Knitting Needle Holder

I made a roll to keep knitting needles in.
Some of them at least...

Layered pretty floral with vintage heavier turquoise and some white and turquoise striped cotton materials and sewed then RS together, then turned them trough so the long strip was lined.
Then, sewed some channels on the turquoise side, and stamped sizes onto vintage belt lining, cut it into squares and vliso-fixed each one to a channel.
It is all tied up with lovely tape measure binding that S4 gave me for Christmas last year.

Here are some little photos of the progress:

How much better, eh!


I was inspired by the roll I made for my lovely pens and pencils (again - SOME of them!!)

Porridge Coloured Wool

And I dyed some of the other porridge coloured wool:

 SCARLET RED:

This is going to be fun to knit with, as well!

Wristies and sockies

Just after Mum's Big Oh birthday my baby sister fell out of a car in an awkward moment and broke both her wrists (crawling out the back of a 4WD and her jeans hem caught on the tow-ball).
Here she is drinking gin at our nephew's wedding:

Ten weeks later she is still in strife with them, needs surgery (cos the hospital she went to didn't apparently do the right thing. The hospital AT WHICH SHE NURSES. So if they can fuck up the brokenness of someone they know and care about, what happens to strangers???? Just wonderin'.)

So I made her a pair of little wristies to cheer her up and protect her wrists and to tell her I love her heaps:

The bright multi-coloured wool is a soft and cuddly soy/wool mix, the turquoise is 8 ply pure  wool. Despite what it looks like it is really a 2Purl 2Plain rib, and with a picot cast-off (how smartie pants am I getting with my knitting, eh!)

I also made wristies for The Sweetheart to wear in his freezing cold office:

Is Opal sock wool, all ribbed to be stretchy and snuggly.

And lacy socks for my all singing, all dancing Bollywood Princess Parvyn Kaur Singh (Google her name - there are thousands of links to all sorts of delightful youtube sites, and to her songs. She is gorgeous!)
I added ribbons through the eyelets just for fun.

The lacy pattern is an easybubs "P5, K4tog, (YO, K1) 6 times, K4 tog, P5 (should still be 22 stitches - or whatever you started with!). Then, K three rows. Rep". You can do any number of purl stitches to fill in the side of the rows. I did the soles in Continental knitting so they would be thicker, and added an extra fine thread into the toes and heels. Two at a time, toe up - THIS is the method I used but there are lots of vids and pages showing how to do it. So much easier than one at a time, and really doesn't seem to take that much longer. Also, essential for lacy socks cos then the patterns are matching...

The Doona Solution

For years I have climbed inside the doona cover and then grasped the bottom corners of the doona and backed out, turning the doona cover inside out with the doona inside. And after a shake it is all beautifully flat and ready to sleep under.

I don't know why I thought of this - but it started cos I dyed a heap of ratty white (ish) t-shirts denim/indigo blue and am (still) cutting them into spiral strips with the long term plan of knitting something with the ensuing yarn. There were about 15 t-shirts so it is a lot of cutting.

BUT THEN!!!!!

What if I sewed a loop of the t-shirt yarn to those two bottom corners of the doona, and two long strings (actually one sewn in the centre to make two) to the inside bottom corners of the doona cover then all I would have to do is tie the long strings to the loops, flap the lot and instantly the doona is inside doona cover!!!

So I did it:

Easy as. and yes, it is a slightly grubby doona, but it is old, and it is way too cold and wet to worry about washing it now. I shall do that when summer comes around again...

(Obviously before I dyed the t-shirts., too)

PS - this is for you, Hayden so you wont ever have to struggle with your doona and cover ever again!

Happy birthday my Mummy!

A couple of months ago it was my Mum's 80th birthday.

And we all got together for the first time since 1996 (or thereabouts - though judging from the hairstyles it could have been the 80s...).

How funny are we?!

This was at the house that our Mum built in the bush out of Castlemaine.
From sandstone she dragged out of her own ground. AND it was double-rock walls too!!!
She was in her fifties when she did this, and didn't have any help until she got up above head height and was starting to stand on wobbly 44 gallon drums for scaffolding. Whereupon, she paid a bloke $10 to help her. All up, including the 15 acres of land, her house cost her $30,000.
She started this in 1986 - couldn't come to Melbourne to see newborn S4 in July because the slab had just been laid and needed to be looked after (and besides - "if you have seen one newborn baby you have seen them all..."!!!).

And here all we are 16 years later (goodness, how difficult it is to get us all in one place!!!):

We haven't changed that much...

Cos here we are when we were all little.
With three other cousins (they are the dark-haired ones!). It isn't such a crash-hot pic cos it is 50 years old and the colour has died a tad.
This was in the Mallee at our farm.
On the swing that our Dad made for a Christmas present (he didn't actually MAKE it - he got one of the farm workers to weld it up from pipes and a slab of timber. Lethal, but no-one ever got whacked with it. That I know of, anyway!). It fitted all of us, and was the most wonderful swing!

How CUTE are those little brothers!!!
And middle of winter and we all have bare feet!
Alpal's pant legs are filthy - and LOOK - he has a dolly!!!!
(And Noela and Marion look like they are also wearing shoes and socks - far right for Noela and Marion is in between two dark haired cussies in the middle of the swing. Softies!!).
This would be about 1962.