I am hopeless at updating this. I'm also hopeless at updating my personal blog at the moment too, so at least I'm not discriminating.

I actually have a lot of crafts on the go at the moment, just not many pictures to show. I've been knitting lots, have completed hats for Abby and Alex, and have another hat going for Andrew. It's not been cold enough for hats yet really (Alex has worn his a few times much to his dislike) so I still have some time to finish it. Abby and Alex's hats were really fun and taught me some new techniques which was good. It's shaped so it fits snug over the head and covers the ears and looks like a little pixie hat. I decided Andrew being in Kindergarten and a boy might not appreciate the pixie look, so I'm doing him a ribbed hat, but it's so boring I keep putting off finishing it.

I have knitted a couple of calimatories as well, the first one was for me and I followed the pattern, but it is ridiculously big, and I will have to rip it back. I made my mother in law one and adjusted the pattern and it came out much better. I still want one so I will have another go for me.

I started knitting a union jack out of some el cheapo worsted weight yarn and a free chart I found online. It has become a bit of a Frankenstein's monster, as it has so many colours and I didn't want to have lots of loopy yarn carried over in the back, so I first tried having lots of small balls on homemade bobbins, but ended up with a tangled mess. So now I'm doing it with a few yards of each colour into little ziplock bags which seems to be working better. My needles are also quite short which is making it a bit more difficult, but still workable I think. Not sure what I will do with it when it's done to be honest, maybe add blocks to it for a blanket or something. Really I just wanted to try using lots of colours and anything union jack related to an expat is like a moth to a flame.

I am also making a quilt. A massive one, to fit our bed. I've made two quilts before, one I started in 2002 and still have not finished. It's a single bed sized quilt, and was very ambitious considering I'd never even used a sewing machine before. It taught me a lot though and perhaps I will get it finished someday so one of the kids can use it. The other one was just a little simple winnie the pooh baby one in eye watering colours. All three kids have used it now, so I have got my charity shop money's worth out of the material :)
The one I am making will be blue and white and I am doing a snail trail pattern. I liked the pattern because it reminded me of MC Escher, my favourite artist. I haven't done that much yet, just a couple of blocks. Silly me thought once the kids started school I would have more time, but that has not been the case!

I have plans to make Christmas cards too, so need to do that this month. I know what I want to do and it shouldn't take too much I hope.

That's it I think. I will post pictures when I have some!

I saw these on another site and decided to have a go myself for a particular group I'm a part of. They're made out of bottle caps (like from soft drink bottles), felt and stuffing and stitched/decorated with embroidery thread.

The crown I'm very happy with, took me a couple of prototypes but I'm happy with the result. One of the cool things about these is they are small enough to fit in a square of a craft organiser box! The ladybird/bug needs a bit more work I think.

I'm going to work on a few others.

I finished the longies for Alex, yay! Not too bad for a first attempt, learned a ton of techniques so all good. I am going to make another (hopefully improved) pair definitely. I also want to knit some purple handwarmers for myself sometime.

I'm close to finishing my first pair of longies for Alex...one thing that is anadvantage to knitting your own baby trousers is that you an make them as long as you want. I breed short legged babies so this is a good thing, as trousers are usually way too long on them. I've got one leg done and started on the other so if I really got on with it I should defintiely have it done this week for sure. I've leant loads from doing this pattern, how to do eyelets for a drawstring, how to do short rows for bum room, how to do kitchener stitch for grafting (although I'd probably still have to look at the youtube video for next time), how to knit on circular needles and how to knit on double-pointed needles. I already have yarn for another pair to do after. I also want to knit myself some handwarmers for next winter sometime too, maybe in a fancy stitch. And in purple.

Photos to come on the longies once they're finished!

