We were invited to our first birthday party already and as all my daughter knew about her new friend seemed to be her interest in horses, we made a special horse bag with horse-y stuff in it (Considering that all other party guests brought horse-y stuff along, this information seems at least to be accurate).

Anyway, as I like gifting handmade stuff, I wanted to make something simple – I know a bit pathetic, just because I don’t know that girl yet I didn’t want to go the extra mile and invest as much time as I would normally do for my other friends. Plus I wanted to leave myself room for more in the upcoming years. If I already start with a handmade gift bag from scratch, where will it end? A handstitched dress? So a shop bought cotton bag with a personalised decoration seemed and actually seems ideal. I am considering to make that my signature thing and always wrap our presents in personalised cotton bags from now on.

Remember the workshop about freestyle machine embroidery? I still haven’t invested in a proper foot for my machine as I am always thinking that I might eventually swap it for a better one. So I did not use that technique although I really loved doing it. and I would have wanted to draw some lines onto that applique.

I love the thin lines done by the freestyle …

…  but I am not too sure about the practicability and washability of it – we had been told “handwash only” – so I prefered anyway to fix the applique with zigzag to make sure it can be washed safely.

Apart from that quick project, I have also done other things. It started with a long list of clothes that we will need for this autumn (I am not publishing the list on here, my husband reads this and I do not want him to make a link between the state of the house and said list, he is quite a clever boy). Now I am on a strict working schedule: Sticking pdf patterns, copying  and cutting preferably in the evening and early morning when sewing noises might disturb the neighbours or draw husband’s attention to the project list and sewing during the day whilst baby is asleep or measuring the length of thread that fits on a bobbin or two.

The first projects include a baby shirt to grow into, pattern from the klimperklein book.

a soft pair of sweat trousers to grow into in about 2 years, pattern from the same book (I only made it one size to big, can you believe it?)

I guess two sizes smaller would have been just right. Which is why I quickly made another one. One size smaller, this time with teal ribbing instead of the much better aubergine as I didn’t have enough aubergine left.

As you can see, much shorter, I am sure it will fit him. Eventually.

I am also still knitting, imagine I made the first pair of socks since 25 years. They really would deserve their own post but who knows if it would ever get written, so lets just admire them – It only took me 6 weeks to make them:

Tada!

Aren’t they amazing and beautiful?

And last but definitely not least: In all that business with moving, new school, nursery,…. I was spending my evenings wondering what to knit next. Only when I was measuring if I could squeeze a pair of tiny octopus trousers out of todays left overs for my soon to be born baby nephew, I realised that I have to knit a traditional baby blanket. In a months time! For 8 months, it had not come to my mind. Well, 6, they didn’t tell me that early. I guess, I suffered a bit of a trauma when knitting 4 in 2016 🙂

So, if I go quiet again, you’ll know what I will be doing.