After this I am all up to date and everything will be blogged as I go, yay!!!

#1- A Candle Flame Cowl (aka the vagina cowl/yoni cowl) for Sazz for Giftmas. Made in Bendigo Woollen Mills Rustic 12ply, colourway Red Currant. (Dec 09)

#2 & #3 were a 'make you something' gift for my lovely local homeschooling friend. She had hinted a long time ago that she would like a hat with bunny ears on it, so I set out to make her one...though on receiving it she decided that they were a lot more like goat's ears LOL, which is awesome too cos she has some goats :)

Bendigo Woollen Mills Colonial 8ply in Black.

She also has a lot of cats, so when the pattern for the little kitty caught my eye I ran with it, cute isn't he?

Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 10ply in Koala. (Dec 09)

#4 was another gift for Sazz, this time for her birthday. A flapper hat :)

Made with a strand each of Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 12ply (was Almond but I dyed it red) and Spotlight's Basic Merino in Red. The flower is actually attached to a pin so it can be removed to move around the hat, or just leave off altogether. (Jan 10)

#5 & #6 were for a beautiful, not so little, freebirthed baby, who I cannot believe is now a couple of months old!! A few months before bub made her arrival, her mum and I discussed possibly woolly gifts and a short sleeved blue kimono was settled upon. I had enough left over to almost make a hat LOL just had to do the very top in another shade of the same yarn, WOOLganic organic merino, in Raindrops and Sangha. (Jan 10)

Last but not least #7- By request, on seeing pics of Sazz's flapper hat I had a request for the same, but with a purple flower. Again the flower is removable. Same yarn used as Sazz's hat, with some Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic for the flower. (Jan 10)

Some secret knitting revealed....

2010-04-04T20:40:00.000+10:00

If you are the last person waiting for something off me for the Facebook 'make you something' from last year, then you may not want to scroll any further.
Same goes for the lovely woman who requested a hat in exchange for ear stretching gear.

You were warned ;)

This post should really be called - The dress that nearly killed my mojo and the hat that saved it.

Bloom by Tikki (aka Georgie Hallam), gorgeous dress, everrrrrrrrryone loves it and the pattern...I am sorry to say that it very nearly killed my knitting mojo.
It was a long knit, not hard, but really very tedious. The lace just wouldn't flow for me and I made numerous small errors. That was until I reached the very last diamond lace part at the bottom... Omigosh, if I wasn't knitting for someone else and it wasn't something that I had been working on for over 2.5mths already and it wasn't something that was supposed to be gifted last year, then I would have frogged it and tossed it away in the corner while I sulked. But alas that was not the case, despite screwing up the lace and failing in my attempt to fix it, which actually wrecked it more when I dropped a stitch..and then I cracked it and pulled it off the needles and had to feed it back on slowly without dropping any more (which I think I did), I soldiered on.
Unfortunately the last diamond lace, although it looks lacey LOL, doesn't really have any diamonds in it....
I think the dress still looks very pretty overall and I hope the recipient feels the same way...

Bloom - knit in Bendigo Woollen Mills Colonial Wool, colourway is Sierra (which I believe is no longer made).

The hat that saved my mojo....
I have been eyeing this hat off for quite a long time, years even...but was never game enough to try it (I don't know why!?!). Until this week that was, the above mentioned lovely woman sent me a pic of a slouchy hat, and wondered if I could make her something similar, so I sent back a bunch of pics of different hats and she chose the Star Crossed Slouchy Beret.

The yarn I chose, I was also concerned about, came from Spotlight, their Moda Vera brand - Mousse. A 70% wool and 30% soya blend. I wasn't sure if it was going to be too bulky, I wasn't sure if it was going to shed like crazy like another very similar feeling yarn from Spotlight I knit awhile back did, I wasn't sure if I had enough! (The last of which was a very silly thought in hindsight LOL).

I was hmmming about it as I did the 1x1 ribbing....but by the time I was cruising through the cables, I was sold, so much so that I went back and got some more of the same yarn, to make myself one of these hats too, loving it!

So there you have it, some of the secret knitting I have been doing of late.

Now I am off to do 2 more 'by request' hats and I also have a felt placenta in the works....and then I need to get started on some more Pay It Forward gifts!

Oh, and a hat for me ;) LOL

Till next time.... xox

More old stuff :-)

2010-03-16T23:23:00.000+11:00

So we are all moved into the new house, have been sleeping here for ummm nearly 2 weeks and I managed to pull my knitting out again over the weekend and have gotten quite a bit done on the secret knitting, no pics yet though unfortunately.

