Poseidon the Cardigan

A little while back, I saw a little girl in a cardigan that had a diamond pattern on it. I fell in love and went on the hunt for a similiar pattern this is what I found. I made so many errors knitting this and had to rip back so many times on the postive I finally learned that technique where you put your needle in the row you want to rip back to and then you just rip rip rip, You know what I’m on about right, if not here is a great tut. Anywho all that ripping and knitting was totally worth it

The colour is Poseidon from Bendigo Woollen mills. I am really loving Bendigo wool to knit with it is so lovely and hardly shows any inaccuracy in tension. Though I’d like to think I was becoming a better knitter, I think in reality Bendigo wool is just that good.

Besides knitting the left side as a mixture of the right and left and ending up with a wonky shaped panel that I had no idea what it was. The diamond pattern was really straight forward. I didn’t even mind knitting that stocking stitch, which is a first for me. Normally I can’t make it 5 cm into stocking stitch before giving in, but this just knitted up so fast.

I love this cardi, the colour, the pattern it’s all so cute. But unfortunately I think she may only get to wear it twice if I’m lucky. I knitted the size 2-3 but to the 4-5 length so in theory this should be long enough to last through 2 winters. Which is what I was counting on as we are in spring, though you wouldn’t know it, a torrential down pour has started this week and it’s been freezing so I quickly sewed the buttons on and she got to wear it at least once.

Love to all

xx

 

I made a quilt from start to finish

I love the idea of making quilts, but I can never carry out the whole process, normally I make a quilt top and then when it come to the idea of basting it all and quilting I give up and the quilt top stays unfinished. But this time I was determined to make a quilt.

The piecing was fine and went along really fast. Most of my seams match up too. I crawled around on the floor spreading the backing out taping and then pinning all those layers together. And then came the quilting, half way through quilting I said I would never machine quilt again.  I believe more then a few choice words were muttered to my sewing machine in the process. Next came the hand sewing of the binding and I fell in love with the whole quilt and what do you know but I already want to make another one and maybe, just maybe even machine quilt it. Who knows.

For now I am busy snuggling under my new quilt with all the kiddies looking at quilt patterns for the next project.

What are you crafting away at this weekend?

Love to all

xx

 

Let’s Catch Up Shall We

If you are one of my friends over on ravelry, you may have noticed I’ve been busy but I haven’t updated any of my new projects on to the blog. I’ve kind of been using ravelry as my mini blog. I love that I can put so much detail over there and it’s all in one little place. I have been really utilizing ravelry a lot lately. But I thought I would pop in and do a catch up. Show you call what I have been working on.

First up is my first item of crochet clothing. I learned to crochet before I learned to knit but I have always felt crochet was for blankets and toys and knitting was for clothes well that changed when on a tight deadline everything went wrong. With a bubba popping out in 2 weeks and an order for said bubba for a layette set was requested. I began knitting a beautiful lace cardigan, but disaster struck twice. 4 ply is incredibly hard to pick up stitches when they fall off your needles, ie: your child sits on your knitting and grabs only the needle to pull it up and what do you know all the knitting is still under their bottom. Worse still when you do it yourself a day later. So with a deadline looming I decided to crochet a little layette instead. I am so glad I did, because it turned out so well and now I have opened up a whole new pattern door 🙂 More things to crochet Woo Hoo!!

I’ve also been knitting for Little Princess, I just can’t help myself. I loved this one, it’s Olinda. I wanted a short sleeved cardigan for her for spring and this has been sitting in my queue for sometime now and I have even had the pattern purchased. I thought it would be a perfect fit with some Bendigo Woollen Mill Angora I got at a great discount price from the back room.  It was a bit of a pain to knit with being angora, shed like crazy while knitting. Kept going up my nose and tickling me like crazy. But the first wash got all of it out and now it’s one of mine and Little Princess’ favourite cardigan.

Don’t you just love the colour. A beautful dusty pink and it looks so pretty on her. Though I may be biased. I think she looks amazing in everything. I do love how it sits from behind too. A really great pattern!

