These Lazy Hazy Days

I have to admit I love summer. I often tell people that I'm solar powered, I seriously struggle during long periods of grey rainy weather, and lets face it you can't beat a warm, clear, calm summers day. Unfortunately where we live the hot sunny weather is usually accompanied by a gale force wind but this summer we've been really lucky and had quite a lot of calm(ish) days where we've been able to get out and enjoy the weather.

For me growing up the lazy hazy days of summer were spent here...

At our bach that is (or beach house for those non kiwis amongst you). We would while away the summer holidays swimming, boating, playing on the beach, scrambling over rocks and soaking up the sun. This is still what I think of when I imagine a perfect lazy summers day.

Today however I had a lovely lazy summer day kicking back at home with the kidlets, and it was even quite productive. While Miss M slept Mr A had a ball tearing up and down our (rather steep) driveway on his wee ride on motorbike while I hung out the washing and even tackled the garden, the horrible creepy vine thing might not thank me but the flax bush I found underneath looks a lot happier :-)
Mr A and I baked this...

and he cleaned out and sorted his toy boxes with the help of Miss M and myself.
Then after more gardening and bike riding we figured we'd earned some afternoon tea.

We even managed to fit in some colouring, card games and playing cars before Daddy got home :-)
So often I think we have to go somewhere or do something to have a good day but today has reminded me that's not necessarily the case.

Oh and what could make a good day better? News of a new LYS opening soon ;-)

Ysolda Love

Yesterday I took some time to catch up on some blog reading which I haven't been doing much of lately. I try to follow a lot of blogs and have many favs but one of the ones I love to spend time catching up on is that of my current fav knitting pattern designer Ysolda Teague. I discovered Ysolda's designs through Ravelry and after reading her blog discovered that she lives in a city that I think of as my second home, Edinburgh. I spent 3 years living and working in Edinburgh and it still holds many fantastic memories for me and I find the gorgeous photos on Ysolda's blog often take me back there.
Anyway back to the point. While reading some recent posts of Ysolda's blog I discovered that her new and much awaited book Little Red in the City is now available for pre-order and will be available in time for my birthday - squeeeee!
I already own both of Ysolda's current books, Whimsical Little Knits and Whimsical Little Knits 2, and wholeheartedly intend to get myself a copy of her new book as well. I have knit a few of her designs already and not only love the easy to follow patterns but also find I always get to learn some new technique along the way. Here are my Ysolda offerings to date

Elijah

Ishbel

Ripley

Veyla

Of these my Veyla mitts would have to be my absolute fav, in fact they are probably one of my fav FOs of all time.  I adore the pattern and they are knitted in the stunningly soft and squishable cashmere/merino in Dreich from Old Maiden Aunt (more about these yarns in another post later I'm sure).

Just before christmas Ysolda set up a 'holiday shop' and as a result I was lucky enough to receive this as a slightly late christmas present last week.

And inside a gorgeous WIP bag featuring the Ysolda design Sophie :-)

Now to find the time to cast on another Ysolda design to keep inside it, I think next on the list for me is the Scroll Lace Scarf knitted in Old Maiden Aunt alpaca/silk in Red red rose as shown in the pattern picture.

In Progress

My crafting seems to be slowly crawling into 2011 with not much progress anywhere so I thought I'd do a wee post about what I currently have in the pipeline.

First of all on the knitting front I am inching my way through a test knit for the lovely Elena of moreknits at an embarassingly slow pace, not helped by a sick child and a baby who doesn't like to give me any time in the evenings. It will be a hooded long sleeved jersey for Mr A eventually (well actually hopefully quite soon), but here's it's sad looking current state.

So with the knitting going nowhere fast then what about sewing? To be honest that's not much better. I do have fabric here for clothes for both Mr A and Miss M and I did finally get around to doing some cutting out today (and making some stupid mistakes in the process). My sewing machine has had to move from our bedroom to a new home in the computer room to make room for Miss M moving out of the bassinet and into the cot.  This should theoretically give me more sewing time as I can now sew while Miss M is asleep, but it wasn't much use until I bought an extension cord today so I can actually plug the machine in. Here's a wee peek at what is in on it's way....

