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bye bye 2015…

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Who would have thought,  one more post in 2015! Certainly not me.

I hope you are able to look back happily.

It has been a very intense year, good and not so good things have happened, in my small world as much as in the big world.

Horrible terrorist attacks and refugee crisis but also amazing reaction by people standing up and working together to welcome and help others. A fight to save an excellent nursery in an area who would have needed it. A child starting proper school and loosing 6 teeth. But most importantly 3 babies joining the family! The extended family,  I only had one myself don’t worry.

And since this is a blog about knitting and sewing? I guess it has been a good year too. The fashion course, lots of bags, a couple of children’s clothes. Knitting was a bit less exciting unless you get excited about 196 knitting squares for 4 baby blankets. One of them lost in the mail (or worn by a kangaroo ). Sorry for not linking with the appropriate posts,  I am typing this on my phone – just browse through my past posts.

But the year ended with knitting:

Two quick hats for the non existing winter here in Austria 20151231_154002

And a knitting related lesson, probably still not a learnt one though: you should always wind up the new skein of yarn into a neat ball before getting started

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Two helpers have been trying to sort this mess out – they gave up. But my niece went and wound her own skein of yarn up into a nice ball 😊

And now I still have 3 hours to think of a new years resolution … (trying to ignore the messy yarn picture)

Guten Rutsch for now and we’ll see each other next year ☺

Merry Christmas

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First of all I would like to wish you all a very happy Christmas. I hope you can enjoy these days with your family and friends.

We had a very nice evening yesterday with “Christkind” delivering lots of presents and today I managed to cook a three course meal (first course was kind of left overs put on a plate nicely – not planned but my daughter was really keen on several courses 🙂 I had thought that Beef Wellington would be challenging enough)

I guess Christmas time has started with the first advent and continued nicely with our advent calendars. IMG_2787

This year I had filled the children’s one with craft stuff and we had a few nice mornings decorating stars, building snowmen….

And i was really pleased with mine, if you remember.

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I had been a little unsure when I ordered it as it was a rather pricey adventure from a shop that I didn’t know and where I hadn’t ordered from yet.

I ordered the “advent calendar for mum with daughter and son” and I could give details about age of children, favourite materials and colours and dislikes and I think i got a really carefully selected choice of goodies ranging from a post card with a sewing related quote over useful tools and pieces of haberdashery to fabrics. And I think it was really worth the money. I do not want to give you a detailed list as this would spoil it for anybody who would ever consider to order the same but just admire this picture of the pile of fabric I have got:

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Some pieces were really short but over the whole width of 150cm, others were longer but only probably 70cm wide, on some occasions i even got two matching pieces.

I guess the shop owner always had a certain project in mind (for a baby boy or a 6 year old girl,…). I would have most likely not chosen any of the fabrics myself (as you might have noticed 😉 the pile is unusually blue for me) but they are really all lovely and this is what makes this advent calendar so great. Not only was I back to the childhood excitement of opening a surprise every morning but I also got really nice things that complement the stuff that I already have rather than being a copy of it. It will be very exciting to use up these fabrics (which technically have left over sizes 🙂 so something to look forward on Sundays ) – The question will be if I ever manage to use them up before the next advent calendar needs to be ordered.

Anyway, Christmas is not quite over yet. We will stay in London for a few more days where we will actually be able to chill and meet friends for relaxed play dates before we fly over to Austria to stare at green mountains and dreaming of skiing whilst enjoying the company of my family and eating lots of Christmas biscuits and all the other good things that my mum is going to prepare for her always hungry breastfeeding daughter.

I hope you are experiencing equally enjoyable moments. Merry Christmas! (No happy new year yet, you see I am planning to post again before 2016 🙂 )

 

 

 

Rechanneling your creativity

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As it is already taking me 6 weeks to knit one fingerless glove … to be fair, I have just started the second one …one that is actually unsuitable material- and sizewise for the person intended but nevermind … Ok, where was I? I better start from the beginning.