And lastly I had a special request from my sister Duchess’ Boyfriend for a crochet Eagle. The pattern is here it’s a great pattern very ingenious but written in very very short hand in parts. The finished product is very cool though. And Duchess’ boyfriend really loved it.

   

Those wings as just so cleverly done. I love them

So there we go we are all caught up and as you can see I’ve been crocheting and knitting, just finding it hard to sit down at the computer to pop it all up for you to see. Hope to be back soon, I have a new top for princess just come off the hook and a cardigan currently on my needles in another great colour also Bendigo Wool. Yep I’m having a love affair at the moment it’s just so great.

Love to all

xx

 

A very late ta dah

Life is so busy at the moment I need to remember to breath. Between being a stay at home mum though I don’t think I should really call myself that anymore, it’s more like a Work from home multi tasking wonder mum. Recently I started taking over my husbands Karate dojo management. It has been a whirl wind couple of months. Of course all the normal stay at home mum jobs still need to be done as I’m still home but I feel like I’ve only got about a 1/4 of the time and to top it all off I decided to get more involved in B’s school and have joined the community group. But amongst it all I have been finding spare moments to stitch, knit and crochet for us.

This is one of my proudest knitting moments an actual item that I myself will wear, not a child who has no say :). I finished this poncho and the start of winter and have pretty much worn it everyday since. It is so nice and warm, made from Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury it is nice and soft and has held up well over the winter. While the neck has streched a little I think it may need to have some elastic sewn in for next winter, I still love it.

It was a pleasure to knit. I loved this knitting pattern, I find stocking knit so hard to knit I want to measure after every cm and am so disappointed to find it has only grown by a cm it’s so disheartening. But cables, patterns and lace change every few rows and it almost seems like a whole new pattern each time you repeat the rows. This poncho only took about a week. I never blocked it. It came straight off the needles and was worn out and about that day. I think I will need another one in a different colour next winter I love it that much and Little Princess will need her own as well.

Love to all

P.S. Photos were taken by Mr C and B can you guess who took which photo. I bet you can’t 🙂

A Giant Ta-dah that has been a long time in the making

 

From Start to finish this blanket has taken 2 year and 4 days, Thats 24 months 4 days or 716 days. That is one hell of a long time for such a little project and in all reality it probably hibernated for half of the that time. Looking back over all these hexipuff episodes the last time I actually knitted a hexifpuff was July 2012. Which means for a whole year these little hexipuffs sat in a box in a bag just waiting to be joined together.

I started to join them together in March 2013 and got 2 rows done and put it away until yesterday I thought to hell with it they will be finished come rain hail or shine and I sewed all 22 rows together yesterday.

And now I have one Finished beekeepers quilt. I used 8ply yarn not sock yarn so my puffs are slightly bigger so I made less puffs I think there is about 200, though I did have some puffs let over at the end of sewing them all together and I thought about making some more and adding another row. But truth be told I could not face knitting another one of these little puffs. I want to like this blanket. I really really do. I mean it took 2 years. Whether in that 2 years it was the actual knitting or the constant reminder that they were yet unfinished, I don’t know. But I’m not jumping for joy over these hexipuffs. I think the problem is that 2 years ago when I started this blanket I had no plan. It was just going to use up all my scraps (which it didn’t). Now 2 years later my colour choices have changed, I tend to head for more muted tones then over the top brights. While this blanket has some of those tones in there, many are just too bright for my liking.

Though we have already been using the blanket, this morning B, little princess and I snuggled under it on the couch. And I do have to admit, it is super comfy and amazingly warm.  But it is long and skinny and rather heavy so I’m not sure how much use it will really get. For now it’s living with the rest of the blankets in our entrance way.

It has been a huge journey and I loved bringing you episodes in the early days of what the puffs had been up to. Santa was one of my favourite. He was such a good sport about the whole thing. Thank you Santa.

