Sunshiny sunflowers

Well it is Christmas eve and I have done a tonne of cooking today in preparation for tomorrow. We made over 60 Greek shortbreads at lunchtime and I’m cooking a roast pork roll and roast chicken at the moment. It has been so hot today I couldn’t put the oven on for that long.

Tomorrow looks like it will be a lot cooler and wetter.

I went out into my tiny patch of garden this morning and managed to get a shot of a sunflower that has just opened up. It is gorgeous. I’ve never grown them before but I tossed some seeds in spring and this is the result. There are another 5 plants that are about to flower.

 

So craft…

I’ve just wrapped up a few presents without taking any photos so I’ll have to get people to model them for me.

Sewing: nappies... modern cloth style

Well I managed to sew 7 nappies on the weekend. They have been waiting around since July to be made up. So it was very satisfying to clear these out of my to do pile. I’m pretty happy with my technique now as well, doing 7 at once makes the process very efficient, as long as they are the same in colour anyway. The last lot I did all had different colour covers which meant a lot of thread changing.

We’ve been a little slack on the cloth nappy front. Ash wears them about one day each week so we aren’t making much of an environmental saving with them. This is about to change now that we have about 3 days worth of cloth nappies, it means we can have half in the wash and the other half in use.

I like the cute patterned polar fleece ones but they are a lot more bulky than the pul ones. I’ve run out of pul lining for the patterned ones as well so I’ll have to think about how many more I want to make. I got a little obsessed with cloth nappies at the end of my pregnancy and found a lot of great patterns and websites with information on making nappies, but the reality is that you really need the baby to check the fit and sizing. Now that Ash is a little bigger these nappies seem to fit a lot better and there are a lot less problems with leaks.

Guilty secrets

I planned for this blog to be about my use and reuse of items within my stash or own collection of clothing. The trouble is that  I have run out of time. I go back to work this week :( and have been sorting through my wardrobe to make sure that I have clothes to wear for work. It was good to rediscover all my old friends but it has made me realise what a collector I have become. So I have done a massive cull.

This has been surprisingly easy. A lot no longer fits. There are a lot of maternity clothes that will not be used again. So it is all packed up into stripy bags awaiting dropping off at a charity store.

 

I’m feeling slightly guilty that I am not going to recycle some of this into clothes for Ashby but I know that he has plenty of clothing already so I don’t need to make more.

So here they are…

proof of my consumerism.

I did cull in January, when we moved house, but obviously not very well. It was very hard to do when I was 8 and a half months pregnant, and unsure what my figure would be like post baby.

Luckily my figure is pretty good (gotta love breastfeeding) and I’ve returned to my pre-baby weight and maintained it for 5 months now. Sorry to brag, but if I get it down in writing then it is all the more reason to stick to it. My maintenance program once I return to work will be riding to work, plus walking with the pram every now and then.

So you may be wondering if I have any clothing left. Yes I do, 2 wardrobes full.

These pictures only show a portion of each as the doors hide the other parts. The leftovers need reorganising and I think that after that I will have to get into the shoes.  That will be really hard as I really love my shoe collection, but I can’t see myself wearing any of those stilettos anytime soon. They are not exactly walking with the pram type of shoes.

Blogging…

Well we are back from our quick holiday up north and I have a new big stash of fabric from Mum and her friends and I have had little time to even unpack the bag let alone do any real sewing. I’ve darned holes and reattached buttons but I’ve done very little else. I’ve haven’t even been blogging much, the laptop has been languishing in the kitchen as I’ve been knitting, by hand, to finish a project that I started at least a year ago.

The beautiful spring weather has deserted us and it is miserable and cold again so I think that is why I have been living on the couch with my knitting when I get any spare time in the evening.

During brief moments of sunshine we managed to get to Floriade twice this year so here are some beautiful spring flowers that I have been enjoying on my screensaver.

Machine knitting fun

As I posted a while ago I dragged out my knitting machine and I’ve been playing with it. I have yet to finish anything and I have ripped back nearly everything, which can be frustrating but then again I haven’t really been following a pattern. The pattern books that I have are the original 70s and 80s ones that I’m not really into. The 70s basic raglan and crew neck jumpers are really cute but from previous experience they aren’t really designed for my body, they sit incredibly high under the arm and the rest of the sizing is very fitted as well.

 

  Here she is, my wonderful old hunk of metal. It’s pretty heavy and is precariously attached to my dining table at the moment, which hubby is not so fond of looking at :)

Here is a sample of the fabric it creates, it is so uniform and fine. I’ve used an old 5 ply  merino in this sample, it has a really silky kind of texture.

I tried out some fair isle patterning which went ok, unfortunately a couple of the needles need replacing and kind of wrecked one side of the intended project. I’ve serviced the machine now and hopefully the next attempt will be perfect.

I can’t wait to do some more, but I have to pack it up for the long weekend :( I really wish I had a large studio so that I could leave all my machines out, that way I could just walk in and pick up where I left off in those rare moments the bub is asleep or entertained.

