Lola

Well as I predicted I did catch the kids cold, but am feeling much better now and hopefully that the end of illness here for a while, fingers crossed!!!

Had a lovely weekend, Julian and I went to our very first mid-winter Christmas, complete with turkey (lentil loaf for me), Christmas decorations, lights, mulled wine and even pressies. It was great fun and I can't believe we haven't done it before especially being from the other side of the world and all. Christmas twice in one year, how brilliant!!

3 weeks today I am starting college, eeeeeekkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.... Yes I am getting a little bit nervous and am feeling stressed for the first time in ages. Tomorrow my BABY is starting pre-school and I am feeling some serious parental guilt. Lola is going to do a few hours a week for the next few weeks to get her used to the place before I start college. I am totally dreading it, I have been a stay at home mum for over 9 years now and it seems weird thinking that I won't be there all the time for my kids. The course is only part time, so I won't be gone that long and apart from being picked up from school by Dad or Grandad twice a week Kalem and Talia won't really notice a change. But Lola will, she is always with me! Oh well it is only a few hours a day and her much loved Nana is looking after her for one day. It will be fine, but it seems like so much is changing and if I think about it too much I can't breath......

Lola this morning posing for photo's wearing her Rainbow dress that I knitted a while back. She didn't get to wear it much when I made it as it was summer and she was crawling, not good in a dress. Now she wears it over pants like a tunic and it looks so cute on her, not to mention it's a great extra layer of woolly warmth.

Wish us luck for tomorrow............. X

Illnes and my Featherweigh Cardy...

I have nearly completed the body of my Featherweight Cardigan and am really pleased with it so far. I love the fact that knitting it on a circular allows you to try it on as you go. Just a couple of inches to go then it's onto the sleeves. I am going to knit the sleeves using 2 circulars which I have never done before,GULP!!! I don't really like knitting with DPN's so am hoping that this method will be easier, I guess that time will tell.

My household are still all full of coughs and colds at the moment, this morning it was like listening to an orchestra of coughs coming from each room, just lovely at 6am!! I am still managing to avoid the dreaded bug, but with the amount of direct hits to the face of coughs and sneezes I took over the weekend, it is only a matter of time......

I thought that I would share this vitamin C packed recipe for a blackcurrant drink. I made this warm and squished all the fruit making it thick and broth like which the kids hated. I then just drained the liquid without smashing up the fruit and chilled it in the fridge, this went down much better......

50gm blackcurrants (we have them in the freezer for times like this....)

2 apples chopped and cored

450ml water

2 teaspoons of lemon juice

honey to taste

Basically place apple and blackcurrants in a pan with water and bring to the boil, simmer for 10 mins then strain. Stir in lemon juice and add honey to taste. Perfect for sick feverish kiddo's and adults too of course!

A MEME

I was recently tagged by the lovely Jannelle, it's taken a while to get around to it, but here is my rather complex MEME...

What is your current obsession?
At the moment it is knitting, probably due to the cold weather. I do however swap and change my obsessions regularly between, sewing, felting, mosaics and of course knitting......

What was the most interesting thing you did today?
I have been stuck home with sick kid for days so am struggling with this one, does playing with paper dress up dolls sounds interesting to you???

What are you wearing today?
My comfy stuck at home clothes, thick socks, warm top, trackie bottoms, the theme here is WARMTH AND COMFORT!!! Not very cool huh...

What's for dinner?
Tonight is one of my favourites, Spicy Roasted Vegetables with Chickpea's and Cous Cous...YUM!!

What would you eat for your last meal?
Chocolate Brownie cake warmed up with ice cream to start, Baked Raspberry cheesecake for main and then Chocolate Mousse for dessert. No need to be healthy if it's my last meal after all.....

What's the last thing you bought?
Yesterday I went to the yarn store and they were having a sale, SAY NO MORE!!!

What are you listening to right now?
I love all music, but to be quite honest I don't think about it a lot. Julian is the music buff in out household and if he is home then there is always music playing. If I am on my own then I normally like the silence. Sometimes I put Cream Classics when I am doing the housework, reminds me of my clubbing days, which sadly seem like a lifetime ago!!

What do you think of the person who tagged you?
Jannelle is a great mother and an AMAZING photographer. A truly inspiring lady!

If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?
At the moment we are dreaming about owning a bit of land in Nelson, somewhere that the children can roam around safely, enjoy nature and have fun!!! Or maybe a sweet seaside cottage somewhere in Cornwall.....

