More mess and car trouble

Well, the other day the weather picked up and we went out in the car to town. We were driving on the country road to town when we decided to stop a little while in the grass, it was so pretty. So, I pulled the car over onto what I thought was grass... however, apparently the barrier was knocked down and was lying invisibly in the grass... I could tell from the crunching grinding sound that followed.... I had gotten lodged on the broken barrier and killed the tire.... impressive huh???

So this is my hubby changing the tire on our old girl...



While Rafaela and I admired the scenery...

...and played at 'driving the car'


We did finally get her moving again.... see... pic of the pretty road to prove it



Thank you for the suggestions to nap instead of blogging...I have a guilty secret to admit though, my baby sleeps all through the night and I don't need to nap... shocking isn't it! In fact, ironically enough, she ONLY sleeps at night...which lead to last nights 'white night', which I pulled in order to get peace to make more mess...



Which eventually resulted in these....


Mission accomplished! These are the finished product modeled by our little madam....


Such a lovely fit, i really like them.

Lastly, I had a fabulous parcel arrive this week, the lovely wool and lace magazine that Marie sent me from her going to paris giveaway....



Gorgeous lambs pride worsted.....Now I just have to find a perfect project for it

water water everywhere....

Ok, well not everywhere exactly....



You may wonder why I am proudly displaying a photo of what appears to be a kitchen sink on my blog...well.. it is a kitchen sink. We've lived here since the start of the year. When we first moved in we had no running water at all and no indoor toilet..... we've come a long way since then (in stages) and the last stage was completed on sunday night. We now have running hot and cold water in the bathroom and the kitchen. WOO HOO!!

This means we no longer have to boil water on the wood stove which makes bathtime easier and a lot more fun (for mummy)



Our wee girl is growing rediculously quickly...she's 7 weeks old now and is 62 cm long and believe it or not, she's cutting her first tooth.... I can't even believe it... its far too early to deal with teeth


I made baby hand and footprints with her,

I didnt want to press too hard, so they are just enough indentation to feel them and see them and I made them into decorative tins I had saved from soap and bath salts so they look pretty for her.

I have managed to do a little crochet... I'm making a scarf...


And, I'm also making a mess....

This is my 'process'....I'm making some nappies...I have a few different kinds of nappies, but I wanted to just add a couple of covers that will dry quickly (made from fleecy fabric).

So that's us more or less caught up, sorry the blogging is a little erratic... I seem to only get to blog when it's the middle of the night and the milk monster is sleeping. Ok... I'm off to enjoy a hot shower...yey!!

blogland...

i was cruising through blogland when i came across this giveaway if you are a knitter you should cruise on by and leave annette a comment, you will just have enough time!

Weather, wool and warmers

Well, it looks like we have just completely bypassed autumn and gone from the end of summer to miserable beginings of winter. I was hoping to blog about this (photo from last week)...



The beautiful harvest weather, the warm afternoons, the gold light.... instead I am bloggin about this (photo from this morning)...



Flippin' cold, blue, icy light with rain, wind and chance of snow. What went wrong?

Oh yes, and on the subject of 'what went wrong'... do you remember my lovely urban aran, which I finished while I was pregnant? I excitedly got it out to see how it would stand up to the chilly winds...


Uh huh... this is urban aran, finished in all it's painstaking glory .... on my husband!!! (sorry Mr pjs, I couldn't resist your 'I'm unimpressed' pose) Clearly I'ma knitting idiot...it drowns me and I look completely rediculous in it. So in the end it's a good thing that i knitted it in a colour that suits my hubby cause it looks great on him and at least one of us has a cosy jumper.

My little sister growed up and left home to go to uni this year, she was away for one week when the weather changed and she realised she hadn't taken her warm clothes.... so I made her a little 'so-you-live-on-your-own-keep-warm' present... a neck warmer. Hope she will like it.

Scrappy little bird mobile

This is the easiest little project to do even if you are a beginner in sewing. It can be accomplished quickly and will use any colour or pattern of scraps which you fancy.

