Girly ta dah's

Gosh, am I glad it's Friday, I've had a head cold brewing all week but haven't felt unwell enough to justify a day of bed rest. You know what it's like when you work and being mum and dealing with all the ge-zillion other things on your plate. You struggle, but continue to juggle through the week. I'm looking forward to some serious rest this weekend though!


I hope you are all well? Part of my relaxation weekend plan is to post a couple of my girly makes I have finished this week.


Do you remember when I went to the Cath Kidston Patch workshop here? Where I got to start to make my very first Dresden plate pattern and take it home to complete. 

All in all it's taken me about 5 hours of cutting, hand sewing and quilting to make this pretty little thing. It's been cathartic and such a pleasure when I have felt stressed.

I can honestly say I have enjoyed each and every stitch I've made. I love the way the pattern turned out too. 

This will be a little cushion for Alice's bed to add to her collection of sweet little cushions. I still need to sew the button on and make up the pillow slip which I intend to do over the weekend and oh, I need to give it a little press to! Not sure about you but ironing doesn't feature very high on the list of priorities in this here household!


I'm not sure why I am so addicted to embroidering names and patterns at the moment. I guess it's like with food craving phases, we all go through phases of liking something for a while then move onto another. 


This week I was invited to a little gathering tomorrow afternoon to an ex-colleague of mine's daughter's second birthday, so what better opportunity than to make a little stitchy present for her!

Because I haven't been feeling great and time constraints, I decided on a simple project, something personal but simple.

I chose this pink with white polka dots cotton fabric from my stash and machine sewed a little draw string bag for her.

I sewed an old crocheted doily (found in a charity shop ages ago) onto the bag, followed by one of my hand sewn hexagons and a button. I still haven't decided on which button yet. I think the small (above) pink one is my favourite for this bag. Or do you think the bigger pink (below) one is better?

Actually after seeing these photo's again I think the bigger one looks better!

Of course her sweet name needed to be embroidered onto the bag.

And there we have it.. a little girly draw string bag for Annabelle...

Ok, so it needs a little pressing too but I am rather please with this pretty and functional bag. I made one for Alice about 2 years ago to try and help her be a bit more tidy and use it for holding all her clothes that needed to be washed (instead of dumping them on the floor!!) and hey presto it worked. How much longer am I going to be able to revel in this pre-teen joy? ;0)

Wishing you all a very special and relaxing weekend

See you soon 

xox

Cotton delights

Hello, did you have a good weekend? Ours varied from highs to lows then highs again. Our kitchen (which some of you will have already read about in previous posts) is almost done and now I can stop moaning and groaning about the lack of cooking equipment and space in the house. We actually managed to sit down at our resurrected dining room table and have a meal together last night for the first time in weeks. Bliss! It's also fabulous knowing where all the food/herbs/spices/tins etc are, instead of searching high and low for that one essential ingredient I stuffed in the under stair cupboard!


So, one of the highs was me playing with thread and using some of my cotton I purchased from Planet Penny's Cotton Club. Thomas who turned four today needed a little pillow slip happiness...I remembered that green is his favourite colour so, green it was, pulled out from the rainbow of cottons.

This cotton is mighty fine stuff, I couldn't wait to crochet with it.

I crocheted a shell border like I did here, but this time used my new cotton which was so smooth and silky to crochet with. A real dream to hook along with, so much so that I hardly couldn't believe how quick the border took, I barely noticed.

I then used some of my new cotton to embroider these stars.

The cotton is a little thicker than normal embroidery cotton and next time I might split the fibres into two for a thinner thread, but the quality remains great.

By now I am sure you will have guessed what the pillow slip looks like...

I had great fun making this for the loveliest little chap, may he have beautiful sleep and the sweetest dreams.

I have another similar little project to make for Saturday, so better get cracking. Thanks for stopping by and

see you all soon xox

Playing catch up

It's lovely to sit down and blog after an immense week of feeling a bit like a headless chicken in my new job. Thank you for all your well wishes, it has certainly taken some energy going back to full time employment and I have been coming home absolutely exhausted to say the least. So much so that my relaxation in crochet and knitting has had to step aside in favour of reading medical literature and making sure all systems are ready for the next frantic day!

It's all good and I am enjoying being in a very privileged position of being a Specialist in my field of Nutrition and Dietetics as a Macmillan Dietitian. It's amazing how much I am learning and how incredibly friendly and welcoming all the Oncology consultants and nursing staff are. I truly feel blessed and am very excited about pursuing my new career route.


Last night was chill out and catch up time and I eventually got round to casting on and doing some knitting. 

I bought this beautiful Debbie Bliss cashmerino DK last weekend with my voucher money my previous colleagues so generously gave me.

I have wanted to knit myself a waistcoat forever and after searching for ages I eventually found this one by Anna Bell on ravelry. I chose this charcoal grey not only because I love it but it generally goes with just about all my shirts for work.

The yarn is pretty much a dream to work with and oh so soft and warm. I really felt totally relaxed last night knitting away. I knew that something "would have to give" when I went back to full time work and sadly it's been my yarn projects. Alas, not all is lost as I know as time goes by things will settle into their groove and find their balance.

I hope that you have all had a good, productive week? I am trying to keep up with visiting your blogs and commenting when I can, I do have to keep up with satisfying my daily blog fix! I think my blogging might slow down a little to once a week for the next while until the dust settles.


