New milestones

The last month or so has seen everyone here achieving new milestones. DP is in the process of changing his job and doing a lot of training for that.  I have finally got around to passing my driver's license, woohoo, I never could have imagined how much difference that would make to life.  And as for the small people well....
Mr A is riding his bike with no trainer wheels :-)

And Miss M has started walking, or should that be running?  Take note of the 'hiya' at the end :-)

Cars and Trains

Anyone who knows Mr A at all with know that he is an absolute car nut.  It is hard to believe now that he never even owned any kind of car until he was given some on his first birthday, the house seems overrun by them now.  So I guess keeping that in mind it wasn't really surprising that Miss M has taken a liking to anything with wheels as well.  She loves to get in on a good game of 'cars' and is very proficient at making a convincing 'brmmming' noise as can be seen here.

As well as cars Mr A has always loved his train set.  Lately every opportunity he gets, which is generally when Miss M is sleeping since she is a bit of a destructive menace otherwise, he builds fantastic train tracks.  Here are a couple of his more recent creations, not too bad for 4y3m.

And then just because she is cute, here is Miss M dancing to "The Flumps"

A FO Update

I have been extremely slack at blogging lately mainly because life has had a bad habit of getting in the way of everything.  I have been spending more time home alone with the kids as DP has started traveling for work and this not only cuts into my crafting time but also my blogging time.  I have also had some health issues come up that have made things a bit more difficult than usual.  It hasn't all been bad though and I hope to get things back on track soon.

Thought I would start tonight with a catch up on some of the things that have come out of the craft room lately.  Actually reading that it sounds like all my crafting takes place in a  nice confined and dedicated space, in reality I have stuff in various stages of development strewn all over the house, but hey whatever works right?

First up is this wee baby doll dress that I made for a baby shower I went to recently.  Knowing the baby was a wee girl and getting some guides to colors from the mum-to-be this is what I came up with.

The pattern is the Kaia Babydoll by the very talented Rachel Evans.  I am particularly pleased that I knitted this completely from stash using cleckheaton country 12ply for the bodice and Skeinz random print for the skirt.  The actual pattern has a lace border on the skirt but I thought that might be a bit lost in the yarn so I opted to add a frill instead.  On the whole this was a quick knit and I am really pleased with how it turned out.  I knitted the 3m size and as the baby only arrived last week I am guessing I will be waiting a while for modeled pics ;-)

Next there was the hat as requested by Mr A.  After the complete debacle of the "red jeans" which he has refused to wear since their completion, I was in two minds how much say to give him in this one.  But since he had requested a hat I thought I would give him a chance.  Letting him loose in my yarn stash proved dangerous and he changed his mind on yarn choice 3 times before settling on a lovely skein of Knitsch sock yarn in Polly which I received as part of the first Knitsch Yarn Club.  With yarn in hand I found a pattern and cast on before he had a chance to change his mind again.  Here is the result.  A Swirl Hat, I did the children's size, in red and blue.  I love how the yarn has striped and Mr A seems pleased with it, although to be honest I am not sure if he has actually worn it yet.

At about this time and feeling very pleased with myself I got a severe case of cast-on-itis and started 4 different projects within about a week.  These are now all close to completion so I will hopefully update with those soon.

I have also been forced to dust off the sewing machine recently.  My baby girl, Miss M, starts daycare tomorrow so I used this as a good incentive to finally get some of the lovely girly nappy fabrics I had stashed away made up.  We are very lucky that our daycare is fully supportive of using cloth and I love seeing her colorful bright nap pies sitting among the rows of sposies :-)
Here is the result of a few evenings work, all made to my own nappy pattern and a mix of poly print PUL, cotton print PUL and minky.

And finally after spending a good many hours searching the house for the wet bag we used for Mr A at daycare I gave up and made a new one.  I've had this cotton in stash since Mr A was tiny with the vision of making a wet bag so better late than never.  Super quick simple large zippered pouch, lined with PUL and big enough to take 6-8 nappies. 

So that's it for now, til next time...............

Fun in the Wintery Sun

As I mentioned we recently spent some time with my parents.  The kidlets both had a ball enjoying the great toys Gran had hired from the local toy library, and the freedom of a fully fenced, flat and easily accessible back yard.  It was the first time Miss M has ever really had a good go at playing outside and she loved every minute of it.

And some action of the fun:

And that innocent looking wee red plastic trolley also provided hours of fun on the days that weren't quite so lovely.  Firstly Mr A had a blast taking Miss M for a ride...

...and then never one to be outdone Miss M had to return the favour.

Mr A had a great time helping Gran in the kitchen and as usual Miss M wanted a piece of the action so here she is helping Gran make the quiche for dinner.

