THINGS OF LATE

 

Things have been a little crazy around here lately. Things have happened, other things very much haven't happened, you know, the usual shit.

Something awesome which HAS happened is that this scrummy little monster came into the world, fresh from my sister's uterus no less! He arrived about an hour after his due date pulled on it's night clothes and went to bed, so close! I got to go up to the hospital that evening and meet the gorgeous boy. We had snuggles and got the measure of one another while my mum helped my sister have her first post-delivery shower. I told him all about his family and how beautiful he was, he peed all over my leg. I think it was a fair game. Anyway, his name is Kit Robert, he weighed  8lbs 5oz and has a rather large head. He has already pretty much outgrown newborn size clothes which just fills me with fear as I have a drawer packed full of newborn clothes upstairs for my baby and if it's anything like Beau, he's gonna be a biggun'. Beau weighed 9lbs 7oz and I honestly can't remember how long he was in newborn size for...I have a feeling that I'm going to be eBaying a whole load of stuff within the first week of my baby boy being here! And man I've got some cute stuff for him...hello Vertbaudet...where have you been all my life (as a mother)??

Other than falling in love with my new nephew, I've mostly been knitting like an absolute crazy lady...look

 Gloves for mums, hats and cardigans (which don't button up right...look at those out of sync stribes goddamnit) for babies, other hats for toddlers, dresses for other toddlers, snuggle bags and teddy bears for other babies...it's crazy I tell you. I've loved knitting since I first picked up the needles again after Beau was born but just lately it has been all that has kept me sane. If I don't have at least two projects on the go and do at least an hour a day (sometimes 6!!) I think I would go mad. I've taken a couple of commissions from friends (like the pink pinafore dress you see above) and so although my hourly rate would work out to approximately sweet FA, I am making a tiny bit of pocket money from it now and then which is nice. I have a fat stash of yarn which I am trying to work my way through and not allowing myself to buy any more (haha, yeah right) until I have used a good chunk of what I already have. To be fair I have been doing quite well and the stash is veeeeerrrryy sloooooowwllyy going down, ball by ball. Some of the patterns I've made up as I've gone along (like the pinafore dress and most of the hats) so I'm also trying to take as detailed notes as possible as I go so that at some point in the future I can write them up real nice and sell them to the good folk who wanna buy them...no? no takers? You just wait and see...Debbie Bliss I'm coming to get you :o)

The pregnancy is going well, I'll be 31 weeks tomorrow (single digits for the countdown...argh!), still got the SPD pains and they're getting worse which is all kinds of not fun. We went to look around Maidstone Birth Centre and Crowborough Birth Centre last week. Totally fell head over heels in love with Maidstone, really REALLY wish it wasn't a 40, potentially 60 minute drive away :o( I wasn't nearly as keen on Crowborough unfortunately, as thats only a 20 minute drive away. At maidstone you get your own double bed in an en-suite room after you deliver...at Crowborough you get a hospital style bed, potentially in a dorm style room and with a shared bathroom. The two just didn't compare really, and I think I would rather be in Pembury hospital than Crowborough. At least you get your own en suite room at Pembury. I just need to decide whether or not I can face the journey to Maidstone in the throws of labour...and whether I'll even have enough time to get there! I think what I'll probably do is book in at Maidstone, see how I feel on the day it all happens and then if I can't face it then we'll head up the road to Pembury. Watch this space.

Anyway, here's me in my undies at 30 weeks pregnant (I really need to put a photo in that spare frame on the wall)...until next time lovers x

 

HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY BEAU!

I have a three year old! How the hell did that happen?!

Can you believe that this gorgeous little lump of squidge is THREE? I can't. It only seems like last week that I was still pregnant with him, and his birth feels like yesterday.

So it was his actual birthday last Wednesday and I initially thought that the day itself would be a rather low key affair. I stayed up late the night before, wrapping his presents, putting up some decorations and finishing off a jumper which I had knitted him. I had a bit of a nightmare with it, in that after sewing up the seam of the neckband, I discovered that it didn't fit over his head, whoops! So I had to make a little last minute alteration and unpick the seam and add a button onto it instead. This is the jumper...could it be any more of a disgusting Christmas jumper? It's wonderfully horrible, if I do say so myself :o)

Its saving grace is that it is made from the wonderfully soft Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran so it wears like a dream.

Anyway...here are a couple of snaps of my beautiful boy opening some pressies on his birthday morning

We then had my sister & Ivy and our friend Emma & her boys round for a play and some birthday cake

One of the best things about having a child is that you get to buy Colin the Caterpillar cake and eat most of it :o)

The day got a little crazy later on, with a million people all turning up at once and I'd be lying if I said I dealt with it like a pro and didn't let it stress me out. Come when you say you're going to come people! This pregnant lady does not enjoy an unexpected evening of playing host and not getting to sit down!

Beau was completely pooped bless him, and fell asleep on the sofa which he NEVER does unless he's ill these days...bless his little cottons

 Yep, he's 3 and he is still as attached as ever to his dummy. That bad boy will be in his graduation photos at this rate...