The last few weeks I have been sewing! With a small baby who likes to be held ALL THE TIME (like right now when trying to type this...), a sling or baby carrier really makes sense. I had a pouch kind with my first baby, I borrowed a Baby Bjorn with my second and then with this one I had very kind donations of a pouch and ring sling kinds. With both of them though I was having trouble getting comfortable with them. Alex mainly likes being upright, and I felt like I wanted his weight distributed across both my shoulders. I started reading about Mei Tai slings and wanted to try one, but didn't want to shell out loads of money! So I found some patterns online and sent about cobbling elements from several different ones to make my own. My first attempt I made in denim with purple accents.


The end result was good, but it's awfully heavy (about the weight of a pair of jeans) and a bit too big for my small baby. It will be good during the winter though.











So then I sent about making another with some design changes, overall smaller body lighter weight material, changing the position on the bottom straps. This one came out much better as it fits him well and he still has room to grow as in the photo it's actually folded up at the bottom.














I'm very pleased with the results. It's very comfortable (although takes a few minutes to put on, it's one ot use when baby is going to be in there a while, not popping in and out), has a roomy pocket on the front, and a flap to put up when he's sleeping for head support and keep the light off him. Eventually I might be able to carry him on my back, but we're not ready for that yet. If I were to make another one, I'd change one more thing that I ended up changing on this one but had to fudge it as it was too late really. Not bad for a novice sewer I think.

I'm also still knitting, making some longies for him...will update on those when I've done a bit more!

Finished!

Ok, here is my mini step by step guide to the way I did my kool aid wool dying. It is by no means the only way to do it, but I find this way easy and I like the blended results. I was a bit rubbish at remembering to take photos for every single step though, but hopefully took enough for the basic idea.

I did two lots yesterday so I'll show you both of them.

Here's what I started with, a selection of kool aid packages (need to be the unsweetened kind), and some 100% wool which happened to be a cream colour. You can use wool that is already dyed, but you will obviously get different results, a darker grey for example might give you more heathery colours. The kool aid colours are pretty neon, I have to say, I did not do a lot of experimentation in mixing colours yet, just wanted to get a feel for the process and see what I could come up with.


Next, I unravelled some of the wool from the ball around some chairs to make it into long pieces I could twist into chunks. Bear in mind that the amount of wool vs. amount of kool aid affects the result. I did fairly small pieces, as I didn't know how it would come out.

After that, I put the wool on to soak in some warm water with a very small squidge of dish soap in it to clean the wool. Here, my wool is fairly spread out, you can keep it more tied together if you wish, just don't tie it too tight or it will be like tie dye and those bits would dye well (unless you want that effect!).


Some guides said to add vinegar to the water, some said you didn't have to as the kool aid was acidic anyway. I did to the first batch I dyed, but after that didn't bother and it seems to have worked fine. While that is soaking for about half an hour, you can make up your kool aid mixes. Obviously use more packets for a more intense colour, although some of them are pretty intense anyway, such as the Blue colour.
I mainly used two packets of the powder, with not too much water, just a few inches at most. Bear in mind that the powder has the colouring on, and as I found out, it is VERY easy to get the powder on your fingers when opening the packets and if you don't wear gloves, your fingers will get dyed.

Here's the two lots I did, on the left is 2 packets of Grape and 2 of Black Cherry, and on the right 2 packets of Orange and 2 of Cherry.



Once the 30 mins is up, you can drain almost all the water from the wool, just leave it swimming in a bit. If you're going to use the same dish to soak and dye in, make sure it is a microwave safe dish.
Now the fun part. Set you dish somewhere where you can work that is right near the microwave, the less you have to jostle the dish to get it in the microwave, the better. Starting with the lightest colour first, pour in one corner. You can go slow and make sure half the wool is well covered with the dye. I liked to concentrate the colour into one corner. If it hasn't covered quite half you can get a plastic spoon and poke the wool into the coloured liquid a bit to make sure the wool gets dyed.
Here is me having put the Orange side in first.
Then put the other side in, again I concentrated in one corner, and let the two colours mingle in the middle. At this stage I did minimal poking as I didn't want to colours to mix beyond what was naturally happening, I only poked to make sure the wool got covered in the liquid. Here's the Orange and Cherry together, and then the Grape and Black Cherry.