We are loving all the extra space, and even though we have only been here a short time we already wonder how on earth we crammed all our stuff into the other house and feeling very at ease here.

So here I am blogging a few more past projects :-) All but 3 of these were Pay It Forward gifts, 1 was a request and the other 2 were birthday presents.

#1 (July 09) A milo vest and 3 crochet fish for a PIF made for an awesome little dude who I also happened to donate breastmilk to (flown frozen in an esky by courier) just over a year ago. The vest is knit in Treliske Organic Merino, I had been hanging onto this yarn for years, just waiting for the perfect project. I knew I couldn't use it for just anything, it had to be something special, and this was a very special gift. The yellow fish was crocheted in Anchor Magicline, the little bit that was leftover from the breastfeeding advocacy cloth that was in my last post. The other 2 fish were made from Moda Vera Bamboo Cotton.

#2 Is a Kimono I crocheted for Sunny's 1st birthday, I really love this pattern, easy to follow. The yarn I used was from Craft Alley, Ashford's Tekapo yarn, in the Sunset colourway. With Panda Woolbale as the edging. (August 09)

#3 a PIF Rainbow Dress. I hand dyed all the yarn for this one, Cleckheaton Country, I dyed it all with food colouring. I actually made a hat to match, but stupidly forgot to take a pic of it. (Sept 09)

#4 & #5 were both a PIF gift for a lovely woman and her daughter. #4 is a Tropical Lily made from Moda Vera Bamboo Cotton and #5 is a crochet lace triangle made from Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 8ply yarn. I found the Tropical Lily a bit fiddly and in my haste to get it done I made a few mistakes, the result is a very cute top though :-) I really love the lace triangle pattern, very quick, very easy and very pretty.

#6 was a request, and the 3rd time I have made this pattern. (Nov 09) I gradient dyed this Bendigo Woollen Mills in rainbow colours, the first time I have ever gradient dyed. It was very fiddly but lots of fun, I love it when I learn something new while working on a project.

#7 is another lace triangle, this time a birthday present for my dad's wife, made out of Kaalund Yarns Enchanté. This yarn is a laceweight silk, thus this triangle was quite a bit smaller than the other purple one above.

#8 & #9 were another PIF gift. Another gorgeous kimono, this time in The Wool Company's Utiku Seaweed colourway, with some Spotlight Basics wool for the edging. I very nearly kept this one for Sunny because the colour is totally yummo!!
#9 is another Candle Flame Cowl, made from the rest of the yarn I dyed for #6. I was quite chuffed that the yarn was the ply needed for the cowl because I desperately wanted to use the rest of the yarn and I desperately wanted to make another Candle Flame Cowl. Great pattern.

As always feel free to go ahead and contact me if you have any questions about anything posted :-)

Creeping along slowly...

2010-02-27T14:43:00.001+11:00

This past week it suddenly occurred to me why we have stay put in this house, despite it being not 100% what we needed...because moving really sucks arse!!!!
My crafting is neglected as I spend all day on the phone negotiating how to get some sort of decent internet connection at the new house, and then I am left headachey and ugh.

I have in my knitting bag a project that I started an awfully long time ago, that was for a Pay It Forward from last year...that was supposed to be finished last year...oops. It has become my number one knitting priority because it is quite and intense project that requires loads of time, patience and concentration (things I am really lacking of course!)

In the meantime, here's another recap of some past projects, some of which were from last year's Pay It Forward :)

The first 2 items are from the same pattern (and I have since made another of these hats), both also for PIFs. The first (April 09) is made from Noro Kureyon, tbh, I don't like the yarn very much at all. The finished product is gorgeous, the colours yummy, but the yarn to knit with is very rough on the hands. Lots of people rave about this yarn, but I am kinda meh about it. The second hat is made from hand dyed possmerino, which is lovely, soft and warm. (July 09)

#3 was another gift (most of my knitting is LOL), another Radiating Star Blanket. This one was done in a very yummy shade of Bendigo Woolen Mills Classic 12ply called Plum. Loved this blanket and the yarn. (May 09)

I had quite a bit of yarn leftover from the star blanket and made a Candle Flame Cowl for a Woolaholics swap with some of it. This cowl is another pattern that I really like and have made twice more since. I particularly like it because to me the candle flame shapes look like yonis. This candle flame cowl was made for a midwife so I thought yonis were kinda appropriate and she loved it :)

The longies and hat (July 09) were a PIF gift for a FB friend, annoyed by the fact that there are less 'boyish' woollies out there to buy. The longies were made in Bendigo Woollen Mills Rustic 12ply which was Peppercorn, but I overdyed it with food colouring. The waistband was Heirloom Merino Magic.
The hat is in The Wool Company's Utiku (from New Zealand) in a colourway called Tropicana.

