Crochet Hat for Violet

I paid 20c for this model this afternoon.

Cheap.

This is for cousin Violet who is 1 soon and since I'm into crocheting at the moment and its a bit cold and her name is Violet and I love her Mum  lots and I've never met Violet yet even though I was given a chance, I made her this hat!

I tried it on a 7 month old baby boy today (a big boy for his age) and it was perfect on him, it is also pretty perfect on my boy above.  I need to write down what I did, cause I think I have finally cracked it on a good shape that fits!

Warm winter things for newborn baby girls

I have finished off the things for my friends new little girl. 

Pink is easy!

A big rug/quilt (not really quilt but you know) made with beautiful flannelette and chenille and binded with pink spots.  No handstitching went on here (binding) as this little beauty needs to be very washing machine friendly as I am hoping this gets used and used and loved and cuddled.

Some warm winter crochet hats for newborns.

Finally I can make these for someone where they will actually fit.  I am determined to upsize this pattern to fit Lilly this year properly.  Here is last years efforts.

There wasn't much in the way of cute flannelette at spotlight this week, I found the white owl print, which is pretty cute.  I just hemmed it into a big bunny rug, can't have too many of them!

and I finished off my crocheted cushion.

Now that wasn't easy- getting that thing onto a pillowcase.

It turned out ok in the end.  But it was tricky stitching it onto the fabric first, without pulling it all out of shape.

Back of the cushion. 

It is going on my bed, not Lilly's!

Now I need to paint my bedroom and make it look worthy of this cute cushion.

My Creative Space

Supplies purchased from the Light yesterday ready to make some snuggly bunny rugs for my friends new baby.  I am backing the animal print flannelette with the light pink chenille.  I splashed out on new scissors too!

Repurposing an already repurposed vintage doily! Is that possible!

This is Lilly's dress which she has outgrown, so I am unstitching the waistband to remove the doily (I slipped it in without cutting into it, knowing it couldn't stay in a dress forever)  thank goodness I did this!  Cause right now, that doily is exactly what my table needs, it is perfect, blue and red to go with the blue enamel jug on my table.  The dress should be ok, after restitching the spotty waistband back down and some other little friend can wear it.  Such a great pattern that Miss Madeline dress from the Handmade Dress.

Monarch Caterpillar update...other updates here and here...

Here we have one of the younger caterpillar's (not Munchie, who is huge now by the way and at school for the project today!)  who has just shed its skin, the kids watched him wriggle out and I caught this picture just as he popped out.  We noticed how bright the yellow stripes are immediately after this and we now know that's why some of the caterpillar's look 'dull' at times.  You can just see the old skin curled up on the leaf behind him, now he is so bright and the black stripes are so glossy, we think they shed their skin about 4 times in the 2 weeks they are caterpillar's. 

What a way to eat your breakfast!  I can highly recommend having nature at the breakfast bench, cause as they are eating, they are studying and watching-  not one ounce of fighting or bad behaviour goes on. 

Here is Lilly, with her 'habitat' ready to present today.  Munchie is on that piece of milkweed in the plastic bottle.  We did up this poster using all our photos and things we have learnt about the Monarch Butterfly lifecycle and she is taking that in as well. 

More Creative Spaces Here!

China Love

Yes sir, I love china, heaps and heaps.

Think it's my Mum's fault.

I've loved it since I was a teenager.

And I especially love it when I get it for a bargain.

Like this selection above, which completely doesn't match, but that just makes it all the more special, cause one day when I find a random bit which does match a bit I've already got- that's like winning lotto (I think kind of, not really).

The blue/gold floral cup above is a new find from the weekend trip to Goomeri, we called in at the (expensive) Kilkivan Antique shop, this cup was $6.  That's alot, for a random cup.  It's a Crown Staffordshire and the saucer under it was also $6 and its Anysley and soooo cute. 

When I find the cup that matches that saucer, that will be a winner!

But until then, I love it like this.

And check out this gorgeous gold Japanese Coffee set for 6 lucky people sipping coffee.