Oh yes, I must record how jubilated we are that Alice has got into the High School we applied for, the one she will be moving to this September and even better, it's the one she was very keen to go too, so that's super brilliant news. We are also counting down to a special holiday we have planned over the Easter break this year, more about that sometime soon xox  

Right, the sun has come out from behind the grey and we're off to soak up some seaside fresh air. I'm also looking forward to going to a poetry evening with a friend tonight to see some local performance poets and have a yummy vegetarian/vegan dinner (I wonder if I can take my knitting?!!!).

Hope to see you all very soon xox 

Made with love

I wanted to share this sweet and easy purse I crocheted on Saturday for A, one of the clever Speech and Language Therapists whom I have the privilege of working with. She is moving on to new and exciting ventures in her life and we shall all miss her very much at work but hope she will pop in and keep in touch with us as time passes by.

I used this lovely easy and straight forward pattern from Lionbrand here (you will have to register with the website to access the free patterns) and enjoyed each and every stitch.

I enjoyed hand stitching this floral fabric to form an inner lining. I love the therapeutic effect that the rhythm of hand stitching brings.

I stitched this little tag into the lining which I thought would be appropriate for A who is following her dreams.

Last, but not least I sewed this pretty ceramic heart shaped button on to complete the little purse. I do hope she likes it.

It was made with love xox

Presents and Parcels

While the down stairs of our home is one big dust ball of drilling, measuring, (ahem) cursing and rejoycing, I am staying upstairs where it is calm and comforting.

Away from 3 men and their copper pipes! Our kitchen is being fitted at long last.


Instead, I will pretend there is no drilling and fitting and fixing going on and take pretty pictures of my pressies and parcels like this one below that the lovely Speech and Language Therapists gave me to say goodbye on Friday (I am fortunate enough to share my second office with these lovely ladies).

Look at the gorgeous potato printing that V and A made on Thursday night to wrap up my pressie. I want a whole alphabet in this font please ;o)

Thank you so much for this delightful and thoughtful wrapping paper, I shall treasure it x


Inside the rectangular shaped present was this little lady...

Isn't she the sweetest timer ever? She can join Alice's Russian doll measuring cups {made by Fred}on the shelf of our brand new shiny kitchen. Oh, I can't wait to use her to bake a cake, we haven't baked for a month now and it's killing me!!


Not only did I get the lovely timer but sweet V also wrapped up another surprise for me. The present was wrapped in tissue paper and tied together with this beautiful beaded copper wire.

Lucky 'ol me to be spoilt so with another perfect pressie, this cotton bag from the De la Warr, thanks so much V, I shall enjoy using this in my new job for carrying all my extra bits and bobs around.

Friday afternoon brought another very exciting parcel to my door, this beautiful rainbow of cotton yumminess I purchased from Planet Penny's Cotton Club you can find details about here if you'd like to join in.

   
Are these not the most cheerful and happy colours you ever did see?


Such good quality too, I think I have the perfect project in mind for these cotton's this summer (or maybe sooner?)

I have felt so blessed amongst the chaos of saying goodbye to my beloved work colleagues and not having a kitchen and arranging our lives to suite our new daily schedules. Thank you all so much for your sweet words of encouragement and support. So well appreciated!


So, while I smell my beautiful lillies from the bunch of flowers I received on Monday...

I've been relaxing on our bed crocheting away

On a little present I am giving away to A, one of the Speech and Language Therapists who is moving on to other ventures in her working life.


Using this soft Swedish Yarn x

  

I promise to blog my little gift soon. An easy peasy crochet handmade with love gift which beginner crocheters can easily do. 

See you all soon xox

Matters of the yarn

Hello all you lovely folk, thank you for commenting and reading my last post. It's always reassuring to know that what I am feeling is 'normal'. This week has got better and more calm as each hour has passed and I am feeling so much more confident about our metamorphosis, maybe there will be some pretty butterflies here after all! 

It's all good and when it's good I can turn my attention to matters of the yarn. Matters of the heart can be neatly compartmentalised for the now.


So, as you may have noticed I've been knitting away at my 20 stitch Aran / double thread DK yarn scarf. It was born out of two main purposes. To use up yarn and draw in the purse strings for a bit as well as my desire to knit a "first scarf". Do you know what I mean by a "first scarf"? I think that most people, when they learn to knit tend to make a scarf or knit a square as their first ever make and I have never really done this. Yes, I have knitted and crocheted numerous scarves, but never made a straight forward garter knit scarf before from left over bits and bobs.

My first knitted project was at school when I was in standard 2 (equivalent of year 2 in UK) in South Africa. We had to knit an all-in-one teddy bear which involved casting on and off mostly to accommodate for arms etc. This was then followed by knitted bed socks which everyone hated as it involved the dreaded purl stitch. I dropped many stitches but learnt how to knit reasonably well, but never felt inspired or inclined to knit myself a scarf from my mum's stash of yarn. This of course could be put down to the fact that South Africa is a gloriously warm/hot country and now that I think about it I don't think I ever owned a woolly scarf when I was growing up! This is not to say that SA doesn't have harsh Winter months in some regions and yes it does snow too.

I wanted to knit myself a "first scarf" with different colours.

So, this scarf was born. I want it to be long so I can wrap it round and round my neck for super duper cosy-ness when the wind chill gets up.

I've decided to call it my snail scarf because it reminds me of a snail when I roll it up.

And because it's being knitted here and there at a snail's pace :0)

Oh, and it's giving me an opportunity to have fun with my camera....

Pretending the stripes are landscapes....

And skies...

for my birdies to take flight.

Have a great weekend xox