#7 & #8 (July 09) were again another PIF, this one for my Sazzie :) I had seen the pattern for the Breastfeeding Advocacy Dishcloth months before and thought of Sazz, so when it came to PIF time, I jumped at the chance to make it. The cotton I made it in (Anchor Magicline) probably wasn't the greatest colurway to display the pattern, but it was all I had on hand at the time.
#8 is a cowl/neckwarmer type thingy, though Sazz has taken to wearing it on her head and I think that's cool :) Guess what yarn it is....if you've been reading along with all my past projects you'd know it is none other than Merino Bambino! The yarn did not to the pattern justice at all, but I knew Sazz loves a rainbow and I really wanted to try that pattern, so I'd call it a win!

Last but not least, something for me! (July 09) An Ishbel shawl. I ordered this yarn yonks ago, specially custom dyed for me by Kelly at Dyelicious (now at Tangled Yarns) to knit socks with...and then I realised I didn't really like knitting socks. So the yarn sat and sat, waiting for the *right* pattern to come along...and this was it :)
The photo just doesn't do the yarn or the pattern justice at all! It is beautiful and vibrant.

Until next time...

I give up!

2010-02-24T00:58:00.000+11:00

I have decided to put the monthly challenge on hold.

My foody mags are packed away somewhere as we prepare to move and I won't see them again until March, so there goes Feb's foody thing. Not to mention the stupid January square, gah I hate that thing. I am going to pull it apart and try it again after we are resettled in our new house, same goes for the food stuff.

Hopefully I will be back into it soon!

more old apwool stuff :)

2010-02-21T06:00:00.052+11:00

First pic is Sunny in a sweater called Sunbeam. The wool (handdyed Treliske organic wool) was gifted to me by the lovely Michelle of The Woolly Tree. I'm not sure that the yarn did the pattern justice, and vice versa, but it is a gorgeous little thing and Sunny wore it lots. It was seamless and cleverly constructed. (Oct 08)

#2...hehehe for a while when he was tiny I managed to knit and breastfeed at the same time, however when Sunny hit the wriggly and interested in everything stage I had to forget about it. But it was very cool while it lasted!!!

By far the coolest ornament I have every made/seen/given LOL. A mini knitting bag! I even wound up tiny skeins of yarn, and made tiny needles by gluing beads onto the ends of toothpicks. (Nov 08)

When I saw a ravelry friend's finished Radiating Star Blanket I knew I had to make one too. Nevermind that I had a newborn, nevermind that it was really freakin hot weather and nevermind that I didn't actually want it for myself LOL. Instead I gifted it, as part of 'Pay it Forward' to the lovely Mel :) Made from Bendigo Woollen Mills Rustic wool. (Dec 08)

Harri and her birth pool buddy turned 1 in early 2009, for their birthday I made them each a par-tay dress, Harri's is on the right. Both made from Utiku from New Zealand's The Wool Company. (Jan/Feb 09)

When a lovely woman had her placenta discarded like rubbish after transferring to hospital from home, despite making her wishes to keep the placenta known and despite all in theatre knowing her wishes, I was asked to make her a woolly placenta. This was the result. The first, and I think the best, of all the woolly and felt placentas I created. (Feb 09)

#7, oh look, there is that rainbow Merino Bambino again!! In February 2009 another friend's babe was born in the very same pool as Harri and her birth pool buddy. To celebrate I made these tiny shoes and #8 which is another seamless kimono, made from The Knittery's Merino/Silk blend. Gorgeous yarn!

Last of all, a uterus!
This was made for a special doula friend who I 'met' (online) quite a few years ago, 5 actually, when I was pregnant with Jet. After completing her family (so she thought!) E decided to become a doula, and for her work I crafted her a placenta and knit this uterus. And E is now counting down till the arrival of babe #5 her first homebirth. I am very excited for her!!

Secret crafting revealed...

2010-02-19T15:39:00.000+11:00

Most of the secret crafting I have been doing lately was for Harri's 2nd birthday.