You can check out all those posts here for now I’m off to have coffee and watch some tele. For once I am without a project on the go so I shall be feeling a little lost

Love to all

xx

A new baby blanket

The Cabbage patch seems full of baby boys at the moment. Do you ever feel like one sex is being born way more then the other. I remember when I had B there was only 1 little girl in our mothers group the rest were all boys and when I had Little Princess all my friends who were having babies were having girls too. Now it seems to have flipped back to boys and I was asked to make a special blanket for someone’s new little nephew. I was given free reign on the design but was asked if it could be similiar colours to the last baby boy blanket I made.

I choose to go with a pattern this time as I was on a bit of a short time frame. The block I choose is from Jan Eatons 200 Crochet Blocks  and the pattern is the Criss Cross  and it works so well in a big blanket. Though putting it together was more like quilting with having to make sure all those spaces lined up. There was a couple of times where I ripped the whole rows back. I found pining the chains were the spaces were to each other really helped make sure those spaces lined up.

This was a relative quick project, much faster then the ripple. I whizzed through the squares and managed to finish the whole blanket in 2 weeks. There are 12 squares in total all joined through the back loops with right sides facing together.And I finally got to add a pom pom edging. This is something I have wanted to do for a while but I just haven’t had the right blanket come off the hook. This one was perfect for pom poms. It was practically screaming at me to sew a pom pom border on. My heart was jumping for joy at the finished look and I think I may need to make us a blanket with a pom pom edge, maybe something red. I have been given a report that the new baby loves his new blankie oh and mum and dad do too.

Love to all

xx

Delivering Crochet to Geelong

Last weekend we all piled in the car at 7am and started our drive to geelong to have breakfast with some old friends. They were down from Canberra for the weekend and visiting family. We hardly ever get to catch up now that we both have kids and live so far away. In fact I think the last couple of times we caught up was their wedding and then ours. So it was well worth the drive down the coast. After a quick stop for coffee for us adults and some tide the kids over until breakfast hash browns we were on the open road. The kids were great on the drive and I took along my yarn basket and made little princess a peppa pig. Which she has becomes obsessed with, it seems once all the kiddies around here hit about 2 and half they all can’t get enough of peppa pig. Do your kids love her too??

We ate at the Wharf Shed which is right on the water. The water was freezing and the wind was blowing it up over the edge of the walls, we all got sprayed by seawater. The wind was blowing a gale but we still managed a walk along the waterfront down to the carousel where all kiddies had a ride, though little princess was the only one at the right age, B and K really really wanted a go but I think after it’s first round trip they were a little disappointed that going round in circles was all it did. But none the less it was warm and out of the wind so us mummies enjoyed it a lot.

After Breakfast we went up the National Wool Museum, which Mr C had been so excited about visiting all week. (Can you hear the sarcasm in my voice) I didn’t make the family wonder around the museum I just wanted to visit the shop and see if they sold lush yarn. Unfortunately I’m very disappointed to say the don’t. They did have some wool on the shelves but not to my taste. So we all piled back in the car and began our journey home which involved a detour through the city due to my bad directions, but oh well we got home eventually. 🙂

It was a lovely catch and I can’t wait to see our friends again. Isn’t catching up with old friend the best.

Love to all

xx

Wishing upon a star

When I was a little girl on the school holidays we got to go with my mum to her craft group (much the same as my children do now). My sisters and I would spend hours playing with the other children while our mother’s crafted away. I remember one ladies house being an old house with lots of different rooms that were filled with many wonderful treasures. My favourite room had a piano right in the center and I would sit in there banging away on the keys. My skills didn’t reach much further then chopsticks, but I had so much fun on that piano. For many years as a child whenever I wished upon a star it was for  a Piano. Though sadly as a child my wish was never granted by those stars and I never took piano lessons. As an adult I have still always wanted to own a piano and maybe just maybe even be able to play it.

Last weekend my wish partly came true and we purchased a beautiful 1800’s Becker piano and this weekend when I arrived home from the gym Mr C was sitting at the piano filling our house with the sound of ‘Heart and Soul’. It made my day.

We have all spent this weekend learning the basics and B is now playing twinkle twinkle little star. There is something about piano music though, even if it is just scales it seems to fill the house with such a wonderful feeling. I’ve had such a thoroughly great weekend learning piano and then listening to others learn while crocheting away on a new blanket.

I was even just treated to a recital of Twinkle twinkle little star by B and he was so proud of himself. Who knew a piano could make for such a wonderful weekend. Even little princess has gotten in on the action and has learnt ‘C’ 🙂

Love to all

xx

Little Princess finally gets some handmade items

I have been so busy knitting for everyone else and doing customer orders that the other day I realized I have never knitted little princess her own cardigan. And so I went on the hunt for a pattern to begin. I already had the yarn a soft cotton acrylic blend by James C. Brett. After a little looking around I settled on this one and cast on. It was a really quick knit and I did tweak the pattern a little. I added bands to the front and if I knitted this again I would probably add more length and shape to the arms. You can check out all the details for the adding the band here.

 

I also finally crocheted Little Princess her own Hoot. The other day a customer asked me if Little Princess had all the toys I crochet and I sadly had to respond that she only had hootabelle (which kicked off my business) and the test crochet of elmo which I later changed his mouth. I had made little princess a hootabelle back here but since then I have been so busy filling orders which has been faboulous as now B has started tennis lessons paid for by crochet 🙂 Yet the making for my family has diminished so I decided little princess definitely needed a hoot since as much as I try to make hootabelle her fav she does tend to favor hoot.

Oh and she was so happy when I finished him and she realized he was for her and not for a customer. She wouldn’t let him go and even held him up for photos. So I’m feeling a little better about my lack of family crafting now and can return to crocheting up those orders now while little princess snuggles down with her hoot and hootabelle.

Love to all.

xx

A wonderful weekend

Our Saturdays are becoming a jam packed action event lately. Saturday mornings is our coffee morning. Our whole little family goes out for coffee and hot chocolates in the morning. It’s become somewhat of a tradition, something we all look forward to. We have recently changed our cafe as the big boy B has started tennis lessons. And I love watching him!!!

After our coffee our little family splits in 2 and Mr C takes K and little princess home while me and B head off to tennis. I drop him with his coaches run across to the leisure center and grab a coffee to keep me warm while I sit  and chatter with other mums and dads in the freezing cold while we watch all our little ones play. B seems to really enjoy tennis which is probably why despite the cold I like it so much. After tennis B and I head home and then it’s time for Mr C to head off to swimming with K. Our afternoon’s are taken up by Mr C and I taking it in turns to head out to the gym. Saturday is a full on day there really isn’t a lot of time to spare but I do sneak in some crafting. Sunday is another story it’s our day it’s empty and we can fill it however we like.

This Sunday Mr C was off working at a Karate Tournament so Esme and I headed up to Emerald to visit the market. Before heading over to the market we popped into the Emerald Bakery for coffee and  cake for the kiddos. We sat right under the heater and the kiddies made a thorough mess with their cakes.

When we headed out to the market and the first thing we did was buy mittens for all the kiddos, yes I know they should all have hand knitted mittens but well they don’t and it was freezing. Esme and I were even shivering. We decided to head straight to the inside market and I think both Esme and I were a little disappointed on the craft at this market there really isn’t enough of it but if you would like some yummo food do head up. We weren’t up there for long we totally underestimated how cold it would be and the kiddies all wanted back in the cars with heaters.

After our lovely visit to the market the kiddies and I headed off to meet someone very special. My bestie finally had her baby boy. You may remember when I made her this blanket back here. Well when I heard her little man arrived I decided to quickly crochet her up a security blanket. I had wanted to make him a little robot but I left that too late so a robot security blanket it was. I love how it turned out. The new mummy got a present too. White Chocolate, Chicken Chips and a little something naughty rum. We visited for probably too long but oh the bubba cuddles they were just so wonderful. I can’t wait for more.

What did you do this weekend??

Did you visit any market or maybe a little one came into your life too.

Love to all

xx