Jolly Holly

My oldest daughter really wanted to make this Holly Wreath from an Usborne Christmas craft book and so we spent the morning happily cutting and gluing and sewing, with the help of the littlest one too.

Christmas Dove

The kids wanted to make some of the Christmas Doves from the Usborne Christmas craft book, but I really didn't feel like using fabric so... out came the paper scissors and glue. The birds the kids made were so cute I couldn't resist making some myself and gluing them to some blank cards I had. The littlest one turned hers into a princess birdie with a crown and long hair! Very cute.

Catch-Up Time

Well, I finally have an hour or so to myself, so I am going to try and catch up with
some moments from my summer. This photo is one of my favourites.

Surf's up.

Life through brown-coloured glasses. Summer at the beach.

This is what happens when you are not watching.

The watermelon that wasn't.

He has been trying to grow watermelon (for years?) and finally succeeded,
even if it was inedible. A near miracle up here at 52 ° latitude.

Play Silks

This afternoon, the youngest one had an impromptu nap. Taking advantage of the relative calm, knowing that my entire evening would be ruined as a result, the other two and I dyed the play silks I bought after the Waldorf camp last week. I think it was worth it!

We used Kool-Aid to dye the pink (Cherry) and green (Lemon-Lime) and used my Ashford dyes to dye the yellow-orange one. The blue one is from day-camp. They are truly lovely. We used hot water and vinegar to set the dye, with the exception that the orange one was also wrapped loosely in plastic wrap and microwaved for a bit and the green one was brought to almost a boil on the stove. The Ashford dyes bound very strongly to the silk and there was no residual dye in the rinse water at all.

Simple Moccasins

My son has been asking for moccasins for a while now and since I had a stash of leather in the basement, I whipped these up. In total it took about 1 hour, maybe two. They are nothing so beautiful as the ones at our historical site, but they are sturdy moosehide and should last a while. Beaded beauties they are not though!

Things I have finished lately . . .

In no particular order:

Knit Picks Lace Headband
from the Victorian Yarn Sampler

Itty Bitty Bear
from Interweave Knits Summer 2005
made from bits of handspun dyed with coffee

Something I finished a couple of years ago, but love so much I made two pairs:
Simple T-Bar Shoes
from 50 Baby Booties to Knit
in Katia Cotton Comfort

Katja

Last summer, I made this top in a lovely blue cotton. Isis by Katia. It only took one tiny ball, I think it cost maybe $6! Fantastic, and it is so cute. But now it is getting a bit short and the back sagged in a not so cute way. I stitched some elastic to the bodice and now its back to fabulous again. Still a little short, but hey it's summer.

I like this pattern so much that this summer I decided to knit another, this time totally improvised. I had some yarn that was a gift from the LYS, but I had no idea what I was going to do with it, until - bing! - I realized it would probably be great for this pattern. The yarn is a ribbonny kind of laddery yarn (well-described, I know) in white with yellow, pink, purple, and green. I knit the smallest size of the Katja pattern adjusting for gauge changes. Originally, I just attached the I-cord neck from one cup to the other in a big loop to pull over her head, but it stretched out waaaaayyyyy too much, so I am redoing the I-cord ties. That way she can wear it until she's at least 6.

Puddles

 

I made this coat a couple of years ago from an old IKEA curtain. It is really heavy cotton, lined with a super cute ladybug fabric that my MIL gave me. I love this pattern. It is an Ottobre pattern, #21 from the Spring 2005 issue. I found a great NikWax product called CottonProof and soaked the coat in it. It didn't change the handle of the fabric much, it is just slighty smoother and the waterproofing is great. I can dump an entire jug of water on this coat and it just beads off.

 

I found these photos today. The colours of the petals are so lovely. Maybe inspiration for some dyeing? Maybe not, nevertheless, they are very happy colours.

 

 

Three Dresses, Three Days

 

It seems that one child, at least, does not have any summer dresses and so, down to the sewing room I went. I had a dress that was given to us which is super easy for the girls to put on and I used it to make a pattern, sizing it up a bit. I'm pretty happy with the results and so are they! Good use of the fabric stash too. I'm on a fabric diet.

Not doing very well at it since I bought some very cute turquoise eyelet and lime green lawn to make another dress for me, similar to the one above (not the cute girly one, that just doesn't suit me anymore, sigh). I made a pattern based on a designer dress that I could not/did not want to afford. It turned out pretty well and also used up some more of the stash, so I treated myself to this. A Mother's Day present you know. Did I say I was on a fabric diet? Naaaah.

Soakers

I was sorting out some photos tonight and updating my Flickr gallery and I found these. These are the Perfection Pants and Curly Purly Soakers that I knit. They have been well used. The pants were knit from New Zealand Treliske Organic Merino Wool Yarn and the pink soakers are from Cascade 220. They really do work and we use them particularly at night, since most of the day when we are at home, the little ones have always just run around naked! The pants look enormous in the photo, but now they are more like capri pants! What a difference time makes, sigh.

Mushroom Cap Hat

So here is the skein of the wool I spun the other day. Silly me, I thought I wouldn't need all the fibre . . . but that turned out to be a good thing. I did much better prep on the remaining fibre and used my wheel instead of my spindle and got a much more consistent yarn. And as for designing the yarn for the project, well, three tries later I finally had the colour pattern that I wanted! Of course, I had to knit the hat three times anyway. I used 15mm needles the first try and I had a hard time getting the tension right, so I tried again with 12mm and decided that the fabric was too stiff. In the end I went back to the 15mm needles and had a much easier time, I guess it just takes practice to use such enormous needles!

In the end I ran out of yarn and had to borrow some strips of Blue Faced Leicester sliver that I am using for another project. I didn't bother spinning them, I just twisted them as I knit the last couple of rows. Probably if I had been more consistent with the first batch of yarn, I might have had enough. Who knows!

Here is the finished hat. The pattern is my own, such as it is. Cast on 30 stitches, knit plain up to about 12 cm, then decrease 5 times every second row until there are 5 stitches left. Pull the yarn through and voila! — a new Mushroom Cap Hat. The yarn worked out to about 3 wpi and Barb, one of the owner's at River City Yarns, where I picked up the fibre, says that she is certain it is Merino. It is definitely soft!