six and a half stitches

WHEN THE URGE STRIKES...

It is such at the moment around here, that if I sit down on the couch, I'm likely to fall asleep immediately. My mind remains active, but the body says, err, no, sleep. So when a small window of energetic craftiness takes hold, I tend to do things at speed, spurred on by guilt also that the piles have remained as piles for far too long. But I can atest to the fact the piles do turn into things eventually.

First up Max and I made mini muffins. Blue cakes, as Max would prefer they be called. Really banana muffins with butter icing which should be purple but looks more like grey, and coloured sprinkles on top. Then we moved onto the backtack project, and finished the bag - no peaking, I'll show finished images when the recipient has the Bunny of Bling - for the Bunny to travel in comfort with. Considering Bunny Of Bling comes with many presents, it was absolutely necessary a bag was made as well.

We then moved onto destroying - in the nicest, bestest, possible way - a little pile of fabrics and recreating them as a basket bag for Lisa. I don't want to ruin her surprise, so you'll have to guess for now how all this works. And hope for me that Lisa likes the fabrics and colours I have chosen. The basket bag comes with little accessories, which will have to wait for next week's crafty energy field to come round. It could come tomorrow, Lisa, in case you're fretting, or maybe not. The energy is very sly and doesn't give much away about when it will next return.

And then we gathered up various trims for Eireanns's Trim Swap, packaged them up, added in some extra bits, and they're now waiting to be posted. You didn't think I'd show them all did you? You'll have to wait till Eireann gets them to find out what they are. They all coordinate. Of course. But that's not all. I also got this little item finished:

It's the Sweeten pattern from Rowan Babies, knit in Rowan 4plysoft in a dark charcoal colour, with silver grey bias binding - unbelievably, this is the first time I've worked with bias binding - around the edges and for the ties. I spent the entire night last night watching two really bad movies (one had Arnold Schwarzenegger in it. That says enough really. That and the fact I can't be bothered checking whether I've spelt Arnie's name properly) and hand sewing the bias binding in place, and hand sewing the binding ties together. As soon as I'm done posting, I'm cutting out a little top to go underneath this...Great pattern, by the way. And quick.

But there's still more....And then I made playdough. Following advice and one of the recipes from the new Kiddley site, we made very uneven green playdough which has since been used to:: make dragons, make dinasours, rub through hair, throw across the kitchen, make trains, and dissect into tiny teeny bits to be trodden on.

And I made more piles.

BACKING ALONG

Backtack Bunny is finished. I just have to package her up and send her on her way. But the packaging is turning out to be just as elaborate. Full photos once she arrives at her new home.

And she likes her 'bling', so she must be treated with care.

And I have a small confession to make, which will undoubtedly piss a number of people off, but I have my reasons. My bunny is all white. Except for a small streak of minty blues. When I started out, there was black in there too. But as I cut, more and more white evolved. And suddenly the black was wrong on the body. And I planned to use it on the flower. And it got cut out, and pieced together, and was wrong. So bunny is all white. I don't think we ever intended BT3 to be black and white, but that it was black, or white, or both (and we did state that), but I think that got lost in our translation, or everyone embraced the black and white thing so wholeheartedly, that I'm now feeling a little insecure about what I've done. And then there's my other confession, which is that I started off making the BHG bunny pattern we made available, and that was what I intended making, and my heart just couldn't get into it. My heart really, really wanted to make a different bunny, and I've learnt that if the heart wants something different, follow it.

There are 5 buttons and an initial on it though. So I'm not completely off track with it!

And I'll play nicely for the trim swap. And the gift tag swap.

And I found an extra ball of grey wool for the baby wrap, so I'm feeling calmer about that. The dyelot is different, but undetectable to the naked eye on the ball, so just in case, I will use that for the under wrap part which wont be seen directly if the dyelots don't quite match once knit up.

WE RAN INTO SOME PROBLEMS ALONG THE WAY

It's not that I don't like pink. Far from it. I love pink of all shades:: from the delicate peony pinks, to the deep cerise jewell pinks, and most pinks inbetween. In moderation.

