Secret Santa!

On Wednesday E’s TNN secret santa present arrived and its so cute!  She got a fairy skirt and a matching wee fairy skirt for her doll!  The skirt is a wee bit big but I just tied it on her like a wrap around – I think it will fit her for years!  (I think she looks all grown up in this photo, her face looks older and her hair is getting long now)

Shirred dress!

I was rummaging through my fabric stash the other day and came across some cotton lawn that I had dyed during a community ed fabric dyeing course earlier in the year at a local high school.  I’d come home with 7m of the stuff, all in different colours and cut in 50cm strips, and had no idea what to do with it apart from make a few hankies.  The fabric was sort of scrunched in a plastic bag when dyed, so it has interesting patterns through it.

 Then I was hit with inspiration from the TNN homemade gallery – it seems that shirred dresses are the big thing at the moment.  So I sweet-talked Mum into whipping one up for E from the dyed lawn.  I asked her to make the straps halterneck style, to tie behind her neck, rather than shoulder straps which I figured might slip off her wee shoulders and get annoying for her:

No crafty pics to show you

I’m very busy crafting but I can’t blog about it because its all for christmas presents!  I am doing a secret santa on TNN and some of it is knitting (hopefully I will finish it tonight) and some of it is sewing (which mum is doing because she’s miles better at it than me).  I’m also sewing some christmas presents all by myself, but I can’t show you those either.

 So in the meantime, here’s E trying pineapple for the first time, and playing about outside:

who needs a car valet when you have a 1 y/o?

In the weekend E helped her granddad clean his car…

Is it a bird, is it a plane…

no its…  MINI SUPER SETH!

Now that this little guy has finally reached his destination, I can show off a pic of him:

His new owner is Neak’s 2yo Seth, for whom mum and I made a “Super Seth” outfit as a secret swap present.  I figured Seth might like a matching minime superhero doll – after all, how many 2yos have a doll made to match them?  OK the real Seth doesn’t have a ‘fro, but Mini Super Seth’s hair sort of got out of control!  The back of his cape is embroidered with an “S”, just like Seth’s one.

Flower fairy shorties (aka pimp my soaker part 4)

OK its not a soaker, its my first attempt at shorties.  And I just managed to squeeze them out of 75g of wool, to fit a one year old.   The yarn is white utiku which I dip-dyed – the purple and green are kool-aid, the pink is red food colouring from Spotlight.  I love how these turned out! (even if the fairy does have fat legs…)

back:

front:

side:

Wendy house!

The other week my mum scored bargain of the year on Trade Me – a plastic wendy house for $20!  It is the perfect size for E and she loves it, she likes to sit in it to eat her morning tea )

Not a very crafty weekend

Well the weather was so beautiful in the weekend that I spent most of it out and about with E, but I did manage to get some fabric cut out ready for sewing – but its for christmas presents so I can’t tell you what its going to become!

I have decided that this summer I want to take E to visit all of the Auckland Regional Council parks in the Northern sector (and hopefully a few in the south and west too), so yesterday I ticked Tawharanui off my list.  I went up with my sister and her husband, and we had a lovely picnic then went for a stroll down the beach with E in the ergo – I was lazy so we all took turns carrying her!  Its actually quite a long beach (a lot longer than the photo below shows) so we were walking for over an hour.  E had a lovely play in the sand too, but I had forgotten the camera *rolls eyes* so no lovely pics here of E playing… here’s an aerial photo of Tawharanui I found on the net:

It was such a beautiful day, no clouds, and the beach was nearly deserted… lovely.

 On the way home we stopped at Warkworth for an icecream, which we ate down by the river watching the ducks, which E enjoyed.  Then we hit a huge traffic jam heading south so rather than crawling south to Orewa at 10km/h we turned west and went for a leisurely drive home via Puhoi and the Kaipara coast. 

Play date!

This morning E had a play date with her wee friend Z – mum just sent me these pics.  It looks like they had a lovely girly time with E’s dolls and playsilks!

 

Longies in the round

I love making longies on circular needles, they are easy & relatively quick, have no seams (yay!), and I find are a great fit with just 3 short rows and a gusset.  I use 40cm and 30cm addi turbo needles, they are soooo nice, just a joy to knit with!

I don’t really follow any one pattern for the longies I make.  I always do an enclosed elastic waistband - mostly because I find ribbing tedious, and making i-cords even more tedious!   It also makes nappy changes quicker and easier when you don’t have to mess about with a drawstring.  For my first pair I was guided by the measurements in the doodlepants pattern but now I just sort of do my own thing.  I add three short rows in the back at 1 inch intervals, pretty much like doodlepants.  But unlike the doodlepants pattern I always put in a gusset – I think a gusset is essential for longies to be worn over cloth nappies.  I always sew up the gusset with kitchener stitch before doing the legs, this means that I can pick up 4 or 5 stitches along the edge of the gusset for the first round of each leg – this eliminates having to sew up any holes later!

 Here’s my first longies-in-the-round effort – E has been wearing them all winter as pajama pants, they are just the best thing for nights!  They are in utiku watermelon have moss stitch cuffs.

 

And here are a pair I made for the TNN mid-winter secret santa.  They are in utiku amber and I pimped them a bit with purl stitch cuffs which have a row of faggoting, and adding a few embroidered bats (the one on the front is supposed to be smiling, really!)

I made a wee beanie to go with it too, I love knitting hats cos they are so quick!  I start off using my 40cm addis and finish up on dpns.