The End of 2007

I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday over the Christmas break with everything going well for you. We had a great Christmas. On the Sunday we spent it at my sister's enjoying a bbq and swapping presents. My parents were spending Christmas with friends at my aunt's house so we decided to catch up beforehand. Isabelle received a lovely bike off mum and dad, and Lachlan received a Dragonology board game and a DVD player too. The game is great as we have already tested it out once. Christmas Day we cooked a beef and a turkey on our spit roast. It was delicious with the roast vegetables. We had 14 relatives over to enjoy the day with us and had so much food left over we spent the next few days trying to eat it all. The dogs and cats had a few delicious leftovers to eat too.
As for knitting, I managed to finish off 2 hats before Christmas Day for Paul's mum and her partner. They turned out really well too. Lachlan was the only willing model though for me to photograph. I have posted the details over on Ravelry and if anyone is interested I will post them here too, so let me know. I have been trying to finish off 2 knitted items for Isabelle, so hopefully in the next week I can post about them. I also started another sweater for her, but I am making it in a larger size so it will last longer. It is Erin from the Rowan Storybook of Little Knits. There are so many fabulous patterns in this book, and this will be the first of many made I am sure. I will post about that project at a later date though. I have been updating my ravelry stash too, and hope that over the next few weeks I can get it all updated. It seems as though I spend more time on it than I do knitting at the moment. There are so many great projects that people have designed and created that I could really spend hours more on it but I do try and limit myself now.

We also ventured down to Point Lonsdale yesterday to spend time with Paul's family. We spent the entire day at the beach. Isabelle even managed to body surf on her boogie board on the small waves that were coming in. There were about 20 or so kids lined up riding along all together. It was so cute and adorable and the noise was fantastic too hearing them scream along with the waves. We finished up at Paul's auntie's house for a bbq dinner and some delicious fruit to nibble on. By the time we left it was getting late, and we all managed to get sunburnt in some place or other. Isabelle's legs are so sunburnt and my shins are burnt too. Paul's side managed to get burnt as well even though I smothered him in sunscreen. I also discovered a lovely shop at Point Lonsdale called Wildpurl. It is on the main street. They sell clothes, a few homewares, little knick knacks and also YARN! I saw the knitted backpacks and toys in the front window and thought ooh I'll pop in and see. There were lovely knitting books, rowan yarns, louisa harding yarns, felted slippers, beautiful buttons and trims, knitting needles with the fancy spotty ends that I really like and a few other goodies too. I could have spent quite a while in there. I bought some Rowan tweed 4 ply yarn which they were trying to clear at the price of $4.75 a 25g ball which was great, so I popped 8 into my basket to buy. I also got 2 little baby knit patterns which look lovely for gifts too. I also spotted an aussie celebrity walking along the street too, Andrew Daddo from Getaway, looking very tanned and relaxed, wearing no shoes and chatting on his mobile phone.

I think today the kids and I will be lying on the couch covered in some aftersun cooling spray until my family come over for New Year's Eve later today. I really do hope it cools down by tonight and we dont need to stay inside all night under the air-conditioner. I just hate the heat and it seems so much hotter lately too. I suppose having sunburn doesnt help does it.

I hope you all enjoy your New Year, so HAPPY NEW YEAR and may 2008 be a very creative, happy, relaxing year for you all!!!!

Have A Very Happy Christmas!

I would like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a healthy, happy and fantastic year for 2008! I have gotten to know some really lovely wonderful people through this blog and have made hopefully longtime friends too.

All my knitted presents are finished, and I will post about them after the xmas break. No time at the moment as I have snuck away for a moment whilst Isabelle is watching Carols in the Domain on the tv singing and dancing away. I have also received some really beautiful handmade postcards as part of the postcard swap that Nichola organised again for this year. I must say that it is always so nice to receive special cards in the mail.