As it is already taking me 6 weeks to knit one fingerless glove, I have apparently started to use my creative energy in other sectors of my life…. you know, general things like tidyness, cleanliness of newborn clothes, diet of young children and mothers and stuff like that. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures to illustrate those creative outbursts but I took one from the fruit platter I had to take to school for their Christmas party:

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I am rather pleased with the result and there hasn’t even been too much early morning swearing involved, really.

As the school holidays are starting today, I am expecting to have much more free time in the next couple of days so I will surely be posting a lot….. It is about time that the 6 year old learns to take care of her brothers, no?!

What I meant to say….

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Surprisingly having a new born (well, he really is a month already, so he has opened his eyes finally) does seem to reduce my time on the computer, sewing machine, knitting needles,… a tiny bit. So, what I meant to say/post…

+ on the first Sunday of advent:I hope you are all having a lovely advent, getting ready for Christmas.

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This is our advent wreath. I bought the wreath and put the candles and the ribbon on myself. I guess, one can tell 🙂

We have also put up the knitted wreath in the window (Note: I am reusing a lot of old pictures in this post. This year’s version had been put up in a rush – still took me two days in total – and therefore looks like a horse shoe with a bow, not worth a picture :))

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+ on 1st December: Time to open the advent calendar:

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This year, mummy got one, too. I thought I’d deserve it this year. I ordered it from VRENIding, a German online fabric and haberdashery shop. There was not only a choice of calendars but I could also give some information about the age of my children (as I went for the calendar “mum plus daughter and son”) but also likes and dislikes re colours, fabrics,….

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I was very excited when the box arrived. I wish I could hang up my bags too. But that would be too tempting and there is simply no space.

Anyway, opening the first bag brought back some childhood memories 🙂

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But I have to admit, I didn’t quite get what the first item was, until my daughter explained it to me. Cookie cutter ok. But what was it? A rabbit? An alien with two heads? And what has this to do with sewing?

IMG_4231It’s scissors, mummy! of course. Silly me.

When I ordered the calendar, I took a slightly risky decision. After all it cost around 75 Euro as far as I remember. From a shop I had never ordered before. But so far, I am really pleased. We are only on day 7 and I got already 3 pieces of fabric and one piece of ribbing. I would say, not bad at all. Of course the fabrics are not huge so it might not always be straight forward to choose what to use them for. But then, for roughly 3 Euro per bag, I can not expect a meter of nice fabric each day. And I guess, it is almost like buying lots of scrap fabrics to make lots of scrap projects for Scrap Sunday 🙂

+ any day really: I just wanted to post a picture of the trio of scrap cardigans as I have not only finished them but also given them to a special courier who will hopefully deliver them to the right babies.

First of all, the three blankets. Ours is the one with the red-orange border. It would have looked much better without the green centre. But I loved the green. And the two other blankets in our house have green in it. So it seemed like a clever idea. The purple turquoise one is my niece’s and the blue green one is my nephew’s.

For the cardigans, I used a slightly lighter blue than the dark one used in the boys’ blankets. I had ordered it as the second blue for ours but it was too close to the dark one. So it was enough for three cardigans and I almost completely used up the other colours. In fact, another orange stripe would have been perfect but I was short of half a row only and had to unravel to the last complete stripe.

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And looking at the picture now, I realise that the contrast between the orange and the red is not quite strong enough. It would have been better to use the blue for the thin stripes, just as I did with the green version. Hmm. Never mind. He will never wear it anyway. He vomits far to much to be allowed a hand knitted woolen cardigan 🙂

And I would have preferred green buttons for the green one. Why are there no decent green buttons? Anywhere? This is something I am wondering since a long time.

I have made these mainly whilst waiting for an overdue baby. Since he is born I have managed this much (knittingwise):

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I meant to knit a pair of fingerless gloves for my lovely midwife. Considering that this is only the first one, winter might be over before I manage to finish the pair. I also find it slightly too big. If it was tighter, the pattern would come out much better, no? So I am actually considering to unravel the whole thing. Luckily I have at least made her a neck warmer already which I will show in the next post. Probably. But for now. Good night.