Wet?

I’m so tired of the rain, as I’m sure everyone else is too.  Nathan nearly needed to swim out to his room yesterday arvo.

And after the drought over summer, watching the water overflowing from the tanks makes me want to cry.  Wish we had more storage capacity

This was yesterday’s pretty that arrived in the post.  I couldn’t resist buying some hand dyed wool.  It’s supposed to be for socks, but I don’t think that my knitting skills are anywhere near good enough to use it, so it may end up as a gift.  Love the colours though.

This is what I’m currently knitting.  It will eventually be a dishcloth.  I looked for some large ply cotton, but couldn’t find any, so thought I would try this yarn.  It’s 100% corn fibre.   Really soft and lovely to knit up.  You might have noticed I have a thing for variegated colours.  They are so neat!

Ian was lovely and bought me home flowers yesterday.  What a nice guy.  I was a bit mean tonight and told him that i liked the thought behind them, but thought they were pretty ugly flowers.  Ungrateful wretch aren’t I?

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One of these things is not like the others………

Some of the new girls are just starting to come onto the lay, and looky what we got today   Sam I am, Sam I am, do you like green eggs and ham?

I got pretties in the mail today.

These handmade buttons may or may not be added onto the quilt.  They look nice anyway.

And a cool kitset bag to try.  Although I have made a promise to myself that I will only sew Cameron’s quilt, till its completed, hopefully in time for his birthday in a few weeks.  I got almost half of it quilted tonight at sewing class, so it’s looking hopeful.

Its a good thing I like Silverbeet (or swiss chard depending on where you’re from), as we have so much of it growing.  I fed a huge bunch to the chooks and some to the cows, and had a big pot full with dinner.  Good that something is still growing.  Roll on spring.

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A new bag

I’m glad that there’s nothing on TV on Sunday nights, makes it easy to get on with my jobs   It was pretty cold here so we closed off the lounge and I sat at the dining room table and finally got this bag finished.  I started it a few weeks ago.  I’m pleased with the way it turned out, although it’s a bit bigger than i expected.  Reversible.

I even got this cute newborn/small all in one nappy made up, it’s part of the pressie for Matt’s boss.  I’m hoping that she will use cloth nappies if she sees how cute they are

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Stash busting :-)

I’m still on a mission to get rid of the stash of nappy making fabric that I have here.  So here’s a new bunch of nappies. 

Mmmmm minky.  All these have a hidden layer of PUL film.  I’ve changed to the larger pattern that i have, so I will get maximum usage from these.  Very unlikely that Cam will outgrow them before toilet training.

Plain ones.  The yellow and blue are the larger pattern, the white one is Ditto’s (just because I wanted to use a small piece of PUL).  You can see i was feeling too lazy to do the leg casing for elastic on these, and I’ve found although it looks nicer, it doesn’t add to the resale value or make any difference to the fit, so lazy is okay today

I had enough burgundy PUL to do this with same colour wings, but wanted to do something with the offcut of train PUL I had (Cam loves trains), so I used it as wings on this nappy.

I had this cut out, snapped and mostly sewn when I did the others similar back in Jan (i think it was Jan, ages ago anyway), but was waiting for matching FOE (fold over elastic), but by the time I got the FOE i had sold off the other nappies similar, as I still couldn’t get a good fit with them on Cam.  So this one has been waiting to be finished.  I have made the leg casing and elastic as tight as possible and have to hope that Cam has filled out enough to fit it better now. We’ll see.  Otherwise it will be gifted to someone.

All the nappies made this week (except the burgundy one) have these nice engraved snaps on them, which I got as part of a co-op on TNN.  Cute aren’t they.  Some have stars and some have the Chinese symbol for “blessings” (well that’s what I was told, who knows what it says really, could say “little buggers” for all i know)

Back with another blog when I’ve done more work.  I’m off to finish a bag I started a few weeks ago.

P.S Hi to the old friends who left a comment on the last post.  Great to hear from you.  We are having a BBQ in a few weeks for Cam’s birthday and Nathan’s boy pad warming, so we’ll be in touch with an invite.

