I know that it’s a mother’s job to see her own children as the most gorgeous children in the world. But seriously, I could just look at this face all day.

Look at those cheeks! And those eyes! Isn’t she just gorgeous? Can you guys believe it’s been nine and a half months since she arrived? It feels like yesterday.

Anyway, I’m not cruel enough to put an orange hat on a ginger child – she’s simply modelling for me! I made this hat for my wonderful friend Jenn who had a lovely little girl in January. Jenn’s elder daughter is Nairn’s Canadian birth twin – they were born on the same day 3000 miles apart – and both celebrate their 4th birthday tomorrow. Isn’t that sweet?

This hat is made from the candy cane pattern in Itty-Bitty Hats by Susan B. Anderson and knitted in a lovely Debbie Bliss DK cotton in a beautiful bright orange. Isn’t it cute? Greer certainly seems to think so.

Does this photo remind you of anyone..?

I defy anyone to say my girls don’t look alike

Posted under knitting

Some of you will know that my workplace had put me and all of my non-permanent colleagues onto 90 days notice before Christmas and a final decision was being made on Friday as to whether our contracts were being renewed or not. At 8pm last night I was finally told that my job was gone and as of the 26th March 2010 I am no longer employed. It’s a very scary situation to be in, especially with Bob being out of work now too but I’m also filled with a sense of peace and relief – and a heartfelt desire not to work for “the man” anymore. Bob and I can and will make it on our own and we have an exciting new venture in the pipeline.

I’m not sure if my feelings have been exacerbated by the news of lots of babies being born to friends old and new. The very fact that new life continues to arrive even while things aren’t so rosy in the world proves that there is always hope and it blooms constantly. A friend of mine has delivered a tiny baby boy at 35 weeks weighing a smidge over 4lb5oz and so I’ve made this little hat to go to him. I hope it fits him only for a short while, before he becomes a monster giant baby with no health worries for him or his enraptured parents.

In other news, Sarah at Dolly Donations has featured me today. I’d love it if you guys could pop over and say hello to her, she’s an inspiration to us all and someone I truly hope to emulate.

Thanks for all your support, you have no idea how much it means to me.

Much love,

Vonnie

Posted under inspiration, knitting, me

I made the Give A Hoot mittens (link to .pdf pattern) last year – a pair for myself and a pair for the lovely AnnieB – and upon wearing them again recently I’ve discovered that my knitting tension clearly isn’t quite what it could be. See -

The mittens are designed in the Scandinavian style with a pointed top and are knitted in the round on double pointed needles. I admittedly find it difficult to avoid the ‘jog’ when moving between needles but have largely resolved this issue over the last few years of practicing with them, but these mittens have confounded me. I’m really not sure how I’ve ended up with such large gaps – it could admittedly be because these mittens are knit using aran weight yarn which is therefore going to highlight any minor error – but I’m thinking it’s more likely to have been my knitting technique, so I ask of all ye knitters out there. Do you have any suggestions of how to avoid this for next time?

Posted under knitting

I’m not really the kind of person who suits a hat, much to my chagrin. It is the bane of my existence that pretty woollies are out of my reach. That said, when Bob & I went to Stockholm in January for our wedding anniversary I picked up a phenomenal ear infection which took nearly three months to heal and so this winter I’m simply not prepared to risk that again.

I’ve already half-heartedly started my craft neutral challenge and this yarn (Sirdar Denim Ultra) has been in my stash for about seven years. It met my criteria of being warm, fluffy and quick to knit up so I combined it with this pattern (Ravelry link) which is supposed to be a slouchy beret.

Note the ubiquitous hairbobbles around the wrist mark of the mother of daughters. The eagle eyed amongst you will note an error about three rows into the pattern caused by Erica leaping on me while I was having a knit break and thus losing my stitch marker but since my friend recently told me that Muslim prayer rugs always have an imperfection since only Allah makes things perfectly, I’ve relaxed my ridiculous perfectionist streak. It’s a really mind-altering way of looking at things. In any case, although (I think) the error is highlighted perfectly in the picture it’s really not obvious in reality.

