Hello winter

A weekend away; pizza nights; knitting socks and hats; pottery; painting in my sketchbook and winter growing – mushrooms and micro greens… 
Even though it’s dark and more than a little cold, I’ve been busy! What about you, what are you up to? Enjoy your weekend, Ill be busy… making! J xoxo

A quick fix

When Im working on one or two larger projects I sometimes feel the need for a quick project to satisfy my cravings for making AND finishing something. So this week I did just that and whipped up this crochet scarf, using scrap yarn and a beautiful woven stitch of single crochet, chain one.

This isn’t the first time Ive used this stitch (you can check out my dishcloths here), I like the fabric it makes and the way it looks, a little more stylish than a plain crochet stitch.

I guess since I joined the ends together its technically a cowl (or maybe a snood or an infinity scarf depending on where you are from), but whichever way you look at it, its lovely and warm and cozy!

And boy did it ever use up a good lot of my leftover wool 🙂

It was very useful today in the chilly wind and rain I had to stand in while watching not one, but two early morning games of Saturday soccer. In fact Im fairly sure, as I sit in front of my roaring fire tonight typing this that I have only JUST begun to thaw out! 

I quickly ducked outside this afternoon to catch the last of the quickly fading light to take these photos and the wind was still blowing everything around:

In other satisfying, but perhaps less permanent projects completed this week, in an unusual half hour where I found myself at home (alone!) and dinner already sorted, I painted some leaves…

I love autumn leaves, and these magnolia leaves lent themselves well as a lovely sturdy canvas. I used some acrylic paint and markers to create these designs, and while they won’t last forever, they were a fun way to use the time I had to unwind at the end of what had been a busy day.

Ok, so maybe I wasn’t entirely alone. I did have a small furry ‘helper’ who couldn’t quite understand what I was doing and why I wasn’t patting him!

I hope your week has been a good one, and for those of you enjoying spring, spare a thought for me as winter fast takes us into her fold and send me some words of the lovely sunshine and greenery you are enjoying at your place please! J xoxo

Pizza night and a bunny

The school holidays are coming to an end this weekend, come Monday we’ll be back to the school/work routines. It’s lovely to take the time together to make some meals a special celebration of the season, the holiday and just being together.

We love a pizza in this family, and now that autumn is here and the evenings are fine but cool, it’s the perfect time for cozying up in front of the pizza oven.Ready to come out…
Maia set the table for us, including picking a bunch of autumnal leaves and flowers and making little place setting name tags…Of course, the pizza was delicious… there are never any complaints about eating dinner on pizza night!And as you might have noticed in the first photo, dessert was also cooked over the open flame – well the marshmallows were anyway 🙂If you follow me on Facebook you might have seen that I recently taught Maia to knit. She picked it up really quickly – I’ve tried and tried to teach her to crochet but it just hasn’t stuck – but she’s taken to knitting like a duck to water…Don’t you love the look of concentration?

I found this really easy pattern to make a knitted bunny, which is basically just  a square which you sew up in a triangle to make the head and then along the seam to make the body… that doesn’t make much sense, but  you can find a much better explanation here!

Stuffing the body…And sewing the final seam:Love that tongue!

Here’s the finished bunny, cute huh…Pretty nifty how two of the corners make the ears! Im thinking it would work just as well with a crochet square, and even better if you had a furry yarn. She was very pleased with herself, and I am very proud of her yarny creating 🙂

For me, Im working on sock two of my second pair of socks, this pair is MUCH easier than the first was!This is taken this morning, while having breakfast. Green smoothie and blueberry and apple pancake squares… the raspberries have finally finished for the season.Don’t you love the colors, these self striping yarns are awesome!

What’s going on at your place, what are you working on?

Have a great week everyone!

Knitted socks

I’ve finished my socks 🙂

Im so happy with how they have turned out, the colors are beautiful and they are so soft, squishy and warm !If you don’t knit, or haven’t in a long time, I’d recommend giving these socks a try. They are relatively easy once you get your head around how they come together, and using a short circular for the majority of the knitting is nothing short of a miracle tool. All your stitches are held together on one needle with two ends, which means less opportunity for dropped stitches.

As I mentioned in the last post, you can find the tutorial I used – which is really excellent – right here. Thanks Christine, I couldn’t have done it without you!