Slowly and carefully, put the dish in the microwave. Cook for 2 minutes, let sit for several minutes, cook 2 minutes etc until the water around the wool is pretty clear, so that the wool has absorbed all the colour. On this one you can still see a bit of colour in the water, but it is still quite clear compared to how it was. Be careful to let your wool sit and cool a bit between bursts in the microwave, and that there is enough water in there, you don't want to be scorching your wool.


Let your wool sit for a few minutes as it will be very hot. Run your hot tap, and when the wool is cool enough to handle, rinse your wool. If you shock the wool with cold water, apparently it will felt.
Squeeze as much water as you can out first with just hands gently, and then roll in a towel and press to squeeze more of the water out. Hang up to dry and voila! You should have dyed wool. It is supposed to be colourfast, but a friend has said that hers did bleed a bit in the wash. I'll probably hand wash my stuff anyway.
Here's the wet versions of the two I made here, and then the dry versions.

I've not been updating this blog! I'm terrible at keeping up with it. I have a personal journal on Livejournal that I jot thoughts on every day things on, and can just about keep up with that. I should update with a couple of craft related items though....

For christmas I decided I wanted to make an advent stocking set. The idea being we could put treats and toys in for the kids and they could open one each day to see what was in it. Of course I decided to do this at the beginning of November, which didn't give me a lot of time to get it finished, but I managed it with some help from my mother-in-law, Sandy. I made them out of felt and some of them turned out better than others...I may revise some of the designs next year, but overall I was very pleased with the outcome. Here's some pictures.


Shortly after Christmas, on January 16th, I gave birth to our third (and last!) child, Alexander. He's now 8 weeks old and I am starting to use cloth nappies/diapers on him. I used cloth with our first child full time for about 18 months at which point I had our second child and with the two of them, I just couldn't get the hang of doing it all the time, I was too far behind on laundry. I did do it part time on and off with both of them, but eventually it went by the way side.
This time I'm having another go, as I only have one in nappies again, but it's going to take a while to build up a decent stash of nappies, at the moment I'm having to wash the very few we have all the time which is not only a pain in the bum, but quite wasteful on water too. One thing I decided I'd like to do it knit Alex some clothes that will serve two purposes, one I can knit things that will fit over the cloth nappies as most clothes are cut in mind for disposables without extra room, and another purpose can be served in that wool can be used as a water resistant wrap over the nappies to prevent leaks.

I'm very much a beginner at knitting, but I managed to knit a little pair of shorts for him in about 3 or 4 days. I just used a spare ball of wool I happened to have, and a pattern from Tiny Birds Organics, which can be found here. It's for an older baby, so in order for it to fit 8 week old Alex, I decided to go down two sizes in needle, and it fits him perfectly!




In fact, at the rate he's growing it probably won't fit him very long, so I'm going to be making more for him but a bit bigger since it'll be getting warmer outside soon. I'm planning to try and make him some longies too, which will be interesting...I've never used circular or double pointed needles before and I think I will need to! All a learning experience.

With more knitting in mind, I heard about dying wool with kool aid. It sounded like fun, and relatively easy to do, and I'd be able to make things with the wool after.
This is my first two attempts. I got some 100% wool in a cream colour, and different packages of kool aid, which is a vile drink over here...it's super sweet when you get the sweetened type and really bright colours. Different flavours give you different colours. I'm going to be doing a step-by-step account of the way I did it for the next tries, and I'll upload it here.
For the blue green one I used Lemonade for the yellow and Berry Blue for the blue on the other side with the fact it would mingle into green in the middle in mind. However, the blue overpowered the yellow a bit too much, so the colours came out more green than I intended, but I still like the result. The orange one is orange and lemonade for the yellow. I was more careful with trying to keep the orange from overpowering the yellow this time, but I did have some spots that were too tight together and didn't dye, but since the wool was a cream colour originally it actually blends well together.
Here they are wet, and then dry.


Ok, that's it for now. I will try and update more often. Promise.