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Stuff

Wipes I made for Cam the other day

Bibs and wipes finished today for a pressie

The shoes and slippers for a swap

Bread made today in the crockpot.  Very yummy, a bigger loaf than the breadmaker, and faster too.

Dessert tonight, with the raspberries we picked in Feb.  Damn they freeze well.

We had about 35mm of rain up till 5pm today.  Had to feed the chooks inside their house as it’s so wet.  Both water tanks are only about 2 inches from the top, hooray.  Wish it would stop raining now.

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Back to school and work

Ian was out the door today at 6.45, and I was up to get Lilly out of bed at 7.00. Bit of a rude awakening for me.  Cam hasn’t been waking till 7.30 usually and then we go back to bed for quarter of an hour for a booby and a snuggle.  He did notice that Dad was missing this morning   It is nice an quiet now.  I’ve put Cam in bed for a sleep (Ican still hear him playing though, so I can’t sew).  The house is clean, I got vacuuming done, and two hours of weeding while Cam played and ate dirt.  I did remove the cow poo from his hands in time to stop that from being eaten.  I hope Daisy’s aren’t poisonous either, cause he chewed on a few of those too.

Not much to say about yesterday.  Rained heaps.  Ian did some weeding of the garden beds in preparation for spring planing (yes, in the rain, he’s a masochist sometimes),

Ian planted the garlic on Thursday.

 I stayed inside and did the weekly baking.  Since reading ‘The Good Life’ by Linda Cockburn we’ve made a bit more effort in conserving energy.  So baking once a week makes sense.  I made the Chelsea Sugar Muesli Bar, Chocolate muffins and Banana Cake.  Did a little bit of sewing in the afternoon, just some more wipes as I always seem to be running out.  I got some bibs cut of the velour towelling the i have, but haven’t got any flannel for the other side, so can’t sew them till tomorrow when Mum brings me some.

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Kids are gross sometimes.

My Brother drinks out of the toilet.
He does it make Mum go mad.
Each time she catches him at it,
She says, ‘I’m telling your Dad.’

Dad really tries to get angry,
But he laughs again and again.
So Mum crept up behind Cameron
And suddenly pulled on the chain.

When all the water had settled,
Cameron was not to be found.
She’d flushed him away down the toilet,
To the drains under the ground.

We never saw him again,
But sometimes when I sit on the loo,
I can hear his faraway voice
Crying, ‘please don’t do a poo!’

Names changed to imply the guilty party. This poem is in a great book I got for the kids ages ago. It came to mind this afternoon, when Ian took off the bathroom door to plane the edge, and no-one realised that Cameron was amusing himself in there :-0  Add this to the drinking of rainwater and mud from the puddles, and trying to drink tomato sauce from the bottle tonight (it’s a vege right?). Truly disgusting.

I was glad he consented to an afternoon sleep today. Cam has made  a lovely habit of sticking his fingers down his throat if he doesn’t want to have a afternoon sleep. Needless to say I’ve had a whole lot of extra washing in the last couple of days. Charming lad.

Matt’s girlfriend dyed Matt’s hair last night and we decided to dye some of Nathan’s with the leftover dye. Here’s the result. I love it!

I even got some sewing done today. I finally finished unpicking the border of Lilly quilt last night (while watching ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’ which is the most romantic film ever), and sewed it back on in the correct place this afternoon, and i got the back made and ready to go. I needed to have a spare 4 inches on the back all around the quilt, and I just scaped by. Phew. NOw I can drop it off to the shop to be quilted on the big machine, then I just need to bind it.

I finished off another pair of Leather baby shoes, just one more pair to go. Here’s a pic of the pencil roll we all helped make on Friday.

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A bleak place.