You'll need:

-Piece of paper
-Fabric scraps in colour or pattern you prefer
-Stuffing (can be synthetic stuffing or you could use more little fabric scraps if you dont have synthetic stuffing)
-Embroidery Floss
-Buttons or beads
-Yarn (just a strand about an arms length)

First of all you'll need to pick your fabric pieces. I made this mobile with 4 different solid colours of linen scraps, but you can make as few or as many birds in as many colours as you like and from whatever fabric you have left over.



Now take a piece of paper and fold it in half. Then take your smallest piece of fabric and mark the width on the folded edge of paper like this...



remember to leave fabric for seams at the edges. Now from the marks you made draw a shape like this...

proportionally, the shape is probably twice as long as it is wide. cut it out making sure you dont cut the fold and you should have a shape like this...



Cut the pieces of your fabric out by pinning the shape to them and allowing for seams, it should look like this...



now fold the fabric shapes in the same way the paper shape was folded, with the right sides of the fabric facing each other , and stitch from the folded edge down both sides of the shape leaving the bottom open, giving you this...


Now turn the shape the right way round, using a pencil to poke the points out, like this



Do the rest of your fabric shapes and you should have a pile of little bird bodies


Now get your stuffing and fill the little birds


When each one is filled turn the lips of the hole in and bring them together


Pin and stitch down the seam as close to the edge as you can



When they are finished you should have a little pile of cushions like these...



Now it's time to get creative, take the embroidery floss and use it to make these little pillows into little birds, pick one end to be a beak, push both sides of the pillow together flat and stitch a triangle for the beak, pick a point to stitch on your eyes and the same for the wings. Now, if you are better at embroidery than I am, which, lets face it, wouldn't be hard, then this is the moment to shine, use your fabulous skill to make extraordinary little birds (my husband had a hard time believing mine were birds at all!!) Anyway, these are the basic little birdies I turned out...


Now do the rest of your birds...


Now take your length of yarn and start connecting your birds.



If you have beads, use the beads threaded between the birds to separate them. I didn't have beads, I used buttons just to decorate it a little...


Once they are all threaded on snugly you're finished.

You have a lovely little string of birds and you used up some of your fabric scraps.

All work and no knitting

It's been ages since I posted anything, mainly because it seems Rafaela can tell the minute I start typing and she wakes up. (Note to reader: this post is equal to several, so get a cuppa before you start)

I thought, since I havn't made anything (except a mess of my house), I would share with you some (only a couple) of the lovely things that people have given Rafaela.

I'll start with shoes since shoes are just the perfect thing to start with.... Our hope-to-soon-be-sister-in-law-if-my-brother-would-just-ask-her bought us these absolutely gorgeous little leather shoes with ribbon laces just after she was born...


And just when I thought it didn't get any better in the shoe world than that, she surprised us on sunday with the same shoes in pink!!


We have her reading skills covered with this fabulous old favourite...


As well as these other lovely books...


A good friend of ours made Rafaela her first dolly...

Which we will let her play with when she is a little older, and another friend bought her a second dolly....

Which we will never let her play with.... this beautiful little dolly is porcelan and is dressed in traditional Romanian dress.... much much too pretty for her to play with, but we'll let her look at it if she's very good (ha ha).

We took Rafaela to church on Sunday to be dedicated. A friend of ours had sent a beautiful outfit which we kept specially for the occasion. We had a lovely day and a little lunch with close family and friends afterwards. She looked gorgeous in her outfit....


But as you can imagine, was not impressed at being made to sit for a photo!


I'll try not to bore you with photo's, but just a couple to complete the post...

This is 4 generations of first born daughters, Rafaela, me, my mother, my grandmother

Me and my father, he's barely seen his granddaughter but he seems pleased enough with her...


And lastly, My Hubby and I with our wee girl


I suppose the post was largely pics, so hopefully you survived to the end. Will try and regulate posting.