Xox Janette

Rag Quilt

Yesterday I made a rag quilt for Maia… Actually it would be more accurate to say that I sewed it together yesterday. I cut out the squares some time ago but lost interest over the summer in sewing it all together (how unlike me!). So in a marathon effort that even gave me a leave pass from making dinner (excellent ploy to remember for future – sorry I cant tonight I’m up to my eyeballs in sewing which I promised Maia I’d finish today) my most excellent helper and I sewed a gazillion squares – first together (batting sandwiched between slightly larger layers of cotton and flannelette) with big crisscrosses, then in rows and finally all the rows together to form a quite lovely pink and purple, flannel backed raggy quilt.

The beauty of this type of quilt is in the imperfectness of it. I promise you there is not a perfectly uniform square in it, and the rows? They don’t exactly line up. I’m ok with that. I know there are some accomplished quilters out there (Nola I’m looking at you) that will not love this quilt. But I’m going with that its supposed to be rustic (can a quilt be rustic?) and of course if it was all perfect it wouldn’t be gorgeous and raggy!

Today its been through the wash, and flapped on the line in the cool autumn breeze for most of the morning, before heading into the dryer for a spin. Out it came, all fluffy soft and frayed and wonderfully snuggly, just asking to be crawled under and read to. Fortunately I know just the girl for such a quilt 🙂

I think this type of quilt is perfect for beginners (like me), and for those that are not that keen on getting everything perfect (truthfully I’d rather poke a needle in my eye than spend days lining up a gazillion squares and then trying to sew them all together neatly –  I can only imagine how much unpicking that would have involved).  Speaking of which I broke three needles in the one afternoon I was making this. One went through my finger so we can’t really blame that on the layers of quilt – this was slightly traumatic for both me and the 8 year old, but the other two were through pushing them and the machine too hard. If I was to attempt this again (which I may), I would buy some stronger (heavier?) needles.

Construction was pretty simple. I got the idea off the interweb, where there are some particularly helpful people who have made many of these quilts and put together lovely tutorials – like this one, this one and this one.

Aside from the cutting and sewing, a few hours last night was spent snipping all the edges to help them fray. My thumb is going to take some time to recover from all the exercise!So that’s that, would I recommend it? Yes? Will I make another??? Hmmmmmmm, we’ll see.

The weather has cooled down significantly here this week, and with it the light is fading, so I took the quilt outdoors to get some photos… supposedly just with Maia and her new quilt…

But someone else wanted in on the photo shoot 🙂

And now he wants in on a quilt too… PLEEEEAAAASSSSSEEEEE Mummy!

When I sat down at the computer tonight to send this I found a couple of other posts which I had begun which I haven’t got around to posting, so all going well I will get those finished and you will hear from me again soon, but until then I hope you are having a wonderful week friends!

J xoxoxo

I am…

In my world right now I am: Gardening… making the most of the summer that has officially extended into Autumn. These echinacea have been a feast for my eyes all summer long!

Giving up in the battle to eat all the zucchini. My family now flat out refuses to eat anything containing zucchini – but as their palates are not yet refined enough to  detected it grated, it’s surreptitiously making its way into all manner of meals undetected heh heh heh. Question, at what point does a zucchini officially become marrow?? These: Marrows.

Potting? Potterying?? *Making* a whole menagerie of clay animals! Loving getting my hands dirty each week at a hand building pottery class I’m taking this term…

This is Petunia. If you follow my face book page you’ve probably seen quite a lot of her!

Tie Dying… Deciding to tie dye with two children = reckless… There was dye, it was EVERYWHERE. Some even made it onto items of clothing.

I have to admit that for the most part, the results (on the clothes) were fabulous. The same can’t be said for my hands… That black thumb lasted for days! Crocheting… a little easy sweet crochet in sherbert cotton. More on that soon!

Eating this  taste sensation! My current favourite toast topping? Natural peanut butter, banana and chia seeds. Once made it doesn’t last long! For the most part no body in my close vicinity shares my love of peanut butter creations… Do you?

Wishing that summer could last forever, but knowing that as the nights begin to close in that its going to be gone soon… So Ill leave you with this gorgeous monarch one of many loving it up at our place right now before summer slips away.

So now I’d like to know, what are you…

Making

Giving up (it is Lent after all)

Crocheting

Eating

Wishing

Doing?

xoxo – J