Well I thought I would elaborate further on our visit to the big smoke this week.  It was disappointing to say the least.  The kids and I hit town about 11ish, and went straight to Kirks which wasn’t far from our start point.  Not too bad, mostly just checked out the toys and lollies (the kids being real interested in clothes and stuff – NOT).  I did notice the the kids clothes were hideously overpriced (well, I thought so), saw some lady asking her daughter if the granddaughter wanted a Trelise Cooper coat (oh to be rich ) :-0.  I felt like a right country bumpkin .  Then we went across the road to browse a new bookshop (boring) and then back to where Ian was working to see if he was ready for lunch.  He wasn’t, so the kids and I went to a food court to have lunch.  It was bang on 12, so the place got seriously busy, not too bad when you’re sitting down eating, but after that we attempted to do more shopping.  The sea of human traffic is horrible.  It’s a freaking minefield just to get to the right side of the footpath.  I was glad I had Cam up high in the Patapum, cause there is little room for buggies.  You can’t even look in shop windows or you impede the flow of traffic, and when you see a shop you want to go in (Dymocks for us),  you have to dive through the hoards of people to get there.  Feels like being in a battle zone.  I really wanted to go up to Cuba street to check out the better shops, but was tired out after just a few, so we went down to the park instead. 

 

The other thing that got me was that by the shops and offices 98% of the people were wearing black.  I know it’s a slimming colour, but it made Wellington seem very depressing.  I am NEVER going to work there.

 

Anyway that’s my rant about Wellington over, rest assured that we won’t be back for a long time.

Here some pics of the kids from our trip.

 

Picked up the new secondhand Bernina for the kids today.  A bit disappointed, it wasn’t in great nick like the guy said.  Ian had to re solder where he had put a new part in, and give it a proper service.  I felt a bit ripped off and the guy we bought it from is a sewing machine tech, I’m bloody lucky I have my own though.  It’s working much better now.  I might even let them loose on it tomorrow.

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I can’t decide………

if I’m glad the holidays are nearly over or not.  The kids are driving me up the wall a bit (mostly just cause they are noisy), but on the the other hand Nathan and Lilly are a whole lot nicer to each other when they are home for the holidays.  I’ve enjoyed Ian being home too, and I know Cam will really miss him when he’s back at work next week

 

We had a nice day in Wellington yesterday, well sort of.  The kids did.  The plan was for the kids and I to do a bit of shopping, then meet Ian for lunch, but Ian’s work went on a bit longer, so the kids and I did our own thing.  We shopped a bit, the kids mostly bought lollies from Kirk’s Then we had lunch at Indian Express, which was awesome, then we did a bit more shopping at the Dymock’s sale, then went over to Frank Kitt’s park.  Everyone (except me) had an ice cream, then Nathan and Lilly had a go on the X-Ride electric skateboards that they have for hire down by Te Papa.  What a great time they had, if I hadn’t been chasing Cam down I would have had a go too. I took some pics on my phone, so will try to load them tomorrow. A quick visit at Te Papa and then back to meet Ian at the carpark.  I stopped at Spotlight on the way home and got the backing fabric for Lilly’s quilt and some more material for Jammie’s for Cam, and some knitting cotton to make a couple of the knitted dishcloths that I love.

After dinner i did man stuff.  I had ordered a small cabinet for Cam’s room from here, of course it was flat packed, and had crappy instructions, but I got it assembled in the end.  The service was great, it was here yesterday and I only ordered it Monday night.

Cam was happy to play with it for ages this morning, hiding things behind the doors, it’s in his room now filled with cars, planes and tractors.

Matt finally went and sat his learners license test yesterday.  Luckily he passed, cause he didn’t study much, but Jilese was doing her test, so we paid for Matt to do his too. About time.  Public transport is very limited here.

While we were in town yesterday our lovely friend gave me this great stack of books to take home.  Isn’t she great?

And just to show what a small world it is out there………… Tonight I won an auction on TM for a Bernina sewing machine I wanted for the kids to use.  It was a bidding war in the end, but it was still a good price.  Afterwards I phoned the guy selling it, who turned out to be the local Janome dealer, but also the father of a lovely guy that I worked with at Bernina head office many (18) years ago.  Can’t wait to pick it up tomorrow.  I might be able to get a good discount on a coverpro

Re- WIP, got the pencil roll done, our best one yet (pics tomorrow), Ian even did some while I was busy on the computer , still need to get the other shoes done.

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Half done :-)

I got half of today’s jobs done.  One pair of leather shoes made, and one pair of minky slippers, one more pair to go (plus one spare pair for trading), which are cut out ready to go.  Nothing done on the pencil roll of baby stuff yet though.

We are off to Welly for the day tomorrow, hopefully we will have time for a visit to spotlight.

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