I've wandered past girl's clothes in shops for the last 4 years looking wistfully, and not without a little regret, that I couldn't buy some of the beautiful clothes for my own daughter. I honestly thought embracing the pink would come a little more naturally to me. But a wee wander through stores on Friday, where the prospect of actually purchasing pink, sent me into mild panic attacks (sorry Jo, the fairie category will have to wait). I can't do it. I can't stand being faced with that much pink. Especially for a newborn baby. Things I took for granted living in the Uk - like 5 packs of plain white sleepsuits from Mothercare or John Lewis without girly embellishments, or the beautiful muted colour schemes from Caramel Baby and Elias and Grace are unheard of here. I've looked. I came home slightly terrified of the immense girliness our house will be subjected to*. Boys were one thing, girls are another. And I can do it. I know I can. And I know it's rather futile to resist because even I as a child lusted after a sugar pink bedroom with gauche net curtains and lots of ruffles. But I'd like some containment please. I left the large shopping centre with all it's pinkness, drove around the corner to Tessuti's, bought some dark grey stretch fabric, some pearl grey buttons, and came home feeling a little overwhelmed, and immediately rifled through boxes.

A dark grey Rowan 4ply Soft is rapidly becoming a wrap top that will be trimmed in either a deep purple or lilac bias that will match deep purples and blues of some Liberty print fabric which will be a kimono wrap top from the japanese craft book, with little grey bloomers to match (OK, I'm assuming you all took notice of my post about Cari's baby stuff 2 posts down and all the links are there). Ahhh, I can feel the pressure disseminating already. Casting on with the grey wool immediately calmed my senses, and I felt much more optimistic. The pattern? A little wrap top from Rowan Babies. Despite having knit far too many wrap tops for my own good, I haven't done this one, but it's nice and polished, and works delightfully with this wool. And it wouldn't be a real knit project if I didn't forewarn you I will run out of wool. I'll be short about 1/3 of a ball. But I think I've got it covered. I have to order a heap of wool this week for another project, so can sneek a ball in, and because it's a wrap top, the under flap can be a different shade and it wont matter too much.

Thank heavens then, for small independant online stores which sell great baby stuff. Lisa's new venture looks fabulous - hooray!

* I will at this point add that I tend to buy neutral at the best of times, even for Max, and we already have a lot of red and white and cream and navy and greys so all is not lost. It's just the absolute gender distinctions that are out there enmasse which frighten me.

SUGAR AND SPICE, OR PUPPY DOGS TAILS

• Statistics say:: 49% chance of a Boy.
• Genetic Family History says:: 27% chance of Girl.
• Chinese Horoscope says:: Boy
• Ring test says:: Girl
• My notoriously unreliable intuition says:: Boy
• My very good friend Rosie says:: Girl
• My very good friend Cari says:: Girl
• My mother who is always right says:: Boy
• My father says:: Girl
• The belly poking out like a torpedo says:: Boy
• The food cravings say:: Boy
• Max says:: Little Sister
• The lovely charming scanner at the hospital says::

Well, they say I don't have to change any of the materials in Petite 6.5st's quilt. They say I can finish the green wrap cardigan with floral fabric if I want. They say perhaps I should learn to like pink. They say I can knit and sew kimono wrap tops till the age of 15 with gay abandon. They say I am now justified in buying loads of Liberty Print fabrics, and using my carefully stashed collection of Nani Iro fabrics.

They say:: Girl.

I say:: Always listen to your 3 year old child, because they are wise beyond their years (the story of Max saying he was having a sister freaks me out, he said it right at the beginning, without any prompting, and was quite determined it was a little sister, and the way he calmly said it made me stop and ask him what he had just said, and sent shivers through me), and bring on the sewing machine and knitting needles.

GLIMPSES

We'll try writing this for the second time.....and hope the post doesn't get chewed. I couldn't keep away from the sneak teasing shots for long. Here is backtack3 in progress. I've used some of the precious Florence Broadhurst fabric, and I can tell you, while it looks great, it's a pain to sew canvas by hand. No fun. But bunny is sturdy, if a little blind at the moment. About a third of my piles are about bunnies - the BT3 one, one for my goddaughter, one for Petite 6.5st, and Max couldn't be left out, so there will be one for him too. There's more sneal photos over at flickr.

And while we're on the monochromatic theme today, this lovely parcel of tags arrived from Abby this week, just in time for various parcels about to head out too :) They're so lovely, all of them.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a day to myself which is rapidly running out, some sewing, some knitting, some wool winding and some eyes to attach before chaos returns. The boys have gone, after making me pancakes for breakfast complete with a homemade mothers day card. Little things go a long way.

STOP TEASING. OK, I WILL.