If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?
Without a shadow of a doubt it would be home.... to my Mum and Dad's. Hopefully my gorgeous brothers would be there, Mum would have cooked one of her lovely roast dinners (with sprouts..) and Dad would be opening another bottle of red wine. SIGH, if only!!


Which language do you want to learn?
Spanish.

What is your favorite color?
GREEN, as shown in nearly all of my knitting!!!

What is your favorite piece of clothing in your own wardrobe?
A floor length 'green' vintage velvet skirt I bought in Melbourne. It doesn't fit me at the moment, but I am hoping one day to squeeze into it again!

What is your dream job?
Midwife. Hopefully soon to be more reality than dream!

What's your favorite magazine?
Sew Hip an English magazine about sewing funny enough.

If you had £100 now, what would you spend it on?
I am assuming that this money has to be spent on ME... Some new boots I have had my eye on for about 3 years, I have been waiting patiently for them to be reduced, but they never are.

Describe your personal style?
At the moment it is whatever fits, but there is definitely a hippy chick living inside of me waiting to break free....

What are you going to do after this?
Apparently I have to draw Talia a fairy for her to colour in, then play dolls, then read books, then painting, then lego. Yep it's all about the sick bored kiddo...

What are your favorite films?
Hmmm, Into the Wild, Schindlers List, Chocolat, The Jazz Singer (yep sad but true), Amelie, The Kite Runner, Sideways and Hideous Kinky.

What's your favorite fruit?
Watermelon.

What inspires you?
My children inspire me to be imaginative and see the joy in simple things. I am inspired by creativity in any form.

Do you collect anything?
Well I was going to say no, but it seems I have a bit of a collection of fabric and yarn going on, also a lot of coloured glass for my mosaics.

What are you currently reading?
I have just finished Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

What makes you follow a blog?
I love connecting with other like minded people, be that in craft or parenting. I love blogs that are about family, art and craft. There is so much inspiration out there.

What do you love most about where you currently live?
We are close to the sea (not walking close, but driving close)..... and there are a lot of lovely families from Kalem's school that live near by.

The rules:1. Respond and rework; answer the questions on your blog, replace one question that you dislike with a question of your invention, add one more question of your own.2. Tag eight other people.
Okay I know this sounds like I am not following the rules, but I think I may be the last person left to actually get this meme done. If there is anybody out there who hasn't done it and wants to play along feel free and please let me know if you do.....

Knit in Public Day 2009.....

Saturday was worldwide knit in public day and I joined in the fun here in Christchurch. What a great day it was too, held at the Dux De Lux and organised by the lovely Amy from The Loop Knittery. It was my first time knitting in public (apart from a couple of rows while camping) and I was quite pleased with my ability to talk and knit at the same time!!!

I had only been there a couple of minutes when I was talked into entering the knitting with spaghetti competition. Blimey it was really hard, basically we were given 2 strands of spaghetti and a length of yarn, the aim being to knit as much as possible in 5 minutes. It is even more difficult than it sounds believe me, but quite a laugh really. You were only allowed the 2 pieces of spaghetti and if they broke you just had to carry on with the small pieces, here is my end result..........

Now I know that it doesn't look like a lot and well, it isn't, I only managed 1 row. Needless to say I didn't win the price for the most knitting, BUT I did win the prize for the neatest knitting with spaghetti!!!! YAY for me and lookey at what I won...................

The most delicious NZ Merino hand dyed yarn from the Loop Knittery and IT'S NOT GREEN......... It is so lovely and I know that it is REALLY sad, but I can't stop looking at them and I may just have to keep them as an ornament and never knit them. I guess that would be a waste, I am thinking maybe another beret/hat of some sort. If anyone knows of any good patterns for 10ply then please let me know.

BUT that's not all, I also received this box of crochet patterns and a World Sweet World magazine. Now I really do have to learn how to crochet...

Here I am with my lovely friend and knitting GURU Gabes and look she is wearing her gorgeous purple Meret. Normally we have the kids with us when we catch up so this was our first time knitting together!!!

I managed to get a few more rows done on my Featherweight Cardigan and it was great being able to knit during the day with no little people around to distract me!!!!

The rest of the weekend was spent visiting friends and hanging out at home. Kalem and I went ice skating on Sunday which had been arranged by his school. It was great fun and Kalem loves it, you should see him go, he is super speedy and not at all afraid of falling over! I managed to stay upright for the whole time and didn't end up embarrassing myself in front of the school mums, there was one very close call though....