I must too say a big THANK YOU to Corrie and Claire for their PIF gifts too. Silly me signed up for 2 PIF's, which I should have realised at the time, but I do have to say that with all the stress with Lachlan and other stress related matters happening in my life I just plain forgot. I tend to forget quite a few things lately. Hopefully that will improve over time as things begin to calm down. I hope I havent offended anyone by being so stupid. I still intend to hold up my end of the PIF so I will make 6 lovely gifts to send off to the first 6 people who would like to participate. Your only requirement is to agree to send off a gift to 3 other people within 365 days. If you leave your name and favourite color in the comments I will create something for each one of you which I really hope you will like.

Well I am being called back to the tv room, so I must go, but I do hope that you all have a really wonderful Christmas with lovely family, friends and neighbours.

Christmas Angel

Look who arrived yesterday to be put atop the Christmas tree! A wonderful little angel along with the wonderful lino printed cards and beautiful brooch from Simmy who had a little contest, and I was very lucky to win. It was during the AWFUL WEEK from hell that I was having so this really cheered me up. Simmy and her family are so talented too, so pop on over and check out her wonderful stories, her little shop full of goodies and see how great she is. THANK YOU SO MUCH SIMMY for the wonderful gifts. I am sure that the angel will be an heirloom for our tree from now on. She is just so beautifully made.

I have also been knitting away. I am about to knit a beautiful ballet wrap style cardigan for Isabelle from Junior Knits called Theresa. It looks very pretty in the book. I only found 4 other people who knit this pattern on ravelry so I do hope mine turns out nicely. We also attended our family get together at Paul's grandmother's on Sunday. Poor thing, she was too busy being sick, but eventually calmed down enough to enjoy herself. I got to hug a few new babies that I had knit gifts for but hadnt met yet. They are both gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Lachie couldnt get enough of Sam, and surprised everyone with how good he was with him. Isabelle wore her new cardigan too, but alas decided to play in the grass with her cousins, so it had to have a delicate trip through the washing machine and thankfully all the prickles and burrs, and grassy bits came out and the cardigan looks like new again. I will try this weekend to get a photo of her in it as we have Paul's brother's BBQ this Sunday over in Murrumbeena (and I will be making sure that the cardigan is not going to be dragged through the grass again) and try and take a picture of her in it then all dressed up. It is supposed to rain by then, but hopefully it will hold out for a few hours on Sunday. Other than that I am still knitting my sister's sweater but it is still boring to take a pic of. No-one likes to see just boring ribbing do they? I am hoping after next week that I will get more of a chance to sit down and do some knitting as the children finish school next week for 6 weeks. We are not going away this year so maybe a few little day trips here and there will stop the kids becoming totally bored. Well that is it for now as I am off to knit.

P.S. Thank you to everyone who left me wonderful comments about Sweet Pea. I loved each and every one of them and I really do appreciate the time you to take to leave me a comment too. So thank you so much!

Sweet Pea

This is all the knitting I have done for the last 2 weeks, and last night I finished it.

Pattern: Sweet Pea from Sublime DK Book 607.

Size: 71cms

Yarn: Sublime Merino DK, 7 balls of cherry red, and Zara 1 and a half balls of dark purple.

Flower: A small bit of light blue Zara yarn.

Started: End of November, finished 7th December 2007.

I really enjoyed knitting this (apart from the ribbing on the collar) which seemed to take FOREVER! I cheated with the flower instead of knitting an i-cord I just used a french knitter (is that what they are called) and did the cord that way, much easier.

Overall I am quite happy with this sweater and I do hope to take some pictures of Isabelle wearing it too to show you how it fits.

Apart from the knitting I seem to be busy all the time. On Wednesday night we had Isabelle's christmas concert which was great fun, and they got the parents up to dance too.

Today we had sports day - Isabelle got 1st in high jump and the 60m sprint which was fantastic. It seems for the rest of the weekends until Christmas we have something on every weekend so I have had to write a list so I remember everything we need to do. I only need to knit a hat for my aunt for Christmas, a last minute decision. I am still knitting away on my sister's sweater although it is only ribbing at the moment so boring pictures I am afraid. I really want to try and knit something for a few little ones that I have some small presents for so I will see how I go with them. I hope everyone gets a chance to relax before Christmas and I will try and post Isabelle's pictures before then. Happy knitting!