I 'made' her a card with a matching envelope, and also a very cute hat. Just to top it all off I threw 50 confetti owls in the package with the hat

(I found them on etsy, love that place!) and wrapped it in the only paper in the house...giftmas paper ROFL. (Did you notice Sazz?)
In my haste to get the hat in the mail I failed to get pics of it before I sent it...well, actually I remembered...but only after it had already been wrapped up and put in the post bag, gah!

The card -

(arty sideways photo LOL)

Matching envelope -

Close up of special label -

And a close up of the special seal -

All set!!

And this is Harri wearing her gift, an apwool-made hat! :-)

2010-02-16T22:10:00.000+11:00

Unfortunately I have no current crafting updates, I have been (and still am) working on secret crafting, when they have been received I will blog about them though :)

I am still battling with the January square, it has taken a back seat at the moment though to the secret crafting mostly because of my serious lack of time right now. But I will hopefully finish it soon and then make a start on the February square....better late then never eh?

So instead I bring blast from the past post #3! Its fun looking back at old stuff I can see how much I have improved, I feel a little embarrassed at the quality of some of it LOL, but mostly its very cool.
The stuff in this lot, this is when I started to get a bit obsessed. I was pregnant with Sunny and yarn and knitting/crocheting became a crutch to get me through stress (and now I feel stressed if I am not able to do any LOL). I started playing with more expensive yarn, the stuff that people raved about (I got it when it was on sale LOL) and saw that hey, there was truth to what they were saying, this stuff IS good!!

First pic, Ms Marigold, made for my sister (oct 2007), no idea if she has ever even worn it...I'm not game to ask what happened to it LOL. One of the last things I ever made in acrylic (the last thing was a pair of legwarmers that the recipient insisted on being acrylic, knowing that I am a bit of a yarn snob LOL), I chose acrylic because I had shitloads of this colour and my sister had not long had a baby, so I didn't think she'd want to have to worry about whether or not to handwash stuff. My first (and only) adult clothing knit. While doing this I learnt about how different increases and decreases lean in different directions....but I still struggle to remember which does what.

Skully, a dish/wash cloth for my bro (dec 2007), my first attempt at making a pattern with stitches. He hasn't used it LOL, but until he moved house it sat on his coffee table like a doily type thing, so I'll take that as a compliment! I do look at it though and blush, the tension isn't tight enough...I think I needed to use smaller needles, its all floppy and has no shape.

#3 is fingerless gloves, made while pregnant and so very sick. (april 2008) I had signed up for a Woolaholics swap, knew that I was pregnant, but was not sick at that time....with my history I REALLY should have known better. I suffered a serious aversion to yarn, the feeling of it in my fingers made me want to hurl. So this was very very tough to make. Crochet in a merino and cashmere blend it was one of my first 'extravagant' yarn purchases and it was delicious!

During a sale at The Knittery, where I also got 2x merino/cashmere, I decided to try out some possmerino, I had heard good things about it. (It's merino with possum fur) I also had a bash at dyeing it. I was very pleased with the results and knit it into a 'Sleep Sack' for a new friend with a new bub, who was Sazz! Unfortunately but the time I got the Sleep Sack to Sazz Harri was too big for it. (A Sleep Sack is like a woollen soaker that people use over cloth nappies, but without legs, just an open end. Perfect for ECing)

Unfortunately the next photo has cut part of Harri's head off, but she is wearing a very cute hat crocheted in the same yarn as the dress. The dress pattern is called Blossom and was another knit where I learnt some new things (april/may 2008). It was constructed weird and the sides are mattress stitched together, I lived in fear of seaming until I made that dress, and I actually ended doing the mattress stitch! This yarn was also merino/cashmere from The Knittery, the colourway was Bloody Mary.
Harri is also wearing some very small and adorable legwarmers that I knit for her, I think she lived in them for quite a while!

Next is the rainbow hat. I love this yarn, and I know at least one of my knitty friends finds the amount of this stuff I have gone through hilarious, Merino Bambino, love it. I think until they had this hat Harri's parents struggled to get one on her, a stretchy ribby hat is a must for babies!! (may 2008)

Next is Sunny's kimono, oh how I love that yarn!! The feel, the colour, the smell even LOL. I loved knitting this so much and I dearly loved the kimono so much that I passed it onto another mother so that it could continue to be loved and that mother has since passed it on. The yarn is Sunflowers from the Yarn Cafe, delicious! (july 2008)

Over the course of a few months (may-july 2008) I knit 3 pairs of longies for my 3 children, though one was still in utero. I couldn't believe how tiny the newborn ones were, especially compared to the other 2 pairs. One was 18mth old sized, and the other 3yro sized. The newby longies knit in another of my favourite yarns, dyed by the lovely Irene at Jolly Jumbuck.

