New toys!!!!!!

Who doesn't love getting something new?  I bought this set of circular knitting needles last week. They are an Addi circular lace set, with eight pairs of needles and three different length cords.  Equivalent to 24 pairs of needles. 
I do like the Addi circulars. I have a couple of their standard circular needles and i love the way the wool slides across the needles with no fuss.  I can't wait to use these. But I do have a couple of things on the go so I will have to wait I think.  until then I will just look at them and plan....

(nice aren't they?)

Ravelry

I have to say I love, love, love the Ravelry website.  it is such a fantastic resource for knitters to find patterns, ask advice, anything really.  I have spent countless hours just cruising through the patterns on this site. A friend told me it was wasted time if I was looking but not 'doing'.  i heartily disagree.  I have had such wonderful times looking, dreaming and even planning projects.
this is the latest that I have made from this site. it is a free pattern, in a newborn size, but she does have a pattern you can but with bigger sizes and a choice of four or eight ply. (This one is done in eight.)  I am planning on buying her expanded pattern when I get a chance to sit and have a look.

Anyway, here it is:

It is knitted from the neck down, all in one.  it was quite easy and is so sweet. I can just see a newborn in this.  The pattern has tapered sleeves or straight; I chose the straight sleeves but am wondering if next time maybe i will do the tapered ones.  These look a little like they might flare outward but they don't.
The sleeves are done on double pointed needles after the body of the cardigan is done.  I love the knitted in one piece idea. No seams to sew up, but also no seams to make it bulky.

I have nobody to give this to but I am having fun knitting baby things and they can all go away for when my grandchildren start coming along (not yet though!!!).

So adorable

We got some new patterns in the shop on Monday afternoon of some vintage type aprons, so after my boss chose some suitably appropriate vintage type material, I whipped this up yesterday.
I love it, it is so cute.  And without the ric-rac it would be perfct for a boy as well. We have some great Cat-In-The-Hat laminated fabric at work so i think I might have to make some out of that too. 

The pattern come from this:

The pattern asks for snaps on the sides, but I used ribbon instead (it was much cuter with ribbon than snaps).  And instead of using binding or ric-rac, I chose to use both.  I think I prefer the binding on the armhole edge, and it covered the ends of the ric-rac nicely.

I also sat and sewed an apron for me, well for me to enter into the show. I have done pretty embroidered ones in the past and i do use them (and get them very grubby) but this one has pretty lace on it, and I am not sure if I can bear to make it dirty.  It just needs ribbon for the neck and it is done but I will wait until it is finished to post a photo.

back again

I am still not sure where tthe time goes. It seems to fly by faster each year, which is a frightening thought! 
I have been busy doing the usual; running kids around from here to there, working, being a wife and mother.  It is all fun, but it all seems to conspire to keep me away from the keyboard.
So, while I am sitting here I will show you a couple of things I have done.  I have been knitting madly away; working in a fabulous wool shop, amongst such nice wool and patterns, how could I not be knitting?  But, it is also Show season, with all the agricultural shows coming up, so i am trying to get some sewing done for those.

Firstly  though is a pair of bootees I made for a friend of my son's who is pregnant. I had an epiphany while making these; as I don't know the sex of the baby I decided to put ribbons in for either boy or girl.  Such a simple idea, and I am sure I am not the first person to do this, but what an easy way to cover for either.

These turned out really well and I hope she liked them.

Another thing I have just finished is this smocked dress. it was so nice to do some smocking after not doing it for a little while. I bought this fabric before Christmas and had this idea floating around in my head for the past six months. Bargello was one smocking technique I hadn't tried before and I am happy with the end result. It is actually really nice for the dress to turn out exactly as it had been in my head.  It does seem to need a hook and eye, or two, between the buttons where the smocking is. Although I might try to reblock it first to see if it sits a bit better.  The smocking has much more give in it than I thought it would.

Besides these, I am in the middle of a knitted wrap, with a shawl planned after that. I have done some other bits and pieces of knitting too.

And I started a smocked dress yesterday. There is a local church group holding a quilt/craft exhibition as a fundraiser and I have been asked to put some smocking in.  Things I am happy to sell. So i am busy with that, I do have a few things they can have, but I am trying to sqeeze out a couple more dresses to include.  They want a christening gown. I have two here, one I am not prepared to sell and the one I made earlier in the year, which I do not really want to see but if i put a high enough proce on it and it sells than I guess I can just make another one.  