Today is being spent indoors with one very sick little girl home from Kindy. Poor little mite has a bad cough and cold and is currently asleep on the couch, bless her!!! No idea when she will be able to go back to kindy as they do not want any children with signs of cold or flu at school or kindy here in NZ at the mo, due to the Swine Flu pandemic. The amount of people getting it here seems to be multiplying daily and it is expected that over 30% of the population will get it, scary hey!!!

Oh well I am off to defrost some blackcurrants to make a sweet tea for when my little on wakes up. Hopefully she will be feeling better after a good sleep! Bye for now....... X

Talia and Tilly

I love watching Talia playing with Tilly, she definitely seems to favour her over her shop bought plastic dolls which is great and of course means that all my hard work was not in vain!! Tilly (along with about 30 other teddies) sleeps with Talia each night and the night before last Talia suddenly realised that Tilly didn't have any proper pyjama's. So I was asked to make her some P.J's, oh and while I was at it a skirt too please......

A chance to get out my beloved sewing machine, how could I resist. I got right on the case and while Lola was sleeping yesterday made Tilly a little skirt and top from an old dress of mine and some pyjama's using an old (very groovy) pillowcase. While I was making them the thought that soon I will not be able to do things like this due to being at COLLEGE, did enter my mind, but it scared me so I pushed it right back out again!!!

Talia was thrilled with my efforts and apparently today I am to make some shoes and a little bag!! We will see.... Anyway here are the two girls this morning on the couch in their P.J's.

Here they are a bit later all dressed and ready for kindy.....

Right off to check out my fabric stash for suitable dolls bag material.... X

A rather pink weekend

Oh me oh my what a lovely weekend I have just had..... On Saturday once I had FINALLY managed to get out of the house alone, I popped along to the wonderful Craft 2.0 fair in town. Well it certainly didn't disappoint, so much lovely stuff on display I was like a child in a sweet shop!!! It was great to see a lot of the lovely and very talented ladies from my Crafty Business group there with stalls full of tantalising goodies. I only wish that I could have bought something from everyone, but alas NO!!! After walking around the circuit at least 3 times I finally settled on the purchases below.

The latest World Sweet World magazine, a gorgeous hand printed scarf from In My Backyard, a sweet little purse from Retreasured and a yummy skein of yarn from needle food. I know more green yarn, which is crazy as there was so much choice, gorgeous, gorgeous colours, oh well I still love mine!!

On Sunday it was off the Disney Princess Wishes on Ice. Well I must admit that I was not totally looking forward to this, thinking that I was to endure yet another boring kiddy show. Boy was I wrong it was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.!!! Seriously I don't know who was more mesmerised me or Talia. It was such a fantastic production full of beautiful costumes, wonderful ice skating and fabulous special effects and to top it all of it was hosted by the REAL Mickey and Minnie Mouse!! We had such a great time and it was good to hang out with my own little princess for the afternoon.

Talia and her best buddy Kenny all dressed up. Seriously you have never seen so many princess dresses in one place before, you literally couldn't move for excited, pink, sparkly little people....

MESMERISED....

Spot the Little Mermaid doll, I was totally carried away on the princess vibe and couldn't say no when Talia pleaded with me to buy her one. Oh well Ariel is her very favourite princess......

Can you spot your favourite princess and look there's Mickey and Minnie, click on the photo for a better look.

Hope that you all had a lovely weekend too.... X

KIDS ART....

Kalem and Talia create so many lovely things that I have decided to post my favourites each week. Talia brought the very pink, ribboned cardboard tube home from kindy last week and was very proud of her creation, it's an Octopus don't ya know!!


Kalem draws a lot at home, but it is not often that he actually brings something from school. Last week he brought this gorgeous picture home, I'm not sure exactly how he made it, something to do with printing and paint. I think it's beautiful and the colours are amazing, definitely worthy of a frame.


We have just had a long weekend here, which has been great, bit chilly though. We didn't get up to much Julian ran in a marathon, I sewed my very first skirt (more about this next post), Lola toddled around happily, Kalem spent most of the weekend with his cousin and Talia spent most of her weekend drawing and painting. She is so cute at the moment, after every drawing she asks me if she is my little artist, well of course she is!!!

Talia also made this little hand puppet from a kit I found tucked away at the back of the craft cupboard. We have to keep it away from Lola as she seems determined to remove it's eye's and nose......

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend..... X