Lastly, another 2 knits for Sunny (sept/oct 2008), these 2 things I decided to hang on to, they have been added to the doll's clothes pile. As you will note the top (seamless kimono sweater) is in merino bambino LOL. The pants are particularly special as the wool was dyed especially for me, for a swap. Some of the wool was knit into a bag for me and they also gave me the remainder, which I made into these longies. I know some knitters would have split the ball to make the stripes match, but I really like how they have turned out.

Hope you have enjoyed this little trip down memory lane, if you have any questions about any of it please comment!!

another blast from the past collection of projects (and a wee update)

2010-02-07T22:55:00.001+11:00

I have not yet managed to finish the January square, I thought I was cruising, unfortunately the square I am doing doesn't give a gauge at all... Not even, the first 3 rounds should be X amount. And thus it was not until I finished that I realised my square was incredibly undersized... I should have known..I tend to crochet tight, but I didn't want to assume. To add insult to injury I ran out of yarn... I decided to soldier on and joined on a new yarn in a totally different colour (a hideous pink in fact) that is a different ply. It looks um...not great. But I had decided before I started that I didn't want a meticulously planned to the last detail, of pretty matching colours, blanket of squares. I had intended to slap together whatever colours I had on hand and thus the blanket will look verrrrrry homemade, ugly to some perhaps, but its mine goddammit, so I will love it :)

I have decided on February's recipe though - Pfeffernusse! Will blog more about that when I actually make them though...

And now more of my past projects -

Like the last lot, these were also from 2007.

Those socks are one of *the* most important things I have ever made. I learnt how to knit in the round with Magic Loop, and it was when I became aware that there are US terms for wool and there are Aust terms for wool...and that you really should double check to make sure you understand them. I didn't at that point...and so socks that were supposed to be knit in worsted weight wool (10ply) were knit in DK (8ply). They still fit somehow...
They were also the first thing I ever dyed, and I dyed them with Kool Aid in the microwave, after I had knit them LOL.

The dress in the middle was made as a thankyou for an online friend who I've known for quite a while now, she helped me through a hellish time and I greatly appreciated it. So I crocheted this dress for her daughter. It was made in cotton because they have issues with wool and I tie dyed it to make it more interesting.
The little bunny next to it was crocheted for her younger daughter, with the leftover cotton from the dress. Possibly the first and last knit toy I will make LOL, they are fiddly buggers!

My first pair of longies. So tiny! Made in acrylic, for my nephew, I did acrylic because my sis wasn't using cloth so it didn't matter if they were wool or not. (Can you imagine me doing that now??)

The 3 soakers, one was for Indy, 2 were for a swap... I don't think I've ever made a soaker again... It was around this point that I began to understand what a yarn snob was, but didn't want to be one LOL!! These soakers were made from Paton's Jet, picked up from Spotlight and the LYS.

The felted checkers set, I LOVED making it, it was crocheted for my bro for giftmas a few years ago now. I like making things for him because I can do quirky stuff and he likes it. When he got this he said he was going to hang it on the wall like a piece of artwork :) (He never has, but hey, the thought was there!)

And lastly a shawl I made for my MIL. She gifted me a heap of handspun in colours that I would never use, so I made something for her... This was the first handspun I ever knit with and it was pretty icky. It still had tonnes of lanolin in it and the dye hadn't taken properly... It washed up quite nicely though.

apwool, the early years

2010-02-06T16:16:00.002+11:00

As promised I am going back over my old finished projects and updating here with the details.
All of these projects were from 2007. 2007 was an important year as far as apwool's crafting goes. It was the year that all of a sudden stuff in my head just 'clicked' and I started to get how to read patterns, my crafting abilities improved and the obsession started to grow.

