just because he's cute!

Rock on!! 

You want a smile, huh?

Nah! Too cheeky for that!

Mmm, tasty... 

creative space ...reclaimed

This week I've been attempting to reclaim my sewing room back from the ever encroaching kidlets.  I've tidied, evicted dolls and soft toys, picked up a billion picture books... repeatedly, subtly snuck out the jigsaw books (Whoever invented jigsaw books really needs to take a good hard look at themselves, they seriously drive me insane!!!)  and probably restacked my ottobre pile about oh, at least three times a day. Toby is rather fond of dismantling them from the bottom shelf of the bookshelf.

Finally nice and tidy I sat in there today for a bit of "me" time.  Two simple tasks to do; the first one choose a button from the three selected for this scarf.  I needed a chai to accomplish that one. See my cute knitting cup? My lovely sister Megsie gave me that. 

The second one was to arrange some charm squarms for a little quilt top. I got them laid out but then Toby attacked and crawled over it, plonking his butt in the middle before attempting to eat the squares.  *sigh* So needless to say, that didn't get accomplished.

Oh well, at least I had a lovely cuppa while I stashed some new fabrics and discussed with Miss Rainbow what to do with this:

and this;

more creative spaces over at kootoyoo

the scarf festival...

You may remember me alluding to the scarf festival in an earlier post, if you don't that's ok, you probably didn't miss much. But we are seemingly in the thick of festival season here.  On Sunday I convinced the little family to go along to the Scarf Festival with me (not that Toby took any convincing, he'll go anywhere mummy goes, my little acolyte :))  Lily was very excited and dressed in her black rainbow dress for the occasion, sweet little child that she is.  

I should preface here that the Scarf Festival isn't really a festival as such; there's workshops and a scarf exhibition, but no real other festivally stuff... I perhaps should have explained better to Lily what it was before arriving though.

Anyway, we arrived at the Wool Museum for the Scarf Exhibition, Lily rushed into the display and oohed and ahhed and then called me over, "Mum, I've found the one I want to wear."  

Not fun, is explaining to a four year old in the middle of an art exhibition that part of the Scarf Festival is not selecting one of the scarves to wear for the occasion. That no, the scarves are for looking at not for wearing.  Fair enough was her response, "oh, a Scarf Festival's not much fun! This is not what I wanted it to be like" :(

Somehow we managed to jolly her through the rest of the time there and she did enjoy it.  There were some awesome works on display.  And we loved the Transformation corner; a corner in the exhibition where you could sit and relax on a couple of couches and have a go at knitting, weaving, braiding and a few other yarnie crafts.  The irony of finding a few balls of acrylic and god forbid, feathers yarn, in the yarn basket in the Wool Museum was not lost on us!!!   

Lily's favourite part of the whole museum was the replica of the mill worker's cottage. She took it over as if it was her own house, sweeping the floor and pottering around in the kitchen and greeted anyone who came into it, offering them a cup of tea and introducing herself... I'm really not sure when she became such a forward little girl.  

The following day Lily decided to have her own Scarf Festival, as she thought it should be done.  Firstly, the guests (Andy and I) were welcomed and handed a little brochure with pictures of the festival's activities (dancing, singing and music ~ for those festival organisers who aren't sure what a festival entails)  and a map on it.

We were then shown the scarf exhibition and asked to select a scarf to wear (with a little bit of guidance from the festival director)

And then we all joined in the singing, dancing and music until lunchtime! So much fun!

the rainbow connection

having just typed that post title, I'm now sitting here singing,

 "some day we'll find it, 

the rainbow connection,

the lovers, the dreamers and me,

la de da da de ...."

and thinking about kermit the frog.  Does anyone else remember kermit singing that song on the muppets? or am I just, well, odd?

so I was  doing some blog surfing, looking at my cute little niece and realised I haven't blogged Lily's new rainbow dress.  This was the nearly the rainbow dress that wasn't.  I was stoked to score this awesome yarn from Jolly Jumbuck and excitedly showed Lily.  She did not share my excitement. In fact, she didn't like it at all.  Why?  It had black in it *sigh* and apparently she doesn't like black; well, that week anyway.  Her colour dislikes can be rather fickle.

So this beautiful yarn sat in my stash for a while, and try as I may I could not convince her that it would make an awesome dress.  

It was only when I made Miss Zoe a little rainbow dress that Lily's thinking shifted and she decided that yes, she would like a black rainbow dress. Silent squeals of delight from me.  I even showed her two choices of colour for the bodice; hot pink and black, and she chose black!  Yep, black!!!! It nearly bowled me over but I'm glad she did because I love love love it!!!

