Gifts

My swap box has arrived ... oh joyous excitement ... although I am going to have to wait until Christmas Day to share the goodies within it with you

As you can see.  So it has been firmly closed and placed under the Christmas tree.  However, just to wet my appetite, I found these two charming characters grinning at me from on top of the red tissue

They have migrated to the tree where they seem very much at home.

I'm planning a few present making days next week to finish off the goodies intended for my family.  They've been shoved to the back as I have been concentrating on other things, such as Robins for sale etc.

11 sleeps left ....  

It's starting to look a lot like Christmas Swap boxes again ...

Hi guys, sorry for the long old time between posts - some clown has fast forwarded the year and just as I'm getting used to August it's suddenly November and Children In Need is nigh.

I really hope you are up for the swap box again because I have already started buying bits for mine - not that I'm getting excited of course.

I've been a busy little bunny, knitting little things to sell and making a block a month patchwork courtesy of Craftsy 

This is my shelf sitting Christmas Robin.  He has plastic beads in his bottom to help him sit nicely and I have had a lot of interest in him, although it backfired a little at my knitting group as they wanted the pattern to knit him themselves, rather than buy one from me!  Hmmm not quite the response I was hoping for, but I've written out the pattern and printed a load off.  I shall sell them instead for slightly less than the finished item  :)

It surprised me, considering that the body of the Robin is only about 4 inches high, that it took four pages to write the pattern up. 


I am also working on Woolly Wormheads hat KAL using this gorgeous yarn from Fyberspates

It is a 4ply BFL, Cashmere and Silk mix and is absolutely scrumptious.

Open University

My current course is Design and Designing and I'm just coming up to the last month of study and my last assignment, which is also the largest, before I sit the exam in October.

This is my second module in the Degree, and I've got two or three more before I get the full Bsc In Design ...  how exiting is this?  I wonder why it's taken me so long to actually realise that this is what I want to do?  I love creating designs and I guess I must be good at it because my lowest assignment score so far has been 90% and my highest 100%.

For this assignment I was given a broad spectrum brief to design a hand tool, either powered or manual.  I knew exactly what I wanted to design and I don't think there is anything on the market already.  I want to create a tool that can be loaded with pins, and pin fabric layers together with just one squeeze of the handle.  I envisage this gizmo speeding up the pinning of material together and making it easier for anyone with weak hands who finds it difficult to manipulate pins and get the through the material.

Would you all be so kind as to complete my survey?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8TTJXDX

I would be very grateful if you could, and if you know any other sewists, please could you send them the link, the more answers and comments I get, the better my work will be.

Bless you all

The third thing !!!

It's been a long old time since I last blogged - time getting away from me again as I attempt to keep up with my OU design course and everything else that I am doing.

Kids are at the end of their second week of holidays and I do so wish it were September again, which is wishing my life away I know, but sometimes .....  Grit my teeth and bear it  :)  We are feeling the pinch so unfortunately we can't take them away so they are having to make do with short local visits.

So the third thing.  Well, the first thing; yesterday Ivan received a letter from his work telling him that they are going through a consultation phase because they need to reduce the wages bill and that at present, his job, as well as many others, is at risk of redundancy !!   Not something that we wanted to hear, although I am hopeful that he will be OK because he is the only Painting and Decorating technician they have, so making him redundant would mean getting rid of P&D courses altogether as the lecturers would not be able to cope without him.  Especially as he does all the ordering as well as all sorts of other things they can't do without :)

The second thing:  I noticed this morning that the car was making a very nasty noise so I trotted off to my brother's garage to get it looked at.  Turns out the clutch has gone and I had to leave the car there and borrow a car.  But its going to cost us at least £600 to get it mended.

So now I'm waiting, with trepidation, for the third thing to happen.

I've been knitting Alpaca finger puppets and lavender hearts for the Alpaca farm, for the majority of the past few months, but I've managed to finish a 30s inspired cushion cover after a year or so of hoping the UFO fairy would do it for me.  Actually I don't seem to have done much at all looking back at it.  I have been spending a lot of time on my OU course though - that's a good excuse.  I have also started spinning tops on a drop spindle.  There's an amazing woman at my knitting group who spins everyday and has done so for decades, and she makes it look so effortless.  She started to teach me how to spin properly and I'm working on it although my yarn is currently very lumpy and bumpy and not quite the fine smooth thread I was hoping for.

I have finally started one of the Noro Cash Island skeins that I have had ornamenting my desk for god knows how long.  I'm making a set of heart shaped coasters, that will be felted in the washing machine, and then I plan to make them a holder from thin plywood and decoupage it.  I am planning to make lots of little things like this and I am hoping to organise a craft sale in my town towards Christmas time.  There is a definite dearth of decent craft sales in my area and I haven't been able to get a table at any of the very few around as they are all booked up.

If the weather's decent tomorrow I might just dump the kids on the other half and go sit on the beach for an hour or two  :)  But then I just have to go back to it all sooner or later  :))
 

My very first Ravelry pattern

And this is it .... It is a lavender scented boudoir cushion for Mother's Day although I think it would make a nice present for a bride as well. The back is a piece of felt from an old jumper that I bunged in the washing machine and the main part is knitted from Sirdar Click Aran, The flowers are knitted in three different yarn weights using the same pattern for the roses, so they come out different sizes, and the daisies are knitted with a very fine 4ply. I mixed lavender in with the filling so it is very delicately scented.

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lavender-scented-boudoir-cushion

I am working with our local Alpaca farm, producing small lavender scented hearts as moth repellants for wardrobes and drawers, and also Alpaca finger puppets. All knitted out of 100% local Alpaca yarn. It is lovely to work with, leaves your fingers really soft.