My Mum found me this at the Collectorama on the weekend.  I mentioned that I was into gold china at the moment and she found this for $25.  Now that is a serious bargain, it is mint condition and I can't wait to use it.  Coffee at my house very soon for the local readers with scones too to try it out...actually, that will be open to the 'commenting' local readers only, hint, hint!!  Thanks Mum, I love it.

This is what makes me happy, piles of this stuff!

This is all thrifted china, all english and all old and unmatching, I love it.

This is a few years worth at least, the op shop ladies are getting smart and pricing it high, not as many bargains these days.

I changed my kitchen hutch display last night, to a yellow theme, since I am loving the gold.

That is a very precious carnival glass bowl on the left that belongs to my husbands mum.  I don't know alot about carnival glass, but I believe it is very precious and I really love it.

The plain yellow Royal Albert cup and saucer with gold rim belongs to Lilly, she let me get it out of the china cabinet to join the other yellow friends on the hutch!  I gave it to her last year.  She loves yellow!

And here is my efforts from yesterday's car journeys, nearly sewn up. 

It will be a small cushion but so bright and colourful.

It is Lucy from Attic 24's pattern.  With a couple of changes also known as mistakes. Never mind!  But now looking at this picture, they are so obvious to me and making me a bit mad now the more I look at it!

Pumpkin Festival

Today we went to Goomeri, to the Pumpkin Festival.

It was awesome!

On the way, I crocheted. 

And on the way home I crocheted. 

And now I am almost finished the front of my cushion! 

Will be revealed soon!

We watched the street parade.  This is the winning whopper of a pumpkin!

We saw horses, stock whips, drafthorses, working dogs, bands, old cars, pumpkin pagaent princesses...

Mum and I checked out the crafty section and saw some quilts including this gorgeous hexagon quilt, which was massive and the hex's were tiny.  Now... I haven't made many quilts so I'm not really in a position to be too critical BUT I would never ever spend a trillion hours hand piecing something like this and then machine quilt it with a revolting bright green thread in a pattern that just doesn't do anything for anyone! 

Machine quilting is def the way to go, but surely a nicer colour and pattern would have been better.

Here are the cute mini pumpkin themed quilts!

We ate pumpkin scones and pumpkin pie! 

This is pumpkin pie, it was good. 

They (the CWA type ladies) were very secretive about the recipe for pumpkin pie which kind of made me mad, cause I really didn't want their exact recipe, I just wanted to know if there was a pumpkin pie recipe in the special cook book they had for sale!

Me and my BFF Kimmy and the pumpkins! 

Our super cute kids enjoying the fairy floss.

Kimmy insisted on going in the famous Pumpkin Rolling Competition and she entered herself and her son Kai.  He chickened out (actually I think he realised his Mum is nuts)  so my boy Joey stepped up to the mark. Here he is trudging up 'Policeman's Hill' to the starting line.  All 680 of them lined up ready to roll their pumpkins!

And here they are with their tagged and numbered pumpkins getting marshalled! 

 It is big business and you can be disqualified for stepping over the yellow line!

Kimmy ready to roll, she was number 367!

And she is nuts, but I love her!

Joey and me waiting patiently, he was number 162!

The view down the hill from the starting line. 

Somewhere down there at the bottom is our family dodging flying pumpkins that hit gutters and got airborne!

Joey's pumpkin went well, flying down the middle then hurtling off to the left...

...and came to rest somewhere around here.  The policeman you maybe able to just see is standing nearby to the special yellow spot that marks $1000 if your pumpkin comes to rest right on it! 

No one won the $1000 this year!

We picked up 6 pumpkins! 

They are in pretty good condition too considering they were hurtled down a bitumen road.  Actually everyone picked up pumpkins.  I thought it was a bit wasteful at first, but every single pumpkin was taken away and we have pumpkin soup in the slow cooker ready for dinner tonight!

We loved the Goomeri Pumpkin Festival and have marked it in our calendar for next year!

