Christmas ornament

I made this for a secret swap for a gorgeous lady I really appreciate. I wasn't supposed to send more than a card, but I couldn't resist when I saw who I was sending to. Michael has just left with the kids to post it. I hope she likes it. I got the pattern from here on Ravelry (God I love that place)

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/star-in-a-star-ornament

or here if you are not amongst the happy few on Ravelry

http://www.jpfun.com/patterns/free/ornaments/f103010_starnstar.shtml



It was easy to follow, well written and worked up in only 20 minutes. I would love to find the time to make more for myself.


:D

A special Christmas Gift

I was so overwhelmed when a package arrived for me. Yes, me! Not trains for DH and DS, not a care package from Grandma for the kids, a package just for me! The beautiful Irene sense I had been through the ringer lately and sent me, yes me, a Christmas gift. It is a hand dyed, hand knitted pair of socks and some chocolate. The socks are so pretty and soft too! It almost makes me want to learn to knit.

Thankyou Irene! I am overwhelmed with your generousity.

KOTC

Mums Poncho

I wore my poncho to Dads birthday, way back in June. Dad loved it and asked me to make one for Mum for her birthday. We struck a deal that I would make it, if he paid for some beautiful wool. I bought 6 balls of Sublime - Extra Fine Merino from Thurechts. This wool is lush and is like butter through the fingers. It also has a beautiful lustre to it. It could easily be worn on a cool summer night.

I designed this poncho for a Queensland winter. It is light and a cross between a poncho and a capelet in length. It is the perfect garment to wear as the sun sets and you feel you just need a little something over the shoulders.

Mum loved it as soon as she saw it. She was thrilled that it was Dads idea and really touched that he had put some thought into her birthday.

We had a great day up the coast and went to a lovely restuarant for lunch over looking the beach. Logan decided to stay a couple of nights with Grandma and Pa. This is his first sleep over and he has barely missed us. He has been very busy and is super excited to have caught two fish with Pa on the boat. :D Aimee and I really missed him though and we can't wait to see him this afternoon. However it has been nice having my little girl all to myself and I think she has liked the individual attention too.

This pattern will be ready for testing after Christmas.

Dreadlock tams and headbands.

Here are some photos of a few dreadlock tams and headbands that I do.

The tams at the top of the phots are made from wool and are thick. The tams at the bottom are made from cotton and very suitable to the queensland climate.

The headbands are simple and are made from wool. Both patterns are my own.

I make all of these in pretty much any colour that people want.

I sell these to Do Yer Nut at Clontarf. The link is on my side bar

:D

Belated Thankyous

I bought some stuff off of Irene at Jolly Jumbuck and she generously sent it all is this special little hand bag! It is just the perfect colour and size and I love it!

Thanks Irene!

Sheryn had a go at making some stitch markers. I was lucky enough to score some! The middle one is a pregnant goddess belly. She made the bead herself from polymer clay. Clever huh?

Thanks Sheryn

Kitchen Cool Swap

I took part in the Woolaholics Kitchen Cool Swap. I sent my swappee, Bec, a recycled bag water bottle holder and 4 Christmas wine charms. It was my first go at both a recycled bag project and a wire crochet project so it took a little longer to complete than I anticipated. Hey starting a new forum in between didn't speed things up either LOL.




I am always making fabulous stuff to give away, so I promised myself to stop doing that. I took some time out to make myself some wine charms as well. I think they turned out OK.

I got the pattern for the wine charms from here

http://yarntomato.com/patterns/wine-glass-charms/

And the pattern for the recycled bag water bottle holder from here

http://www.myrecycledbags.com/2007/07/28/recycled-plastic-water-bottle-holder/

Both patterns were written well and easy to follow.

Lucky me got a parcel in return. I am still not sure who it is from. It came from Geelong.

I received two dishcloths and pot scrubbers. The disclothes are too nice for my sink so I am going to use them on the children in the bath. :D I also got a felted bowl. I have been wanting to make one for ages to put by bibs and bobs in. I always have a scatter of little things on my kitchen bench, so now I have somewhere for them all to live.

Thankyou Swapper! KOTC

Intuitive Parenting

Sheryn, Mel Marr and I have started a new forum called "Intuitive Parenting." Our aim is to create a safe place for attachment parents to discuss raising their children who are aged between 2 and 18.

http://www.intuitiveparenting.info/forum.php

Come and have a look for yourself! :D

A bad hair day!

Logan cut Aimees hair!

It looked like this. All of the hair up in pigtails. No fringe, all the one length.... GORGEOUS!

Then he cut it, so it looked like this

A mullet! Short all over the top and long at the back.

I took her to the hairdresser, who was very sweet and did not cut much at all but restyled it to look like this.

We then discussed a plan to grow it back to how it was and still keep it looking respectable.

When I discovered Logan cutting Aimees hair and took the scissors off of him, he exclaimed "Hey, I haven't finished yet! I want Aimee to look beautiful like me! She has to have short hair!" Needless to say, Logan spent the rest of the afternoon on the thinking chair. LOL.

All the scissors are in the locked cupboard! Are you crying with me? I am sure I will see the funny side in a day or two, really I will......

Skirts

I have been working on a skirt pattern based on my popular skort pattern. I had many people asking me to do a skirt for their older girls who no longer wear nappies. Here is what I came up with.

The top skirt was made by Sheryn, who is one of my testers. The bottom skirt was made by me for my darling Aimee. Her wardrobe is going to be impressive once the patterns are all released (Yay!) Sheryns skirt was made out of Amaizing (corn) and Aimees skirt was made out of Sirdar Just Bamboo. I prefer the bamboo for this pattern as the lace in the skirt was more accentuated.

I really want my patterns to move and this skirt really bounces when Aimee wears it. I am my hardest critic and today when Aimee was wearing it I kept thinking about how cute it was. As you can see, my poor darling broke her arm a week ago. The sling will be off in one week. She is coping really well considering

Patterns

Well I am finally making the leap from selling garments to selling patterns! My feelings are a mixture of excitement and terror and let me tell you, I am on a very steep learning curve. Making a pattern from scratch is easy, writing it out so that a novice can follow it, I am finding challenging.
My skort pattern is currently being tested and I have rewritten it a couple of times since I first gave it to the ladies to test (blush) Anyway, one of the ladies has finished the soaker which was the hardest part of the pattern, so all is going well.
One of my testers has also tested a skirt pattern for me. It will need further testing, but I am really happy with this pattern. It will be sized from girls size 2 - 10. Along with those two patterns I will also be selling the OTRS pattern, a pattern that combines longies, shorties and capris, a frilly soaker pattern, and frilly longies and capri patterns, a girls poncho and a ladies poncho. If you take a look at my earlier blog posts you will get a great idea about what will be up for grabs.
I hope to have the patterns up and ready for sale on a website by January. I will be busy between now and then. Wish me luck!

Purple Rainbow up for grabs!

I have relisted the Purple Rainbow Skort on Ozebaby. It was bought for a small bubba so I offered a custom instead so the little angel gets to wear it straight away rather than have it sit in the cupboard for a year. :D

Australia Post found the lost soakers!

Davina has them in her hot little hands. I am so relieved. Everything will be going registered from now on. They should be available in the next couple of days :D

Hair Ties

I have been working on these hair ties for a while now. I have three varieties. I intend on adding them to custom orders and Ozebaby orders for my more exclusive garments. These three are made to match the three skorts I showed you a couple of posts ago.

Fireworks skort modelled.

Thanks Irene for sending me these photos.

Here is little Matilda, Irenes daughter modelling the skort that I made for her. Notice the hair tie in her hair. She is just adorable. Look at those deep brown eyes. I am such a sucker for brown eyes. Guess what colour eyes my hubby has LOL. I wish I could see her and Aimee playing together, but alas they live on the other side of the continent. Maybe one day.....

A sneak peak.

Here is a sneak peak at some skorts that will be previewing on Ozebaby this week. There will be more, but not too many ;)

Latest order for Baby Beehinds.

Here is the photo of my last order to Davina at Baby Beehinds. They will be available some time this week. Davina has been very good to me and I wish to thank her for her support from the bottom of my heart.

From here on the soakers will be available through me when I offer custom slots. The next lot of custom slots will be available in October or November.

Fireworks Skort Finished!

I have finally finished the Fireworks skort.

It is made from Western Australian Crepe and is very soft. The soaker under the skort is the same wool as the first few rows under the waistband. The lace on the skirt is called Starburst from The Stitch Bible.

These are some hair ties I made to match the outfit.

