A Week of Birthday Madness

Over a week in April three of the four members of our family celebrate their birthdays.  As you can imagine this makes for a pretty crazy time of year and this year seemed to be worse than ever.  So here are some pics of what has kept me busy and away from the computer over the last week or so :-)

First up was my birthday, this unfortunately ended up like this...

...a wee boy on IV antibiotics for an infected bite which meant trips to the hospital every 6 hours for another dose.  Not how I had intended to spend my birthday but there you go.

Gran was staying so there was lots of time taken up with her enjoying the kidlets.

Miss M learned how to do this all by herself.

There was a birthday cake to be made for Mr A to take to daycare.

A very excited wee boy (who was thankfully now feeling a lot better, although still a bit knocked about by the antibiotics) went on the train with Mummy, Gran and Miss M and went to see The Wiggles live in concert!

The wee boy turned 4!  Where did the time go?

Time for Daddy's birthday which he spent playing his new computer game with Mr A.

And finally a late night making this..

...for Mr A's birthday party :-)

And finally Easter :-)  There were presents from Granny and Papa..

And an Easter Bunny hunt (in jammies and sheep gumboots naturally).

Now I feel like I need a couple of weeks sleep to catch up!

Look what I can do!

I can do this all by myself aren't I clever?

FO: Special baby gift

A dear friend Julia had a gorgeous baby boy a couple of months ago and you would have thought I would have been organised enough to have a gift all ready for the arrival, but no!  With life getting in the way I finally got this wee jersey to her last week so I can now update here with this FO.

I blogged a sneak peek of this some time ago.....

And here is the finished jersey :-)

I have had my eye on this pattern for years and was so pleased to have an excuse (and the time) to finally knit it.  Yes it is simple but there is something about the wide rib and the raglan shaping that I think makes it a perfect baby boy jersey.  Also it is completely functional!  I am not a fan of jerseys for wee babies as they are invariably difficult to get on and off but this one actually opens right down the back and fastens with domes so you get the look of a jersey with ease of dressing - ingenious!  So the details.  The pattern is from a Phildar magazine, number 447 and this was one of the very first Phildar magazines that I ever bought (I am now completely addicted to them).  They have the most lovely simple and stylish knits for babies and children and are just a bit different to local patterns.  I guess things have changed a bit since the introduction of Ravelry and so many online patterns but I was craving something 'different' to knit and having to send for the books from France and translate the patterns from french was not going to stop me.  Although Phildar occasionally bring out one of their pattern books in english I tend to just use the french versions, they are cheaper, there is more choice and once you have a good translation sheet for abbreviations it is easy enough to follow the patterns.
So anyway this is from Phildar Layette number 447 and I knitted it in Bendigo Luxury 4ply in colourway Stone.  This yarn is lovely and soft although I did find the 4ply varied in thickness a wee bit through the ball although this wasn't obvious once knitted up and blocked.
Overall I was pretty happy with this FO and glad that I finally got it to it's intended owner (before it was too small).  Here is a pic of it in action, isn't he just scrummy?  :-)

FO: Trousers for Miss M

Recently I had the opportunity to test a new pattern for trousers/leggings specifically developed to fit over cloth bums!  Since I was just starting to think about some sewing for Miss M to cover autumn/winter I snapped up the chance and here are the results.
First of all I LOVE this pattern.  It is super quick and easy, I whipped these up in about 20 mins including the cutting out, and the fit is fantastic on my wee one.  I did a size 72cm and Miss M is only about 68cm long so although they are a fantastic fit in the rise they are a bit long in the leg still on her, but hey that just means they will last through winter ;-)  As the pattern was developed for a fabric with 2-way stretch I chose a pink and white pinstripe cotton lycra for my prototype pair.

I was so happy with these that I just had to whip up another pair.  This time I used some merino I had in stash and as it was only really a one-way stretch I added about 1cm to the rise to give plenty of coverage over the nappy.  The results...

This pair do seem to cling a bit more around her nappy but I think that is really just down to the fabric choice.  This pattern will definitely be my "go to" pattern for trousers for her for this winter.  I'll be sure to blog more about it upon it's release :-)

Puffy Paint

A friend posted a link to a blog with a recipe for homemade puffy paint last week and I thought since Mr A is very into all things craft related at the moment it might be fun to try.  Of course I couldn't find the link when the time came but a quick search of Google popped up a nice simple wee recipe that we had everything for.  So this is what we did:

1 Tablespoon self-raising flour
1 Tablespoon Salt
Water to mix to a paste
Food colouring

EASY PEASY!

Here's our paint

We painted onto cardboard because I was a little nervous of putting the fairly thin craft paper we have at the moment into the microwave.  So the painting process, works best if painted on quite thick.

When complete pop in the microwave for about 10 seconds and voila, puffy paint :-)