As the title suggests there’s more to this post. Erica has decided that actually she rather likes my hat so I have now cast on Amy Swenson’s Cabled hat (pdf link) for her, but in the meantime I’m having to tolerate this nonsense. Two years old and she’s already raiding my wardrobe. Of course, as is the way of these things she suits the hat much better than I do. Ah well

Posted under for the kids, knitting

Those of you on my twitter friends list will have seen me bemoaning Nairn’s clear lack of ability but overwhelming interest in learning to knit. Thinking back, I don’t think I was much older than he was when my Nana taught me to knit and I am assured I was not the most calm and settled of children so my Nana must have had the patience of a saint back then. I’m sure he’ll pick it up in time – I may well have a nice little vodka habit by then right enough!

Anyway – a question for the knitters out there. One of my friends (who shall remain nameless until after Christmas!) asked me to recommend a knitting kit for an adult and one for an 8 year old child. I offered to put one together for him but I’m now not sure of the patterns I had in mind to recommend. The adult recipient has learned to knit but that is about the sum total of her skill right now, the child recipient can’t knit at all.

For the adult, I had thought about making up the kit with supplies to enable her to knit Branching Out from Knitty but I’m thinking now that for a beginner that is maybe a little advanced? For the child, I was simply going to make up the kit with instructions for knitting and purling and enough yarn to make a decent length scarf.

What would you suggest? Links to free patterns are especially welcome although I have a few Debbie Bliss books that I’d be happy to send up to the recipient. I’ve been a knitter for so long that I don’t really have the hindsight to see what a good starter pattern would be.

Posted under knitting, recommendations

I know, I know – my idea of “tomorrow” is dreadful, but I think my loyal readerbase are already well aware of my terrible timekeeping

So onto my mistake. If you click on the photo it will take you to the flickr page where I have added notes to explain the mistake. Unfortunately these notes don’t carry over if the photo is being hosted elsewhere so I’ll do my best to explain.

The first place to spot the mistake is on the waistband on the right hand side. You’ll notice it is about an inch higher than the waistband on the left. The second place to spot it is by looking straight down the middle of the main section of the longies.

When you’re knitting longies, you want the back to be higher than the front for the simple reason that the longies have to accommodate a cloth-padded bottom. To do this, you add something called short rows which basically mean you work to 3/4 of the way through a row, turn and work back to 1/4 way through, then turn and finish your row. This adds two extra rows to the back but not the front. The side effect of short rows is that you’re left with a clear join (which can be seen down the middle of my longies). Of course, being that short rows should have been worked across the back and yet mine are shown across the middle means that…

… I split for the leg in the wrong place. If I’d kept going, the rise across the back wouldn’t have accommodated Greer’s big cloth bum and the right hand side would have been significantly bigger than the left.

So there we have it! Doh!

Posted under knitting

You may or may not have noticed (and Kat can certainly attest to this fact) that I am quite the perfectionist. I’ll try most things but don’t sell my crafts really because I have no confidence that they’re good enough. If there’s even the slightest flaw – if my stitches aren’t quite right, if I am a little heavy handed with paint or dye – I will set what I’ve made aside.

So can you imagine my rage this evening? I’ve been working on a pair of longies* for Greer this week, it’s the first knitting I’ve picked up in a while and I spent most of last night and today working on the leg. I was SO HAPPY with how the wool (which I dyed myself) was knitting up and finally cast off the first leg earlier.

Then I looked at them.

Then I noticed a MAJOR COCK UP.

I’ll post what the cock up is tomorrow, in the meantime I’m going to leave it as is to see how quickly my knitting friends can spot it. Luckily for us, my lovely and fabulously talented friend Evelyn is currently making Greer a pair of her scrappies longies so at least we’ll have one pair to tide us over!

Apologies for the terrible photos but a) they were taken on my phone and b) the light in here is terrible.

I’m away to frog** the leg and start again. Out of curiosity though, can I ask your opinions on the leg design?

Firstly – I’ve got a moss-stitch band roughly where Greer’s knees will be. Primarily this is because the rise is so big on these that I don’t think my variegated wool will stretch to two full legs so I’ve broken it up with the trim colour. The other reason is that Greer will be crawling soon and I think the moss stitch patches will help reduce the wear and tear if she’s crawling in them. Do you think a) the band of colour looks okay and b) the moss stitch band is a good idea or a terrible one? Bob said he thought it might look better simply knitted but after the work that’s gone into them I’d be fuming if they ended up with a hole in the knee.

