Secret Stitching

A few months back one of the lovely ladies from my local mums knitting group, Zoe, gave me some yarn that she wasn’t going to use. It was Patons Fuzzy Wuzzy and it looked like it was from the 1950s from the design of the label, although that’s most likely a ridiculous over exaggeration. I had about a ball and ¾ of each colour in a grey and a white and no ideas what to do with it. They went straight into the stash.

Zoe was pregnant when she gifted the yarn to me and as she grew and grew and started coming to the group less often I decided that it would be a nice idea to make something for the baby using the yarn. I found pattern in Simple Knits for Cherished Babies by Erika Knight which is surprising as I never really liked the book much as I thought the patterns were too simple. The pattern I chose was the Vintage Cardigan, which is mean to have a velvet ribbon sewn round the edges, but I decided to jazz it up a bit with some subtle colour stripes instead. This made the simple pattern a little more interesting for me and soon I was knitting away happily.

I made sure I bought two projects along to our group meet-ups in case Zoe came along and a few times my second project came out of the bag instead of the secret cardigan. The yarn was so soft to work with but quite fluffy and I realised that it probably wasn’t terribly well suited to baby garments, but I figured that perhaps it would fit a doll or a bear if it posed a choking/ breathing/ general health hazard.

The cardigan was finished about a week prior to the birth of beautiful baby Inez. I handed over the finished article to Zoe, a gift from gifted yarn and she loved it. Baby Inez has managed to model it for us here despite the warm weather at the moment. You’ll be glad to hear it hasn’t seemed to impair her breathing at all.

Happy Easter!

We had a lovely few days which included a trip to Upshire where we saw a heard of deer, a trip to the seaside and Flo’s first taste of chocolate!

It was so lovely going to the beach in the super sunshine we had this weekend. It felt like a proper family outing with sticky sun cream all over, sand between the toes and 99 Flakes to finish off. Flo absolutely loved the beach. I sort of expected her to find it strange and maybe a bit scary at first but she couldn’t get enough of having her toes in the lapping waves and crawling around in the sand. She managed to eat just one mouthful of sand which I thought was pretty good.

On Easter Sunday Flo put on her Sunday best and went to Easter mass where all the kids got Cadbury’s Creme Eggs at the end of the service. Before we’d even managed to get back to our seat she’d managed to eat at bit of the egg through the foil wrapper.

On Bank holiday Monday my Mum went a bit baking crazy and made two amazing cakes/ deserts. There was a towering Victoria sponge with fresh cream and strawberries and a raspberry and chocolate tart. Mmmmmmm! For quality control I had to sample both of course.

Limbo days

The last couple of weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind mixed with limbo. We had to moved out of our rented accommodation and move in with my parents temporarily while the purchasing of our first flat hopefully goes through. Therefore there was a lot of activity with moving stuff into storage, cleaning our old flat from top to bottom and trying to get the family settled in. Now there’s a bit of a limbo where we don’t know when we’re moving into our new place but we know we’re not staying at my parents for long.

Despite the uncertainty it is nice being back at the house I grew up in, if not a bit odd being there with my husband and daughter. Flo absolutely loves all the attention and constant entertainment, plus with all the good weather she’s having the best time running up and down the garden with her trolley of bricks, stopping very now and again to eat some grass. And yes, that is a hand knitted cardi she's wearing! We also have built in babysitting so have reaped the benefits of being able to have a shower in the morning, getting the odd lie in and occasionally going out together a night! Who’d have thought it?

Crafting has been a little on hold during the move, although I have finished a mystery project which I will reveal hopefully next week once it has been received by its lucky(?) recipient.

I have been working on a lacy blue summer top, which is making progress but I haven’t taken any pictures of yet to share with you. I promise to do so soon.

Sadly my class at the Creative Biscuit got cancelled due to a low number of bookings. I think this may have been down to its half term slot, so hopefully we will be able to re-arrange for another more suitable date. In the mean time they do have Craft Month coming up which is run by East London Craft Guerrilla who will be doing a variety of workshops along with an exciting sounding Crafternoon Grand Finale on the 27^th May. I think I might try to go along to that one.

Paper Love

This weekend it was Mothers Day and Flo gave me this very cute card. The hand knitted gloves holding hands are so cute!

I love knitting related cards and found these recently on Etsy. My fave is the pirate card. Apparently he’s working on an AAARRGGyle sock. Tee hee!

kNotes for kNitters have loads of other great cards, notebooks and totes and although they’re based it the US they’re well worth a look.

So did you see us on Pointless? This was the highlight of the show: