Well I couldn’t afford to buy a tropical island

Its beautiful, its for sale, and its slightly out of my price range.  Although escaping to the sun does sound very nice, in the midst of this awful weather we’ve been having.

So instead I listened to the rain pelting and the wind howling outside, hung out in my kitchen and dyed some yarn.  I call it Blue Lagoon. 

I also call it yummy!  I’m so pleased with how this turned out.  Its 200g of white Utiku dyed with Wiltons and Americolor cake gels, and some el cheapo Spotlight food colouring.

Check out what Gabes has been doing!

Gabes has made some funky stitch markers with letters, to use when doing the short rows on my longies pattern!  How cool are they!!!!!

Pattern update

Well I’ve been meaning to update the longies pattern for a while, people keep asking me how long to make the rise and the legs and I’ve been a bit slack about finishing the pattern for all sizes *blush*.

So yesterday I added in a newborn size – I’m making a nb pair at the moment and they are soooooo quick after the endless toddler longies!  I’ve done the body and one leg and only used 50g of yarn too, so I’m expecting the whole thing to take less than 75g.

I also put in the measurements for when to start doing the crotch.  These are based partly on helpful advice from TNNers (thanks guys!) but they are still estimates of course, and the best way to ensure a perfect fit is to measure the rise of the child who the longies are intended for!   I haven’t added any leg measurements yet but hopefully will do that this weekend.

I also changed the crotch part of the pattern slightly, in that I altered the number of stitches you slip onto the dpns for kitchener stitch.  The only reason for the change was when I’m knitting longies I tend to forget how many stitches to hold back on the circulars (how feeble is that when the pattern is written on my own blog!) and I tend to default to 4.  Which works out quite well I think, so I just simplified the crotch pattern to match what I have been doing – this just makes the crotch a fraction wider in the bigger sizes, which I figure is good for over cloth nappies anyway.  By all means use whatever number of stitches works for you!  And if you hate the change just tell me and I will change it back again.

Lucky girl

Yesterday Mum and Dad bought this on Trade Me, and set it up in their living room:

E’s eyes nearly popped out of her head this morning when she saw it!  And for once she was actually speechless! LOL

After needing a little help climbing up the platforms initially, she soon got the hang of it:

And its fun to crawl around under it too

And then her buddy D came to play, and he loved it too

I imagine it will stay indoors for the rest of winter, and by spring my mum will be thoroughly sick of it dominating her living room and will put it outside.  For now, its just the thing to keep two energetic toddlers busy when its cold and wet outside.

Odessa at last

When I first saw the odessa hat on Gabe’s blog, I knew I had to make one too.  Minus the beads, cos I’m not so sure about beads on headwear.  Anyway, I cast one on in gorgeous Sublime cashmere-merino, for Tammy. 

Well.  While the pattern was easy, I’m embarrassed to report that this hat took me about 3 times longer than it should have, because I kept making careless mistakes.  And then I didn’t discover the mistakes until 2 or 3 inches after I’d made them.  GAAAH!  I blame this on knitting late at night watching TV and not really concentrating on what I was doing (I was watching Series 1 of Roswell on DVD ok!  I was trying to follow that and not really thinking about my knitting!).

Anyway, I was very very very pleased to finish this yesterday, because I’ve actually knit enough stitches to make 2 of the darn things.   And now that its done I’m quite pleased with it, and more importantly, Tammy says she loves it.

It looks a little lumpy to me where I have started the decreases, but then again I haven’t blocked it either, cos I’m lazy.  Still, I figure if Tammy wears it enough the lumpy bits will stretch and even out?

Calorimetry #3

I made a toddler sized calorimetry for E, from the same ball of Cleckheaton Vintage Hues that I used for mine (and I still have plenty of yarn left over from that ball!).  I cast on 68 stitches and went down to 28, but if I make a toddler one again I’ll just go down to 36 or even more, because it doesn’t need to be this wide.

 This is odd wool – in the first half of the ball the strand was one solid colour (which then changed, iykwim) but in the second half of the ball the strand was 2 strands of different colours twisted together, hence the brown flecks through the whole thing.  So it looks quite different to my one , and not because of the different stitch count.  But I like it anyway, and it stops E from stealing mine!

Calorimetry #2

Last weekend I made my sister a calorimetry – again its Cleckheaton Vintage Hues, just a different colour.  I love this pattern!  Its so cool to achieve a FO in one sitting

Pixie Murray

E watches rather a lot of Wiggles DVDs.  They are her favourite TV show.   The other day I realised she was probably watching far too much of it, when she burst out with “Hello, I’m Murray” while I was cleaning her teeth.  Of course I laughed, so the joke has continued. (Murray is the red Wiggle, for those of you not in the know ;o) )

That morning when I got her out of bed and plonked her on the floor to change her nappy she did a big stretch and I told her she looked like a starfish.  She disagreed.  I told her she was stretching out her arms and legs just like a starfish and Miss Contrary said “no, seahorse!”.  Which made me giggle too, so the next morning when I got her out of bed, ever the one to combine jokes, she stated “hello, I’m seahorse!”.  Followed by lots of giggling LOL

Later that day my mum presented E with a gorgeous cardie which she had just finished knitting.  Its in TWC amber and its just lovely.  It has a hood with a point on it, and Mum told E she looked like a pixie.  When mum took her to music class an hour later E was wearing red trousers, a red top and her amber cardie.  And she happily marched up to the other mothers there and announced “Hello, I’m pixie Murray!” *blush*  They probably thought my child is mad!  But at least she has a good imagination LOL

Here she is modelling the cardie yesterday (no she did not go out wearing pink and red together!)

And here is her pixie hood:

Oh and here she is holding her birthday present from my good friend J, who made it herself.  Its arms are linked together, I think it is meant to hang on a doorknob but it hasn’t had a chance because E has been playing with it.  She loves it – well its a bird so of course she does!   I love the frilly bloomers )  I’ll have to take a better photo of it, its very cool!  Thankyou so much Auntie J!!!