I'll aim to have more finished projects and less WIPs in my next craft post.

So....

Thanks to those of you who commented on my Pay It Forward post and are wanting to spread some RAOK cheer throughout the year. Pookee, marshmellowmagic and happychic I will be in touch when your RAOKs are organised. I'm am loving planning these and those that I will do from the facebook version of this. I hope that anyone who reads these posts now will think about putting together some RAOKs of their own. Since posting earlier in the week I hae already been the recipient of a lovely RAOK in the form of some bibs for Miss M, and today I posted off a wee something to someone special ;-)

Fun with Food Colouring

Just before christmas I was lucky enough to get a take my turn with a travelling swap box a group of friends organised earlier in the year. The box when it arrived was a treasure trove of delights and after much deliberaion I chose the following:

That is some Baby Bella bamboo yarn, some gorgeous Needlefood sock yarn in Mango Smoothie and a wee pack containing playsilks and kool-aid for dying.

So when we were faced with some free time with nothing to do bwtween christmas and new year Mr A and I tackled some playsilk dying. I let Mr A choose the colours and he chose red and blue, and as we didn't have any red kool-aid we just used standard food colouring.
The first step was to soak the playsilks in a solution of white vinegar and hotnwater for about half an hour. While this wa going on we mixed up the dyes, the blue was two packets of berry blue kool-aid in 2 cups of water with a splash of vinegar and the red was a random amount of red food colouring in some water with a splash of vinegar (very scientific of me I know).

Drain the playsilks and add to the dye solutions

Cover and microwave for 2 mins on high, then a further 1 min then stand to cool.

Rinse the playsilks in cool water until the water runs clear, this was straight away with the blue one but the red took a lot of rinsing, I think I may have been a bit overzealous with the red food colouring.  Then hang on the line to dry.

Now play!  Mr A adores these and has been really creative in finding different ways of playing with them.

And Miss M wasn't one to miss out on the fun either!

I'm really pleased with how these turned out and it was a great activity to share with Mr A.  Ours turned out with a mottled look but we could have got a more solid colour by agitating the playsilks more in the dye solution.  The same dying technique can also be used for wool :-)

Pay It Forward

Some of you may have seen the Handmade pay-it-forward posts doing the rounds on facebook at the moment. I am doing this and it got me to thinking it would be fun to do something similar to 'celebrate' the beginning of my blog. I've decided to steer away from the strictly handmade theme of the facebook version to allow more people to get involved. So here's what I thought would happen:
1. You leave a comment on this post and just for fun tell me either about a random act of kindness you have received or one you think it would be fun to receive. I'm happy for this to go international so you don't have to be in NZ to take part.
2. At 8pm NZT on Sunday I'll randomly choose 3 people who will receive a RAOK from me sometime between now and the end of April. I'll post on here that evening who the lucky people are.
3. If you are chosen it is up to you to pay-it-forward. How you do this is entirely up to you. It might be sending someone a random gift, doing something to brighten the day of a friend having a rough time, or a RAOK for a complete stranger. It doesn't have to be a big expense, maybe someone home made from stash, some baking, or extra veges from your garden? You might want to encourage your recipients to pay it forward as well to keep the chain going.

I'd like to think that this is a fun way to inject a bit of cheer into peoples lives in 2011. We all know how easy it is for life to get away from us and weeks to fly by in the standard daily grind, and everyone deserves to feel a little bit special sometimes :-)

Jolly Good Fun

It's always nice when there's a bright spot to an otherwise tough day. Yesterday Mr A was sick with a fever and spent the whole day miserable on the sofa or in bed, poor wee monkey. He brightened up after dinner though and suggested we give Miss M a turn in her Jolly Jumper. Here's the result

Miss M had a ball, she just loves her big brother so much and jumping with him was the best thing ever!

It will never cease to amaze me how kids can have you so worried and then in the blink of an eye they have turned things around and put the biggest smile on your face :-)