Announcing

The safe arrival of Angus John Lindon Brock.  Born the 28th of December at 8.55pm, and weighing in at a hefty 9lbs 2ozs!

Now our family is complete.

Winding down

I'm doing my best to keep up with all the blogs I read, plus being active on Ravelry, and Facebook.  However I fear my motivation to keep my own blog updated has waned.  I think it's more to do with massive baby brain than anything, I try to think of a post to write and my mind literally goes blank.  Well.... that's my excuse anyway...

With only five and a half weeks to go I'm finding myself spending more and more time relaxing on the couch with knitting needles in my hand.  This works well as I can also supervise the wee girl at play.  So without further ado here's some examples of what I've been knitting -

Some pants for Baby, knitted in sock yarn.

A spring top for Tamsyn (Nikki, you'd love this one!)

Something for one of my sisters but it's for her birthday so I can't show it yet.  A couple of other things that I haven't got around to taking pictures of either.  But it's all good and very very satisfying.

So to finish off this meagre post I have to share this photo taken at the recent Teddy Bears Picnic in Launceston's City Park -

Dressed entirely in clothes her Mummy made for her.   :-)

A small diversion

I needed to do something fun and for me, well, mostly for the wee girlie.  I've admired what this talented lady does for a while and thought why not?  A lovely simple square patch quilt in fun bright spring colours.

 Just a small quilt, using fabrics only from my stash and simply quilted in the ditch.


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... and then I cut it....


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Five times in fact...



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 But for good purposes.

 You see it's an old pram (made when 3 wheelers were a new thing), a hand-me-down that has been oh so useful but in desperate need of jazzing up.  In winter it has a sleeping bag (which can be seen here, gosh wasn't she small back then!) for keeping little bodies very warm and snug, but it's spring and I wanted to capture it in quilt form.  So to speak.

And the quilt-as-you-go dream?  It's still there, and I'm going to make a start.... soon.... honest....
(Tamsyn's hat is from Foal Design)

A quilt for a little man called Felix

I meant to post this last week and not have so big a gap between posts.  But hey, I'm just over 6 months pregnant and baby brain has been quite intense this time, not to mention the tiredness and just plain laziness...  I seem to reserve most of my strength for Tamsyn and the bare minimum of housewifery.  Even though I make sure I read (almost) everyone's blog each day, comments may be brief.  I think "cool!" has been all I can manage some days.  :/

I don't altogether see this as a bad thing, my body is working hard at growing a little person and apart from the occasional meltdown things have been pretty cruisey.

Felix's sock monkey quilt was the first I've ever made where I didn't have a plan other than doing a whole heap of bias squares, and the width of the fabric (all half yard cuts) dictated the size of those squares.  I thought I'd leave the Brady Bunch style fabric whole which would be good for alternating blocks.  When it came to laying out the blocks on the lounge room floor after Tamsyn had gone to bed one night I had come up with a star style.  Ant looked at it, screwed up his nose a bit and said "how about this instead".

I knew he was right.

It's the first quilt I've made purely out of flannel: front, back and binding.  I made sure there was enough fabric left over for a very scrappy back and did some basic machine quilting.  I'm never going to do a purely flannel quilt again, it's so much more temperamental than quilting cotton - it seems to give/stretch more, but I'll continue to use it as a backing fabric.  That works well.

Next up, I want to try my hand at some 'quilt as you go'.  I've been quilting for over 20 years and have never tried it.  I've also been inspired by what this talented lady can do here and here. Oh and here too.  ♥

It's been a long time between quilts...

But I'm getting there, and it probably means that Felix should receive it before his first birthday.  That has to be a big fat tick on the To Do List.

I shall reveal all once it's quilted.

I must be nesting....

Spring has sprung and summer will be here before we know it.  I've felt the urge to make the girl some warm weather clothes now because come Christmas time the opportunity to even look at the sewing machine will be rare.

A couple of weeks ago I had a little op-shopping jaunt with Tara in Deloraine.  One of my finds was this girls' summer top.  Even though it wouldn't fit Tamsyn for probably another five years, I was too smitten with the little cat print and thought I might be able to do something with it.

With a bit of help from one of my Ottobre patterns I've turned it into a little summer dress by cutting out arm holes and adding a ribbon casing to the neckline.  I already had the spotty ribbon in my stash and was just the right length.

While in Deloraine I couldn't resist a visit to the local fabric/quilt shop Fresh Fabric, and fell in love with this Heather Bailey print.  I've made this dress before, this one and then this one for her birthday, each one a bigger pattern size.  I decided to leave the contrasting panel off the bottom edge this time, mainly because I didn't have a suitable contrasting fabric.

And then perusing my fabric stash a couple of days ago I rediscovered this fabric that Tamsyn's auntie sent her for her birthday.  It's an Alexander Henry and was just enough to make up this little number using a pattern I bought on Etsy.  I love the way that it's reversible too and for some reason I had plenty of purple gingham handy to line it.  This is a super fast, super easy pattern so I think there'll be a few more of these coming out of the sewing room.  Yay!

And the winner is...

... with thanks to random.org -

That would be Rel!  Congratulations sweetie, email me your address and I'll pop the bag in the post quick smart!

So, to give this post a bit of variety I'll get my act together and show you one of the things I've made recently for the little girl.

A little sleeveless dress/pinafore which is not quite little enough at the moment, but I'm thinking it'll be great for spring.  It's a Drops design, size 12 - 18 months and very easy to knit up except for the lace pattern in the skirt. 

I've never been terribly great or persistent when it comes to patterned lace and gave up after 2 repeats, but that's just me.  Still, I don't think it looks too bad and was glad I didn't undo the knitting (or frogged, to use an American term!).  The yarn was a great find from The Potty Knitter, who recycles yarns from old knitwear.  I'm tempted to buy a few balls of the slate as well.  Time will tell....