For the last few months I've been showing teasing shots of a selection of things that were being done for a wonderful friend's impending launch into motherhood. I've not shown the full finished pieces, because I wanted to wait till Cari had received her parcel and had seen it first, and not on the internet. But now I can - Cari's cybershower should be in full swing, the parcel has landed, and the goods can now be shown and described. I've had some wonderful, wonderful feedback from people about the clothes - those who have seen the pieces in real life, and those who have seen what's on Cari's blog, and I feel for once that I need to properly explain where each piece comes from and how it was made. I know I don't do that enough, and I'm going to try harder to explain things.

I'm really proud of this set - It is sewed beautifully (am I allowed to say that of my own work?), using gorgeous materials, and the sweater is something I essentially made up as I went, and as my first foray into custom knitting, I'm very excited about the finished product.

Let's start with the jumper. I wanted to do something stripey, and I wanted to use wool I had in my stash already. I had some Blue Sky Alpaca/silk in a grey and very light blue that I've been wanting to combine for ages, so based the sweater around that. 3/4 of the way through the second sleeve, I ran out of that wool, having already added another wool to the mix to lengthened it out, and without a nice convenient stockist near me, hunted through the stash for something which would work. A nice ball of Eki Riva Baby Alpaca 4ply had my name on it. I ran out of wool again, but knew I could get more, so continued with that selection for the arms. (actually I worked my way through quite a number of possibilities, none of which looked right, until I eventually found the Eki Riva which I knew I had in a box, but couldn't for the life of me find despite upturning every box numerous times). The wool is used double to try and match the thickness of the Blue Sky. It doesn't, it's actually much thicker and tighter, but works nicely as a thickness contrast. The whole thing was knit on 2.5mm Addi circulars. It took a long time - way longer than I would normally spend on a baby sweater, but heck, it's worth it and I loved knitting it....The pattern is based very, very loosely on a raglan cardigan pattern in Erika Knight's Simple Knits For Cherished Babies. I amended stitch counts etc to make it a sweater instead, and changed the neck ribbing. I also got scared the neck opening wouldn't be big enough (I've made that mistake before) so made buttonholes down the left hand shoulder seam with additional ribbing. 2 buttons are fixed in place, and the other 3 are working buttons.

Now let's talk about the clothes. This is another set the same as I did back over New Years - same pattern from one of my japanese craft books (there's photos and links to a few relevant things in this post in this link including the pattern book). The kimono top is cotton, and an Aranzi Aranzo printed fabric (by the way, the service and friendliness of these people is excellent). I love these fabrics, and having bought a load last year, I've been waiting for the perfect moment to use them. Cari's baby and my own baby will be decked out in them. I french seamed each seam except the armholes - how I love french seams. Such a simple, neat finish, and I've said this before, but the perfect seam for baby clothes. 2 dark grey pearlised buttons on a ribbon loop hold it together, along with a ribbon tie inside. The pants just tickle me whenever I make them. They're gorgeous. A great antithesis to rugged 'skate' clothes in the shops. The material is top quality wool suiting with a hint of lycra in it from Tessuti's. It's soft, and stretchy, and should hold up to great wear. The little blue pinstripe works well with the other blues. The elastic in the legs can be taken out and it becomes a little pair of trousers if the idea of bloomers and bonnets doesn't fit.

The pattern for these is incredibly put together. There's simple patterns, and then there's simple patterns which just come together well and hold their shape and have had thought put into them - the cut is just right, the process of putting them together is just right. Having just finished another top (completely different pattern) that was 'simple' I can say it was the worst pattern for a top I've ever followed and rough - I'd have to modify it to make it neat and elegant (I'm talking about the Burda pyjama pattern now - the bottoms are the best bottom pattern ever, but the top - nahhh. Needs more work). Every moment of making these Kimono tops up has been joy - and perhaps that is because they are so tiny and small and elegant in their own right. I am itching to make my own baby these clothes - I already have piles (oh stop with the piles would you!!) of combinations, and special white fabrics picked out (it's a summer baby) and coordinating wools for jumpers......

6 OF ONE...

I have a teensy confession to make. It hasn't just been material I've been buying. There's been a dent in the world supply of japanese craft books over the last few months as well. I've uploaded a heap onto flickr so you can go over and see all of them there, but I wanted to share some of the sweetest inspiration images from one book, from Kitty Craft - ISBN4529041255.

Now if only my sewing stuff fitted neatly into a half dozen egg carton. And for those of you who I know are curious, look! A belly shot...

No, not really. I don't have pins sticking out of me, and I'm not that hairy. It's the closest you're going to get to a belly shot on here anyway.

PILE IT ON

You could be forgiven for thinking all I make are piles. Indeed, there has been more pile making than project making recently. It's a by-product of stash enhancement.