Knit Couture – a review

Lately I’ve been on a bit of a knitting book binge. Knit Couture is the latest victim. I feel like I am looking for the perfect pattern to inspire me. I currently have quite a few knitting projects on the go but I’m still looking for something else.

Well… onto the review. I’m disappointed. The book has a lot of history and development of contemporary fashion designers who use knitwear in their collections which I found really interesting. I even remember studying a couple of these designers myself a few years ago in design school. People like Vivienne  Westwood and Kenzo who have done absolutely amazing things with knitwear.

When it came to the actual knitting projects I just wasn’t inspired. The photography is all  dark, arty and broody so you can’t actually see the detail. This was so frustrating, other people probably wouldn’t find it  a problem but I am a visual learner. I need to see things in detail in order to understand them. The written pattern is fine, but I like to see a visual representation in order to know where I am going and to know that I am on the right track with the patterning. There is an absolutely gorgeous skirt in the book that looks to have beautiful lace detailing but the pattern is written and has no supporting graph or close-up photograph.

I consider myself an intermediate knitter, I like a challenge every now and then and probably could easily handle something that is a little advanced as long as the instructions are clear. The other problem is that this book is geared to imperial measurements and does not have metric in brackets for ease of use by Aussies.

Sleep, what was that

With a 6 month old baby you kind of forget what it is like to get a good nights sleep. The trouble is that in the last couple of months of the pregnancy I didn't sleep very well either, so that means that I haven't slept a solid 8 hours in at least 9 months. Last night I got 6 hours in a row! It was so nice. Bub has had a shocking week, his cold has meant that he hasn't been sleeping very well. But yesterday he seemed to turn a corner and is starting to do better. (Plus we had a big day out in the lovely sunshine and that wore him out.)

The middle of the night breastfeeds have not been too much of a chore. I've been catching up on some podcasts to keep me awake. I caught up on Cast-on which has been really good. I love the music that she chooses for the show. I've really enjoyed the most recent series of "Make do and mend". I've been trying to do more of that myself since I started maternity leave. When I look at my wardrobe it horrifies me. I don't just have one wardrobe I seem to have 3, with large bags of clothes lurking in the bottom of each containing maternity clothes, work clothes, fat clothes... the list goes on.


The other thing that I have discovered is audiobooks from my local library. I've started listening to Chasing Harry Winston (the same author of The Devil wears Prada). The library has heaps of different titles to choose from and I can transfer them from my PC to an MP3 player which is really convenient. I now have no excuse not to go walking or cycling. I'm a bit of a lazy exerciser, I get bored really quickly so if there is no one around to make me do something or to keep me interested I kind of slack off.

Anyway, I may head off to bed now, I'm actually looking forward to my late night wake-up call so I can get on with more of the book :)

Erghh, sick and tired

We've had 2 days of being really sick with a virus, the bub and I. We've both been whingey, runny nosed blobs in bed. That paints a delightful picture I'm sure.
On the up side I kept to my deadline and managed to photograph and get one thing up on etsy! Woohoo. Since then I have managed to add 2 more things as well. Check them out in the sidebar.

One of the hearts in my heart pendant necklace. Hard to part with this one, but I know that I am never likely to wear it.

The weather is so gorgeous today, here in Canberra, it feels like spring has finally arrived. I feel invigorated, it is amazing what a little vitamin d can do for you after a long winter and a cold.

Get on with it already

Wow, way to procrastinate. I keep thinking about doing the etsy thing but keep delaying. I guess I haven't really made it a priority so there is always something else to do. Even if I don''t get any sewing done there are heaps of old beading projects that are saleable.

The trouble with loving to bead but being allergic to base metals is that I keep creating and then just shoving them into gift bags as presents for my family. But I'm pretty sure my family members are kind of over beaded jewellery for Christmas and birthday presents. Same with the knitting thing, most of our family live in the north so they really don't need scarves or woollen socks in their climate.

So to make myself do something about this I'm going to blog a deadline. Saturday afternoon, I am going to put something up for sale on etsy. There... it is said now, no going back.

Time to tend to the bub, he has a runny nose and bad cough poor thing, so the procrastinating isn't all about me, some of it is about caring for him ;)

Keeping me awake at night

Do you ever have those weeks where you seem to be brimming ideas, but most of them seem to hit you just as you are trying to get to sleep? The last 2 nights my darling boy has slept 8 hours and I have slept around 4-5 hours. Ergghhh, my brain just won't switch off. I need to take a notepad to bed, write down all the ideas and then I may get some relief. My visual diary has so many ideas in it, but I have made little real progress on actually constructing anything.

My mother's group met today and it was so nice to hear that the other mother's are experiencing similar things to me. One friend referred it to as the ground hog day effect. Doing the same thing each day over and over and making little progress.

I've been thinking about baby accessories that I would like to make. There are quite a few that I think would help me out, to stay organised and feel a little co-ordinated so I'm sure that they  would sell as well. Like a Nappy change organiser in a wet bag so you could take home any disasters without contaminating everything.
I keep writing posts in my head... there are not enough hours in the day. Anyway the boy is off to sleep so I might try and get comatose early :)