With Christmas finally over, I was a bit stumped as to what to knit – too hard to decide after the pressure of Christmas was removed! So I went to my fallback pattern, when I want to knit but don’t want to think - a punk knitters soaker. This one is for my sister, and I’d promised to make it for her from this yarn a while ago. Her baby is due in March and I have a project list a mile long of the things I want to make for her, so it was nice to check one off the list.
I used the yarn I’d received in the TNN hand-dyed yarn swap. The pattern suggested for it was a scarf, but I don’t think I have the attention span for scarves, so my sister had asked for me to make a soaker from it for her. It will match some yellow towelling velour that I dyed aaaages ago, that will become fitted nappies. The yarn is 8ply felted merino, dyed with paprika. Its lovely soft yarn and I enjoyed using it. The soaker is gonna need a couple of washes before it is worn, I discovered that after a while my fingers were starting to turn yellow LOL. The waist and cuffs are just some cream cleckheaton country.
I think it needs to be embellished but I can’t decide on a design, so it can sit in my project bag for a bit while I think about it.
I still have 50g of the lovely yellow yarn left, and I can’t decide what to do with it!
For Christmas E got the most gorgeous gift from my friend J. For E’s birthday J made her Mummy Duck which E adores, so to feed E’s bird obsession for Christmas J made her this darling wee owl and 4 weeny owlets!!!! Squeeee! Are they too cute or what!!! Owly has an applique heart patch on her butt too
For Christmas I decided to make my SIL K some wristwarmers. I’d always admired these lovely Evangeline Gloves made by Gabes, and as I had some of the same yarn in my stash that Gabes used, I decided to be a total copycat and make some for my SIL – I’ve even used the same colour!
They turned out great! Well I think so anyway, and I know K likes them cos she has been wearing them despite the fact that its the middle of summer! LOL
These were made in Patons Jet, and I used my 4mm 30cm circulars. The only thing I was a little disappointed with was the thumb, I thought it was a bit narrow/tight at the base of the thumb. If I made them again I think I’d change the way the thumb is made – the way Gabes suggested looks good, I should have just done that!
E helpfully modelled them for me so that I could get a pic of both of them. Eek, the cast off join is a bit obvious, but I guess thats a bit unavoidable in 12ply.
I haven’t updated this blog in a while because all my crafting lately has been christmas gifts, and I couldn’t show them before they were given! Now that christmas is nearly over, I will start showing what I have been up to.
In the meantime, here is E in a Dorothy the Dinosaur outfit made for her for Christmas by her clever Nana C. It has a hat, detachable tail, ballet shoes and wee tutu!
When my sister decided to take up knitting a couple of months ago, I got her working on a soaker for her first piece of knitting. Its on flats, I figured it was a good way to learn the basics. She finished the knitting part ages ago, and then I very kindly sewed it up for her ;o) Its been sitting around waiting for a cord, and I finally got around to crocheting one the other day. I think she did great for her first FO! She’s a bit of a perfectionist so there are no mistakes in it, cos she goes back and fixes those (good! I hate it when beginners just leave mistakes as they are! I can’t bear that myself LOL)
Its a small size I think (trying to remember cos she cast on ages ago!), and is unisex cos her bubs is a surprise still – hopefully it won’t be a surprise after this week though ;o)
My sister has been busy making wipes from the cotton velour we dyed the other weekend. She backed them with some printed flannelette and they look cool. She did about 40 of them so she’s certainly not going to run out! (her bubs is due in March). These are the velour sides:
And this is what she used to back most of them
And here are some wraps that I dyed at the same time:
Here are a couple more videos from the display. I’m sorry about the quality – these were taken on my little still camera, which struggled with the lighting.
We went to the Waiuku Christmas Display yesterday and E loved it! It was in a little church hall in Waiuku, which is not somewhere we’ve ever been before (well it is MILES away from where we live!) but it was worth the drive cos we all had a great time, particularly E! We went with Nana C, and dressed E in her christmas tree costume as part of the fun.
Basically the display is put on by a couple of local families, who started collecting animated santas as a hobby, and whose collections grew as the families tried to out-do each other. Eventually they had collected so much stuff they decided to display it for the public, which is very nice of them, and they have been doing it every December for the last five years. They only ask for a gold coin donation, which is no doubt to cover the cost of the hall hire, and its open Thurs-Sun until Christmas.
Its only in a little hall, but there is so much stuff that you keep finding new things to look at. We were there for an hour and we still didn’t get a good look at absolutely everything. Apparently there are 500+ santas! We were lucky because there weren’t many visitors when we went (we were surprised cos we thought it would be packed!). Apparently it gets busier before christmas though, yesterday was the first day it opened.
We took some photos but only had a little point-and-shoot digital camera, and it was a bit hard with the lighting. Because lots of the toys lit up, the lighting was dimmed a bit in the hall, so without using the flash the photos are a bit fuzzy cos the camera struggled to focus in the dim light, but with the flash you kinda don’t get the cool ambience of all the lit-up toys.
The families running the display all gushed over E in her costume, they thought she was adorable! E was squealing in delight, at times she was shaking with excitement! (I think thats what she’s doing in the pic below, with her fists clenched! She’s watching a ski slope thingy that she was totally into)
There was a reindeer head mounted on the wall, and it talked and moved! It has a speaker and a microphone if you know what I mean, so it called E over and was chatting to her. E thought it was great, although she did keep looking over her shoulder at the lady talking into the microphone LOL. (look, more clenched fists!)
There were lots of fibre-optic trees:
This is what E was looking at in the first pic – at the bottom of the tree is a wee ski slope, it takes the elf skiiers up to the top and then they go down the slope. The wires on the left of of the tree are a cable car that went up and down the tree (the car is at the top in the pic). On the right of the tree is santa on a ladder holding a string of christmas lights, he climbs up and down the ladder.
Looking at a merry-go-round:
Looking at an even bigger merry-go-round (more fist clenching!):
Posing on a chair in front of the “fireplace”. Unfortunately at this stage she managed to get fake snow in her mouth and she kicked up a fuss and didn’t pose nicely, so this is the best we got (I didn’t even see the santa inside the fireplace until I downloaded the photos!):
We loved this snow-globe, santa is looking through a magnifying glass at a village, to see whether the boys and girls have been good
There were two big trains and lots of village buildings. Unfortunately the train is a bit blurry in this pic cos we’ve left the flash off to show the lights
Here’s a wee video, its very noisy because all the musical toys are going at once!
This next video is very dark unfortunately and rather blurry, but its E dancing with two dancing christmas trees! Its Nana C who twirls E around in the middle.
We went to visit Nana C yesterday, and she had made E a rad christmas tree costume! E loved it, although she wasnt that great at posing for photos for us. It has a headband with a star on it, but the star is a bit heavy and the headband slips whenever she tilts her head, so Nana C gave me some smaller stars and another headband and I have to figure out how to make another one (eek!)
I’ve been busy crafting this week, but its been all for christmas presents so I can’t really share on here yet. In the meantime, E has been having fun with her play food. Yesterday she carefully set it all out and had a tea party with a couple of her favourite toys.
Mummy Duck was in the push chair (don’t ask me why she is naked, I assume she has just had a bath or been on the potty, which Mummy Duck does a lot) and Penguin was in the high chair having a cupcake :)