Secondly – I usually do a ruffle edging on the legs but I’ve gone with a ribbed cuff which can be folded over to give Greer some growing room. I can’t quite decide if I like the way it looks though – what say you?

* Longies are knitted, lanolised trousers worn over cloth nappies. They’re a more breathable solution than plastic pants and the wool can hold a significant amount of wee before it leaches, PLUS with being lanolised the longies are self-cleaning since lanolin+urine=soap. Clever, eh?

** Frogging (for the non-knitters) is when you rip back what you’ve knitted. Rip-it, Rip-it. Geddit?

Posted under dyeing wool, knitting

I did finish this before I had Greer but until this week I didn’t have a good photograph of it. Alas, Greer has grown so quickly that it looks like a tank top rather than a dress! Still – after all our worries with Erica, Greer’s growth is a very welcome surprise. She was weighed this week at 11lb 2oz so is absolutely thriving. It’s making me feel very proud of my boobies and EXTREMELY relieved!

So – this dress is knit using the Kaia babydoll pattern and I just squeezed it out of 100g Sirdar snuggly baby bamboo DK. Seriously – I had just enough left to do the drawstring and that was it! It’s a really lovely little pattern although I think if I were to make it again I’d pick up stitches around the armhole and knit little sleeves.

You even got a wee smile from my big girl!

Posted under for the kids, knitting

I should guiltily admit that this cake was actually made for my very lovely brother-in-law, Gary, who celebrated his 27th birthday on the 15th. This was supposed to be his birthday cake but since I didn’t get to see him as I’d expected at the weekend, I generously told Bob it could be his Fathers day cake.

Before icing:

After icing:

You will need:
2 bananas (the riper the better)
170g caster sugar
170g self raising flour
170g butter
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease & line a 2lb loaf tin.
2. Slice up your bananas, place in a bowl and add the other ingredients.
3. Using a handheld whisk or blender, mix up the ingredients until completely blended and your bananas are mushed to bits.
4. Pour the mixture into your tin, place in the oven and bake for an hour until your loaf is done.

For this loaf and the two cakes which I’ll be blogging later in the week, I used the cream cheese icing from Nigella Lawson’s Guinness cake recipe. This made enough to generously cover all three cakes so bear that in mind!

You will need:
300g cream cheese (like philadelphia – I use the generic version)
150g icing sugar
125ml double cream

Whip the cream cheese until smooth, add the sieved icing sugar and whip after every few spoonfuls. Add the cream and mix until you have a spreadable consistency with no lumps of sugar. Using a spatula, put a very thin coating of this icing over your cake – this will seal in the crumbs. Once you’ve done this, load up your spatula and frost the cake. Slice and munch!

Posted under baking, knitting, recipes

I have such a backlog of things to blog that I think you’ll be inundated this week with posts!

Firstly, I wish all the Dads in your life a Happy Fathers day. I didn’t get to see my own Dad yesterday so I can’t blog what I made for him, hopefully I can remedy that tomorrow. Truth be told I don’t know what I’d do without my Dad, he’s an absolute superstar and a great Papa – I know that my kids and my niece absolutely adore him. I just wish he didn’t live almost an hour away!

Secondly I had to share this little photo of my niece. Bad Auntie Vonnie gave Bailey a marshmallow twizzler in Starbucks on Saturday while her Mummy was on the phone and therefore powerless to do anything about it. Isn’t she a cutie-pie?

Thirdly! I made these cookies a few weeks ago and the kids devoured them almost as soon as they were in the cookie jar so I figured I should pony up the recipe. This makes loads, although the recipe suggests it’ll make 14.

You will need:
100g/4oz butter, softened
100g/4oz light muscovado sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
150g/6oz self-raising flour
85g/3oz (approx 3 tubes) smarties (I used the mini smarties)

1) Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl until light and creamy, then beat in the syrup.
2) Work in half the flour. Stir in the smarties with the remaining flour and work the dough together with your fingers. Divide into 14 balls and place them well apart on baking sheets. Do not flatten them.
3) Bake for 12 minutes until pale golden at the edges. Cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight container for up to four days (if the little horrors in your life let them last that long!)

Posted under baking, knitting, sewing, with the kids