Organising Craft (trying hard to)

There is a million different options for doing craft/drawing/colouring here at this house. 

I am always tidying it up.  Here is the latest array of options.  (there is another small box housing all the derwent pencils in tins and oil pastels and textas as well!)

I was running out of containers- upright sides, not sloping are the best to house pencils, crayons and textas.  So I got the mod podge out and these cute scraps and made over a milo tin!

So I think I'll be doing a few more since it looks pretty good and works perfectly.  These are Joey's chubby pencils.

She is only 7 years old and she can draw.  I find  these 'sketches' scattered all over the place. 

I am pretty sure this one is a donkey.  Clever girl Lill!

Monarch Caterpillar Update

Munchie the caterpillar is growing!

He/she has more than doubled in size in 1 week and yesterday we saw him/her shed its skin!  They do this a few times as they grow but we've never actually seen it happening before.  You can see the skin behind him (look I am just going to refer to Munchie as a him ok!!)

And my 2 trusty caterpillar observers keeping a close eye on things.  You can just see Munchie on the underside of a leaf nearby to Lilly who is on the right of the picture.

p.s. like I predicted we now have a total of 8 caterpillars, in various stages of growth on this one branch of milk weed!  It is amazing how tiny the eggs are and all of a sudden if  you study the leaves closely tiny tiny caterpillars seem to appear before your eyes.  And as I also predicted, we will be needing another fresh branch to continue feeding these little guys which will in turn bring more eggs!  So as soon as Munchie turns into a chrysalis and then a butterfuly, we will put the branches back at the milk weed patch so the rest of the little caterpillars can do their thing there!

My Creative Space

Colourful spotty fabric cut in 3 inch wide strips, the width of the fabric, and pressed ready to become apron ties!

The finished product.  A simple cafe style apron.

I am co-ordinating our school fete cafe this year in August.  And I decided to make a start on the prettyness of the cafe since I still have a couple of months to go.  I thought we'd all look matching and colourful in bright aprons.

I took advantage of Spotlights 20% off spots and stripes and $10 gift card to get 7 different colours in the mini dot.  I am making 7 aprons at this stage (not sure how many people we'll have at any one time on the day working, but its a good start).  And with the leftover I am making bunting to hang around the marquee in all these gorgeous colours.

More creative space!

Lemon Butter and Paper Craft

Yesterday we had a day at home.

I made Lemon Butter using a recipe from Julie Goodwin's new book and the kids made flowers. 

They made lots of colourful flowers using cupcake cases, pipe cleaners, paddle pop sticks and crepe paper.

Lilly was testing out ways to make flowers for table centrepieces at our school Fete Cafe I am helping organise.

I think they are beautiful. 

Yummm Lemon Butter, best eaten straight from the jar!

Garden Dam Exploring

This is my newest garden.

I really like cordylines at the moment.  I got most of these from a grower up near Noosa for a good price a couple of months ago, they are doing really well. 

I also got a couple of Brom's as well, I think this one was $10, its big and so glossy and green.  You can just see my shell collection amongst the leaves.  Thats where  we dump all the shells that do not have a hole in them and we sit and fossick through them for something to do.

This weekend the kids explored the dam (thats the dam you can see, we drained it and are now in the long process of cleaning it up and filling again).  It has a little bit of water in it with water lilly's and reeds and grasses and a few stray fish and other insects.

That you can catch with a basket with rope tied to it!

They caught about 10 little guppies, 1 or 2 very important Dragonfly babies (nymphs) including one that was shedding its shell, and some very interesting water dwelling beetles.

Here we are with the catch.  The dragonfly nymph was taken to school, since that is exactly what they are studying at the moment in grade 2- the lifecycle of the dragonfly.  And the beetles and guppies got released back to the dam today after a day of study in this container!

UPDATE: Munchie the Monarch Caterpillar is powering along and has doubled in size!  There are 2 more tiny caterpillar's now in view as well and  no more eggs that we can see left on the branch.