Many people have asked me over the months where I got the materials for Max's bubble quilt plus some of the fabrics I've used as kimono flaps on knitted jackets. It's all hand screen printed by two lovely ladies in Lilyfield in Sydney, who go by the name Prints Charming. They have, until now, been selling small scale through local fabric shops, and a few interstate shops. They recently opened a small shop adjacent to their workshop in Lilyfield which carries some fabric and some pieces made up - quilts and clothes, all of which are gorgeous. The best bit though, is being invited back into the workshop. These ladies are great - they run a small business doing what they love, they screen print everything themselves on the premises so every fabric run is unique and different. They get to experiment, play with colour, and be surrounded by fabric paint and rolls of material. And watching them pull box after box of fabric pieces out to show you and inspire you was a wonderful way to spend a morning.  Their sense of colour and graphic is great, and I love the fact they have made such a strong statement for children's fabrics. And I love the fact they loved Max's quilt. The pile of red on the left - patterned up, cut out, sewn up and about to fly across the ocean to a little girl called Brynne.

And then there are the piles of Had To Have fabrics. These piles I can blame on other people. Their links carried me to online shops, and my fingers twitched to buy. And after the third or fourth visit back to a site, well, it's only courteous to actually stop and buy. Eventually, via DaciaRay (and via a few other people along the way), I stopped at Kitty Craft and bought some quarters of various fabrics.

I have well and truly failed miserably at use What You Have Month. Now that's a surprise to some of you I bet. So now, slowly, I am turning these piles into things. My backtack project is hip hoppiting along, and is very white - ahhh, still teasing. Pyjamas have been made, and I know now why I am afraid of clothes. I am especially afraid of collars. And buttonholes now the magic buttonhole maker on my machine doesn't work. It turns out I am a heathen clothes sewer as well. So much so I think I need to learn to use bias binding (another fear). I've got another bunny cut out for Petite 6.5st. And in amongst all that, the various knitted inserts to the new baby quilt are coming along. I'm stalling on that one. Next week, hopefully, we find out the sex of Petite 6.5st, and then I can alter materials, proportions and balance if I need to.

As I've been typing this up, I've been trying to get some decent shots of the cats. Which is harder than you think with a flash, and cats who don't sit or stand still when a camera is pointed at them. Max has to do a show and tell thing each week, and we have failed terribly as parents the last couple of weeks and have not primed our child for wondrous adventures to show and tell. So I've resorted to speaking about the cats and sending print outs of cat photos. I'm really hoping that doesn't read as lame as it sounds, and is. Maybe he can discover a new planet this weekend and make up for it next weekend.

ROBOTS ALIVE!

Otherwise titled: Pyjama Irrationality In Mid Stage Pregnancy - Fact or Fiction

Last year, the wonderful Kelly sent me as part of her backtack2 package, some additional robot and spaceship material. She had made a series of things for Max including a painting smock, out of a similar material, and to say I had fallen in love with it, would be an understatement. The material has sat beside me in my workspace, taunting me to make it into something. On finishing the quilt for Max, I had this deep need/desire/obssessional pull to make Max pyjamas, and immediately thought of the robot material. What that has to do with the quilt materials, I have no idea, but becoming obsessed with making the robot pyjamas, meant I got obsessed about buying more hand printed material and making more pyjamas that would match the quilt. That's another story, where I show you how carried away I get in material shops with pretty colours all around me. No, Max really doesn't give a shit whether his pyjamas match his quilt, but it seemed perfectly rational at the time. And then I really got into the pyjama groove and thought I'd make Kelly's daughter pyjamas too, and ask for more material from her, because I'm pushy, to make even more pyjamas. More robot pyjamas to be exact, and to proove I'm not completely bonkers, Max woke at 5am this morning having wet the bed because we've now decided to remove the nappy at night and let me tell you that waterproof underlays DO NOT WORK IN COMBINATION WITH FULL BLADDERS and he demanded another pair of robot pyjamas to replace the sodden ones he was currently sitting in. So I need numerous pairs. Particularly if they have robots and space ships on them.

So I present green robot pyjama bottoms, with grey t-shirt with some of the robots and space ships blanket stitched onto the front. The pattern was so damn simple I'm not sure why I hadn't done this before (I have a fear of sewing clothes, which I am trying to overcome) and if anyone's interested in a simple no fuss pattern for boys and girls from 3-15 years, go straight out and buy Burda Pattern 9747. And expect to see a few pyjamas on here over the next few weeks.