So it is all busy busy busy here in my house.

Down Memory Lane

I have been going through the bag of baby clothes that I kept from when the boys were little. There is a reason for it today, and without going into a long and probably boring explanation, there is a family joke about me crying over baby bootees when my kids leave home.  (I deny that this will happen, while knowing it probably will!!).
Anyway, my eldest is on work experience this week and is making a big trek into the city each day. He, of course, has been quite excited and I have been quietly worrying more grey hairs out onto my head.  Day one yesterday went without a hitch, as I expect the rest of the week will.
Anyway, thinking about the family joke over bootees when he goes out into the big wide world, i dragged out the baby clothes today in search of some bootees. I really thought I had kept heaps of their baby clothes but now that they are all but grown up I do wish I had more!
Anyway, I found these which I thought might be fun to look at. When the kids were toddlers we had a lot of family weddings and events and so I would make them little suits.  So this is a progression of the vests they have worn over the years.  The one at the top is a more recent one; my youngest son looks oh so smart in a vest and suit pants.

There are more floating around in wardrobes i think.  The two at the bottom were done in fabric picked by the kids; the stars glow in the dark. The frogs were what the youngest boy wanted so I made it, much to my husband's horror! 

And just to show you, I DID find some bootees in all that tripping down memory lane:

Australian wool and sheep show

this weekend Bendigo hosts the Australian Sheep and Wool show, an annual event.  We closed the shop for the day and took a mini bus up yesterday.  It was a lovely day.
It was cold when we got there so my first purchase was a pair of fingerless gloves made from the softest alpaca.  So nice!  (I forgot to take my nice long rainbow ones).  We then spent an hour wandering around before going into the ladies lunch hosted by Deborah Hutton with guest speakers Quentin Bryce (Governor-General) and comedienne Rachel Burger. 
After a nice lunch with lots of laughs courtesy of Rachel, we wandered around for a bit longer and then got back on the bus to come home.  There was lots of lovely wools to look at, and hold.  I did manage to buy wool, not sure why as i do happn to work in a WOOL SHOP!!!  but I found some lovely sock wool, a blend of bamboo, merino and nylon. It is so soft I am thinking of making a shawl. My head is full of shawls at the minute and I am dying to make one.  Actually, if I were being honest here, I am dying to wear one but am not sure I will stick at knitting a whole shawl!!!

Anyway, this is what i came home with:

two skeins of wool, fingerless gloves, two scarf/shawl pins, a set of stitch markers and three little badges.  The stitch markers are so very cute; again, I do work in a wool shop, and do have plenty of plastic ones, but these are soooo sweet i had to have them.
The only disappointing thing about the day was there was no-one selling knitting needles, row counters, circular needles; any of the tools actually required to knit with. So you could buy plenty of lovely wools, but nothing to use them with.  Such a shame.  I only saw two stands with shawl pins; I really was on the look out for something quite special. These are very nice and I am happy with them but they were really the only ones.  I believe it is a relatively new sho, and is growing bigger by the year so hopefully nect year there will be a stand with tools for knitters, and crocheters, on it.
Anyway, it was a lovely day and I had such fun. I have promised myself I will finish the little baby singlet I am halfway through before I pick up any stitches to start a shawl. (it isn't the only thing I have on the go, it is just the smallest and at least i will have finished something before starting something else!!)

In the garden

We are in the middle of a cold cold winter that has been wet and miserable and not much fun, so there is not much to see in the garden except this solitary plant I have.  i love these when they come up every year, they are so pretty.

The good news is that I planted some daffodils earlier in the year as mine seem to have mostly disappeared as garden beds have been moved around.  I can now see my new daffodil bulbs pushing up through the gardens so I wait to see what they will all look like. I am a little excited, i love spring bulbs. 
The kids are on school holidays currently. They have not had much fun, with me working through the holidays and the weather not nice outside.  Today we went to the movies; eldest son went with a group of friends and the younger son and I went to see Brave. Such a sweet movie, and I did have more than one giggle to see the mother in the movie trying in vain to get her teenage daughter to listen to her.  I doubt my son found it funny in the same way I did! i did love listening to the sound of Billy Connoly's voice as the father; such an awesome accent!!
This is what the kids got up to the other day; wrestling on our lounge; naughty boys!

It looks like cuddles; but is actually wrestling. Fun and games on a wintery day!!