I frogged the skirt at least 4 times getting the colours right. To begin with I didn't use the purple but the whole thing was far to busy. I found the purple broke it up more and made it all come together. It has taken me awhile to see any beauty in this garment, but now I am falling in love with it. I still have to post it to Irene (opps) but I want to show it off to as many people in real life before it goes to the other side of Australia. LOL

Longies!

These are a pair of crochetted longies I made my friend, Kyms little girl, Amelie. Isn't she the cutest? Look at those beautiful deep brown eyes!



I created this pattern myself. It features the same ribbed waistband that I have on my soakers as well as the same drawstring. This drawstring has hearts on it to match the embellishing. I have changed the bum of this pattern since completing these as I felt it needed to be more roomy for a clothed bum. The crotch is tightly crochetted to prevent any leaks.



I made this pair using some delicious hand dyed Tasmanian Merino from Irene at Jolly Jumbucks. The colourway is called 'Rosebush'. It is earthy with lovely pink, maroon and leafy greens tones.



This was my first go at embellishing and I think I did an OK job. The bottom of the longies is trimmed with a simple shell stitch. It still needs to be blocked so that it doesn't stick up like that. I finished these in a hurry before Kym and Amelie went for a winter trip down south.




I didn't like doing the embellishing very much, so I doubt I will make another pair with it. Lucky Kym and Amelie have a one off now!

My Poncho Designs

I have gone crazy making ponchos!
I have made one for Aimee, myself and my friend Sheryn.
I now have two designs. The design for Aimees poncho is being tested by a friend. I think I still need to tweak the writing of it but I am very happy with the design. Sheryn is making Aimee a hat to go with it. I will add the flowers. Stay tuned for photos! It is made out of 8ply, 100% wool from Nundle Woollen Mill. The bodice is a daisy stitch.






Here is the poncho I made for myself. Would you believe in 25 years of crochet I only have one wearable and that is a hat? In fact I barely keep any of my creations. I own about two rugs and that is it. SHAMEFUL. Anyway....... I hate winter! I hate being rugged up and I hate layers, with a passion. I chucked the biggest tantrum the other day just because it was cold. :( I designed this poncho so that it is not too heavy or long over my elbows. I used Te Awa Moon Dance, which is felted 8ply merino from New Zealand. This wool is lush and I had 175g left over from another project.... perfect.

Matildas Skort

A long time ago Irene and I decided to do a swap. She generously agreed to give me 400g of wool in exchange for a skort.
I received this wool.

It is handdyed Tasmanian Merino. The longies are my own pattern ;)

Irene has been very patient whilst my friend Kym learnt to dye wool. Here is the photo of the wool she has dyed. This weekend I am going to ball it up and get started on the skort. I have chosen the yummiest lace to go over the soaker. I'll give you a hint about the finished skort. It is named "FIREWORKS!"

If you love the longies you can email me and we can arrange something. Otherwise they will be on the market next year.

Skorts

I have developed my own skort pattern. The soaker under the skort is very similar to my other soaker pattern, but it is lighter. The skort is a dainty lace also of my own design. I love the lace so much that I use have used it in my avatar. When the child sits she looks like she is peaking out from a flower.
This skort is modelled by my beautiful daughter just before her first birthday.

There will be a Purple Rainbow, Tutti Fruitti and a Boysenberry ripple available in Spring through Best for Baby on Ozebaby.

You can veiw these colour combination at Baby Beehinds. The link is to the right.

I will also be making some OOAK (One Of A Kind) skorts using these beautiful wools from Irene at Jolly Jumbuck.

This is Tasmanian merino. When it is teamed with the lemon waist band it will make a very pretty skort.

This is gradient dyed wool from Jolly Jumbuck. The peach will look very cute under the multicoloured skort. It will scream out to be embellished. I simply do not challenge myself enough LOL

Sheryns Moon gift!

My friend Sheryn attended Aimees homebirth. She was an absolute trooper throughout the 26 hours. Not too many friends can get a woman in transition to belly dance.

A few months after Aimees birth some friends and I had a womens circle for Sheryn to celebrate her moon cycle and the nuturing woman that she is. We all promised to create something for her. I decided to make her a poncho.



I have finally finished it. Here is a link to the website the pattern came from.


http://www.berroco.com/exclusives/pocahontis/pocahontis.html