I've been busy on the rainbow dress knitting front,  all part of testing the pattern for re-release with loads of options and some improvements to the pattern.  Sage scored one and our other little niece Piper's is nearly finished too.  Lily's Aurora barbie got a new one too and there was one in the local love stocking. pics of those I haven't shared tomorrow.

or you can check out Sage and Zoe's here and here. 

Project specs

Pattern: Rainbow dress

Needles: 4mm

Yarn: Jolly Jumbuck Black Rainbow on 'Freya' dk, 200g.

WOOLganics 8 ply, Leura, 50g

mods: size 2 knit to size 4ish length, extra length in bodice, ruffled hem option 2 variation from pattern.  63cm in length 

must be love.. at last

it seems like megs and i have been talking about and working towards this stocking for about three years; in reality it's probably been nearly four months!!  goodness, it's taken us awhile.  i don't think i've really done a proper stocking since toby was born, so it's been awhile which does make me a little nervous.

this socking is the first with some of my knits too; all from my own patterns ... which I'm also a little nervous about having never sold my knitting before.

so this stocking is all about local love; with the inspiration coming from firstly from all those wonderful Australian fabric designers whose wares I would otherwise probably just hoard to look at and pat. so here's some pics of my part of the stocking, you can see the rest over at the store, all going live at 8:30pm tonight (just before the Bill starts ;))

Rainbow Dress, size 3 months in pear tree supersoft merino

Milo vest, size 6 months in pear tree yarn denim.

Denim skirt, size 2-4 with pockets in Pippijoe's Spot flower.

Black denim wide leg pants, size 2 with pockets in Kristen Doran's Molly birds.

Milo vest size 3 months in Jo Sharp Silkroad DK, treasure colourway.

Denim bootlegs, size 1 with pockets in Kristen Doran's Lily pads.

Black hemp wide leg pants, size 3 with pockets in Pippijoe's Leaftree.

Drill wide leg pants, size 2 with pockets in Tegan Rose's Antique Keys.

Denim bootlegs, size 0 with pockets in Hollabee's Sumar.

my creative space ... albeit a little late

but hey, better late than never! 

Yesterday, not much happening in my space, I went shopping with my mum and the kiddies. (Why do shopping centres have to have the heating so damn hot that you can barely enter the stores and you come home with a cracking headache and dehydrated.  Perfect breeding ground for swine flu, really.)

I've been hitting the machines today trying, oh so much, to get everything ready for our local love stocking. And yes, it has been coming, coming, coming for such a very very long time now. But the date is set and most of it is ready to go, just some last minute finishing to go now and I'll be ready.  Pssst, it's tomorrow night in case you're wondering.

Today Andy said he would look after the kiddies while I sewed. But it wasn't too long and I had the Rainbow girl at my feet attempting to hand sew a kit bag and the little one on my back.  It is more challenging to sew with him on there, particularly when he bounces up and down and pulls my hair, but doable ;)  

It's 6 pm now and I've missed the light today for photos so previews tomorrow.  The kidlets are both asleep *shock horror* which makes me sound like we're astoundingly organised parents but sadly not so. Toby went to sleep about half an hour ago after a couple of catnaps today and after putting him down I found Lily curled up in bed where she was pretending to be sick earlier. Luckily she scoffed a sandwich and a half about an hour ago. I'm sure there will be shenanigans from both of them in a hour or two, no doubt LOL. Man, it's quiet....  Ok going to sew a bit more while I can and the adventure boy battles it out in the kitchen creating a culinary delight as only he can; *cough cough* warming soup and making cheese on toast. 

more creative spaces over at kootoyoo

oh, and in case you're wondering, I did get the glue off the wall!!! Hooray!!! I ripped *eek* the pictures off and then used a spray water bottle to dampen the leftover paper and glue which I carefully scraped off with a rag and my fingernails. 

crap ...

anyone know how to get glued on pictures off painted walls?

We're having a festival here today apparently.  A Celtic festival in fact.  I wanted to go to the Scarf Festival at the Wool Museum but Lily decided that a Celtic festival at home was more her thing. I don't think she was keen on changing out of her rather odd outfit.

So she set about making the decorations for the festival, while I finished unpacking from our visit to the pint household (is it only me that it seems to take a week to unpack everything after I've been away?)  Lily's decoration creations were being supervised by her not so observant father. I realised something was going down when I heard him ask her not to draw on the walls. It seems she had got a little carried away with the decorating, "It was a little accident," I'm assured. Thank goodness for Crayola textas and their washability.

Later she tells me she had another little accident with the decorating after I find some random bits of paper glued to the TV cabinet.  It seems she ran out of blue tac and had to glue all her pictures and decorations to the wall.  *oops*   As Lily quite rightly points out, she didn't know she wasn't allowed to glue things on the wall. I mean, I've never actually said, "Don't glue things to the wall", have I?   

So does anyone have any ideas on how to remove these stunning artworks without too much hassle and without removing the paint? *sigh*