It occurred to me that the finger puppets are also ideal as needle cosies - if you are anything like me I keep my most used needles in a pot on the table and I've used one of these to keep my 3mm needles together - works a treat.

Treat Time

I have ordered me some gorgeous sock yarn from Allison (of course) and look what came with it !!!!



Such a sweet, thoughtful gift and they really have cheered me up - I just sat there this morning hugging my yarn and grinning at my happy stitch markers. They are really well made and displayed, a treat to look at. I think I will be collecting some more of those later on in the year for various birthdays because I think they are ideal little pressies.

A huge THANK YOU Allison, this really made my day and the sock yarn is even more scrummy in life than in photos - now I need to find a suitable sock pattern to do it justice. I was going to go for plain rib and stocking stitch but I think yarn like this needs to be used for something a little more flamboyant - a lacey stitch or something like that. Might have to buy another book !!!!

Took Alex to his swimming class this evening - we sat there in the 70s building which has a corrugated plastic roof on wooden beams, so it was streaming with condensation and it felt like it would be dryer to sit in the pool itself. Alex was doing well until his teacher took them into the big pool - she made them hold the rail while she went with each one across the pool and of course Alex decided to let go and swim around - she panicked and shouted at him and of course that was it - he went into melt down in the pool - I had to go down to poolside and it took two of us to lift him out and quite a long time to calm him down. The poor teacher was shocked by his reaction, although she knows he has Aspergers, this is the first time it has impacted on his swimming and I think it frightened her a bit. It doesn't help that, although he is doing very well at school educationally, he has also picked up some shocking bad language from the other children and uses it freely. I keep telling people to ignore it as he will eventually get fed up if he gets no reaction from it, but it is very difficult to do so when he is f-ing and blinding and calling people names !!! But I guess that's all kids to some degree. He just does it more explosively.

His emotional development seems to have stalled - he only recognises two emotions - excited and angry. Although he knows the names for the others and can match them to facial expressions on a poster, he cannot link them with himself. This is a massive barrier but I am confident that we will crack it eventually. He is very young to have been diagnosed and statemented, a lot of children don't get diagnosed until they are 9 or 10 and have already been labelled as a naughty child or stupid.

I am currently knitting the Alan Dart chess set, and the board is enormous. So much so that I am going to make it into a piece of wall art as there is nowhere else to store it, and I think it will look good on the wall. I am going to put a little magnet under each square, as the pieces are all designed to have a steel nut in the bottom to add stability, so I can use that to stick them to the board - I think that will look good on a wall although it will have to be in a secure area to avoid them being knocked off by passers by and 7 year old hurricanes.

Also on the needles is a heart shaped boudoir cushion - designed by me. Actually the cushion is finished, I am now knitting loads of flowers to sew to it. I have added Lavender to the stuffing, and the idea is to cover the front in flowers. The back is a piece of red felt cut from a felted jumper and sewed to the knitted front. I am quite pleased with it, and I am planning to release the pattern through Ravelry - for 50p or £1 I think depending on how it is received. I think, with the Lavender in it, it will make a good sleep pillow to tuck down the side of your main pillows so that the soothing smell of Lavender will help you go to sleep. That is the idea anyway.

My sugar levels have stabilised although they are still too high at round about 14 to 15 mmol (ideally they want to be below 10) but they are considerably better than they were and I have lost weight as well - so bonus all round. I have started having my main meals on a side plate and I have found that I am still feeling full, so it is obviously a psychological thing as much as anything.

Last Saturday I went to the Hobbycraft and Creative Stitches show at Blue Water with my Mum. We weren't entirely impressed with the Hobbycraft side as all the stalls were papercrafts and we didn't think that there was enough variety. But the Creative Stitches part made up for that. There was the Under and Over the Sea exhibition there - the knitted tent containing all manner of knitted and crocheted under and over water stuff such as coral reefs, mermaids, a submarine, jellyfish, fish a sea monster, a shark and a fisherman - there was so much work in it and it was fascinating to walk through.

There was a goodly variety of stalls from cross stitch to beads and art to dyeing. Mum and I both took a class in working in pastels and produced a snowy scene with trees and people in it. I am really impressed with my own work and I am going to frame it. Tried to today but made a total pigs ear of the mount board so I am going to take it into town tomorrow to get it properly done.

I bought some amazing beads, in the shape of chrysanthemums, made from crushed gemstone mixed with resin. They weren't cheap, but I am planning to add them to a piece of knitted wall art. I will be running out of walls very soon :)

Short Post

I've only just started to recover from a diabetic meltdown last week in which I ended up in hospital connected to Insulin to bring my sugar levels down to safe levels. S0 not much knitting has been going on and a lot of sleeping in its place. Result? I feel depressed again !!! Isn't it wonderful how knitting can make you feel much better? I managed to stay with it for several rows of a hat and a small knitted heart tonight and already I feel much calmer.

I was supposed to be spending most of the weekend in Woking at a City & Guilds Handknitting Tutorial, so that has been cancelled, but I am hoping to be able to go to Bluewater next week for the Hobbycrafts show. Excellent reason to get better quickly although that is a coach trip so all the hard work is done for me.

Now I'm getting used to a new regime of tablets and injections and small meals and NO chocolate - oh the misery - mind you I have lost 4lb in weight since Sunday last, so there is some good cheer. Still battling to get my blood sugars down below 10, I don't think that will happen until I've lost a wee bit more weight. Mind you as I've dropped my intake by about two thirds I'll either lose weight or die of starvation.

Sorry for feeling sorry for myself - this is a real Dear Diary moment, and sometimes it is easier to make sense of events if you talk about them, or blog about them .....

P.S. I've accidentally ordered the odd knitting book or three - medicinal purposes only you understand