So on the whole we had a lovely relaxing holiday, chilling out, spending time catching up with family and friends and just plain having fun :-)

Buttons and Lace

Well this poor blog has been a bit neglected of late mainly because there has been a lot going on here, but more on that some other time.
One of the things that I will post more about later is that Mr A, Miss M and I recently spent 10 days enjoying the hospitality and fun at my parents place.  We had a lovely wee break away and while I was there Mum decided it was time for me to go through her sewing stash and decide what I wanted out of it.  Now I knew her stash was large but even I had no idea of the actual epic proportions of it.  The sorting took place over about 4 nights once the kidlets were in bed and there is now a massive box at their place with my name on it.  Inside is a veritable treasure trove of patterns, laces, edgings, elastic and buttons, hmm did I mention buttons?
I did bring a small selection of stuff back with me that I thought I might use some of in the near future but the bulk of it is staying put until we have the car there at some stage.  First up the laces I brought back.

And just a few of my firm favs up close (sorry the lighting is so rubbish in the pics).

I am totally in love with those funky vintagey braids and can't wait to get some wee denim dresses made up for Miss M to put them on.

Then there are the buttons.  The box of buttons my Mum has at her house is massive, like probably the equivalent of about 6 shoeboxes FULL of buttons.  I went through them one night and made some selections and then Mr A had a fab time going through and selecting some for his craft projects as well.

Here is our haul

And one lot of Mr A's tipped out.

There are some real gems amongst them but I have no idea how I will ever use even a small proportion of them.  Any ideas for using large vintage buttons gratefully accepted :-)

I can't wait to get my whole big box here although I have no idea where I am going to store all the stuff!

Testing Undina

Yes I have been back at the test knitting again, this time a gorgeous wee tunic/top for Miss M called Undina, tested for Elena Nodel.  This pattern is part of Elena's Back to the Sea collection which I tested another pattern from, Maritimes, earlier in the year.  As the last one was for Mr A, this time I decided to do the girly version of the pattern for Miss M.
I think I adore everything about this pattern.  I love the finished shape of the tunis, the detailing of the yoke and of course I am always a sucker for cables.  I completed this knit in Bendigo Woolen Mills Luxury 8ply and used Utiku Possum Merino in Lipstick as the contrast colour.  I completed a size 12-18m for Miss M even though she is only 9.5m as her chest size was between that and the 9m size and I wanted it to last her for a while :-)
So here is my finished version of Undina:

Undina

The cables

Sleeve detail

And a few, rather rubbish, modeled pics.  The light really wasn't great the day I took these and I will try and get some better pics once the weather here improves enough for me to take some outside.

I should just note that it isn't actually as 'bulky' as it looks in the pics and Miss M isn't build like a rugby player, she just had a whole lot of layers of clothes underneath it.

A Little Bit of Culture

Well I have fallen way behind on my blog for a variety of reasons.  One of them being that it is the middle of winter and just keeping on top of the boring things like washing etc while battling the seemingly never-ending rounds of colds seems nearly impossible, let alone blogging.  Also DPs job is going through a lot of changes which is meaning a few changes for the family, including time away for him, which is taking a bit of getting my head around and getting used to.  In amongst all this my crafting has pretty much ground to a halt but life in general never seems to slow down.

A couple of weeks ago Mr A's daycare had a week celebrating all the different cultures represented within the centre.  As a centrepiece of this week was an International Pot-Luck Dinner which Mr A was very excited about.  He came home telling me how he was going to take a "scottish dinner" and wear his kilt :-) This may all sound fine and dandy but said kilt was made for him 2 years ago and he may just have grown a tad since then.  Here is what he looked like when he last wore it.

Hmm he may be ever so slightly bigger than that now :-P  Anyway Gran made him this kilt in his family tartan before we went back to Scotland for his 2nd birthday and she made it as a true childs kilt on a bodice.  In order for him to be able to actually get into it, and for it not to be some kind of mini skirt I had to do some pretty impressive bodice lengthening which isn't too pretty but does the job.
Okay so where are we now.  Dinner, check, (taking haggis, neeps and tatties), Mr A's outfit, check.  "But Mum what will Miss M wear?".  Very good question!!!!!!
I have been wanting to make Miss M a traditional baby dress for some time now and even got out the fabric and pattern to cut it out only to find out that the pattern I had was missing a couple of vital pieces - ARGHHH!  So good old Mum came to the rescue by sending me her, rather vintage, copy of Enid Gilchris'ts "Little Coats and Dresses" book.  This was my first ever attempt at pattern drafting but I was actually surprised at how well it all went, once I had acquired a decent metal ruler with inches on it :-)
And fabric?  Well of course ever wee girl needs a wee tartan dress.  I didn't have any of the family tartan in a suitable fabric so her's is Black Watch.
Long story short I got from this...

...to this....

...in just a few short days with only a few minor headaches and a couple of bad words muttered.

The dinner was a huge success with many people pleasantly surprised to find they liked haggis upon their first tasting of it, Miss M certainly downed hers, and several people said they had wanted to try it for some time.

Here are my two wee kilted kiwis looking a little tired on it upon our return home (I forgot to take the camera to the actual dinner!).