There is a purpose to the blank spot in the mosaic, one of the biggest projects I have ever done was a baby shawl for my (step)brother and his girlfriend when they were expecting their son. Unfortunately (stupidly!) I never took a photo of it...I wish I did because it was a great example of why you should make sure you get all your yarn from the same dyelot LOL. Halfway through the colour changed...it was subtle but I could tell. But I was very pregnant and sick at the time, so I didn't care *blush*.
It was a beautiful shawl, beautiful, huge and had tonnes of mistakes in it, parts of the pattern didn't make sense (not even to my MIL's MIL who has been crocheting since before I was born) so I had to make it work the best I could. I think it ended up being about 1.5metres square. And it was a horrid shade of baby blue...in acrylic of course ROFL.

Actually that reminds me of another early project that I don't have photos of, a baby jacket. Also done in horrid acrylic, in a weird sparkly shade of purpley blue and before I realised the importance of measuring gauge...back then I crocheted quite loosely and so this jacket which was supposed to fit a newborn came out so large that if I still had it, it would fit Sunny now LOL.

One of my first knitting projects was a pair of Possum Pouches made for WIRES (Wildlife Information Rescue & Education Service) http://www.wires.org.au/index.php
Again riddled with mistakes, though by now I was able to not drop stitches or accidentally increase, my stitches were uneven and again gauge was not so great.

The cat blanket was for my nephew's 1st birthday (same one I made the shawl for) it took months but I really enjoyed it. I found a clipart graphic I liked, put it onto graph paper to make it into a crochet chart and off I went! I made the colours up as I went along, and I didn't bother waiting till I was at the edge to change colours I did it as I went. Initially I tried to weave in the ends, but then gave up and resorted to tying knots in the back and later when it was finished I sewed a piece of brown polar fleece onto the back. I most probably nearly killed my sewing machine doing so, but I am not a sewer so was not aware then that sewing that was not a good idea LOL.

Around this time I became a member of a knit/crochet forum, called Woolaholics. It was where I learnt the most about knitting and crochet, and they had the most awesome swaps. When I joined they were running a scarf swap, not game enough to knit for another person yet I opted to crochet.

The pink baby sweater makes me laugh, I crocheted the arms while feeling incredibly stressed and you can see that the stitches on the arms are smaller than the body of the sweater. The blanket I made up myself, and was for the same baby as the sweater, though I have no idea if it fit or was ever used because they never told us if they got it...

The 'camo' sweater was made for one of the first freebirthers I ever 'knew'. It also makes me laugh because I was horrified that it came out looking like camouflage and it was for a girl *gasp* (I wouldn't put it on a girl or a boy now)

The baby mobile is one of the coolest things I have ever made. I was so proud of it, and so nervous making it because the recipient has been crocheting for yeeeeeeears. The bib with it....hmmm somehow I failed to realise that bibs are more useful when made in cotton and thus absorbent, this bib was made in acrylic D'OH!

Lastly, my first experiment with felting. A bag I made for my mum. The bottom part felted beautifully, went buttery soft. The top part...I thought it was wool, but it would not felt, I now wonder if it was superwash...
In any case, I don't think Mum ever used it anyway LOL.

1 a month challenge begins!

2010-01-30T02:21:00.001+11:00

I decided earlier this month to join in on a 1 a month challenge, both for something woolly and something foody.
I've gotten as far as deciding on the patterns for the woolly challenge, but have yet to make anything.

Today I managed to do the foody part :-D

Of course inspiration hit shortly before tea time so I was constantly shooing the kids away while trying to juggle tea and several batches of cookies. Mmmm cookies!!

So one recipe didn't really count for the challenge, because I've made it before, but I wanted to try it again to try and make it better than it was last time.
The recipe was from this Super Food Ideas magazine -

And the pic of them in the mag -

And these are mine, nope, not as pretty as the magazine pic, but they turned out alright :) (They are just vanilla btw)

I'm still not entirely happy with how they turned out. I don't know if it's me, or the recipe but they have turned out kind of hard and crunchy both times.

I'm sure the boys will eat them anyway!

The other recipe was from a free Coles magazine -

The recipe was for Passionfruit Melting Moments....but I had no passionfruit LOL.

Here's the pic from the mag -

Note how they are quite small, nicely rounded...

Here's mine -

Mmmm not so small or perfect looking, but they are quite delicious.

As I said up higher, inspiration hit near teatime, so I was in a hurry and quite frankly I didn't want pissy little biscuits anyway!

I made half as many as the recipe was supposed to make and I put some orange juice in the icing/filling instead of the passionfruit. Quite tasty :)

So that is January done on the foody side of things, now I need to get cracking on the woolly side!

Btw, as I find the time I will be updating the blog with posts about past woolly items, or any other crafty things worth a mention.