So anyway, when James came back at the weekend he obviously wanted to do something to celebrate Beau's birthday too. Our local steam railway had a super cool sounding Fireman Sam day on, so we were all geared up to go but the birthday boy himself just wasn't interested at all! He would not get dressed to go along, so in the end we gave up on that idea and went out for a late lunch when he eventually stopped behaving like a teenager and got out of his PJ's. We went to the Rose & Crown at Riverhead and had a really yummy, really reasonable lunch.

 Maybe I'm biased, but I do think that he is the most beautiful creature I have ever laid eyes on, this boy of mine

 While we were eating lunch, James made the mistake of stealing a piece of Beau's bread off of his plate, while he wasn't looking. He had asked for a piece and Beau had said no...silly James took one anyway. Next thing you know, Beau is having a meltdown so James tells him that a bird flew in and stole the piece of bread. Not as silly as James took him for, Beau starts asking questions about this cheeky bird, which meant that when we went out to the car, we had to actually go and find a bird's nest to show Beau and palm it off as the nest where the cheeky bird took the bread back to, to feed it's babies. It was all rather sweet :o)

 To round off the birthday celebrations, we had some of my family round for a little party on Sunday. I cooked a big (but not big enough apparently) pot of Chili con Carne and then we had a billion different kinds of cake for pudding. All in all, it was almost a week of eating far too much indulgent food which has left me feeling like a ten ton Tessie! It was worth it though, my boy had a great third birthday, and you only get one of those.

 

"THE" BLANKET

So, you may or may not know that knitting is kind of my thing. I learnt just after I had Beau and the first big project I embarked upon was a huge blanket made up of lots of little squares (you can read more about that here) and ever since then I have rarely been without a little project in progress. If you follow me in instagram, you'll no doubt have seen me posting photos of the various things I've been working on. 

When we decided to try for another baby, naturally I started thinking about all the wonderful things I could knit for it, and impatient as ever, I had to start on something right away. Yeah that's right, before I was even pregnant. I decided I would start with a blanket, and to be honest, when I first cast the stitches on the needles, I didn't entirely know where I was going with it. Did I mention that I'm impatient?!

Before too long, inspiration struck me like a sharp flick between the eyes, and I knew I had to make it a chevron blanket. You see, I'm a little chevron obsessed. It was the only choice really, so I started mapping out a pattern. As luck would have it, I had cast on the exact amount of stitches to make a perfect, evenly spaced chevron pattern so I could carry on my merry way without having to start over with more or less stitches. Call it divine intervention if you like. Maybe my knitting guardian angel (my nan) was giving me a little helping hand :o). Initially I thought I would try and do it semi intarsia style, by using individual mini skeins of wool for each of the black arrows, but after the first complete chevron stripe I realised that this was a bloody stupid idea and I was making an already fiddly pattern ten billion times fiddlier. I would have to do it all fair isle style, and just deal with the messy back later. 

  I decided to stick with my old favourites, black and off white, partly to keep it unisex and partly because it just looks so good. I used Debbie Bliss' Cashmerino Aran yarn. I have a little stash of the stuff which I bought with a little business venture in mind, so pretty much everything I knit these days gets done it that. Luckily it also happens to be the softest, most perfect yarn in the world, especially for blankets as it's a great thickness for snugly warm loveliness. 

By this point I had started having the recurring chemical pregnancies, so all the while I wasn't successfully getting pregnant, there wasn't much rush to get it finished. It became my babysitting project, by which I mean I would just take it with me when I went to babysitting jobs and do a few rows here and there in between putting children to bed, eating gross amounts of chocolate and drinking enough tea to sink a ship. 

It was slow growing for quite some time, and every now and then I would realise that I had fucked up on a row or two but it didn't matter. I just carried on and I kind of think the imperfections just add to it's handmade charm. 

Once I finally got pregnant and it seemed like it was going pretty smoothly, I got the drive to ramp up the pace a bit and started to make some real progress with it. I was never really sure how long I was going to make it. On days when I was exasperated with it, I thought I would finish when it was roughly square, but I knew that the less lazy part of me wanted it to be a decent rectangle really. I plugged on, and once I got past the square stage, I realised that I really wouldn't have to do much more to make it  a really nice size anyway. By this time, the pregnancy was still going well and I had recently found out that Santa's Little Helper is going to be a boy, so I started thinking about maybe adding in a feature stripe in colour.

I searched through my stash of Debbie Bless Cashmerino Aran but none of the colours I had were bold enough. If I was going to add colour, I wanted it to be bright and to make the whole blanket pop, otherwise it was better to leave it monochrome. I had all but gone off the idea of a feature stripe, when I popped into my local C&H fabrics store on the off chance that they might have a more lively colour in that range which would suit the role. 

They didn't have anything which stood out in the aran weight, but they did have this beautiful sunshine yellow in a lighter weight of the same yarn type. I would have to double it up so it didn't change the feel of the blanket too much...could I be bothered? While I was in there I wandered over to the fabric section, yellow yarn in hand, to see if there was anything suitable for backing the blanket with. Because I had done it fair isle, the back was covered in tiny loops of yarn which I had carried along, and I knew that as soon as little baby fingers got anywhere near it, they would find their way into the loops and pull it all out of shape. So although I didn't really want to make it any thicker than it already was, I had to back it with something to protect the loops.

It must have been divine intervention again, because from the piles and piles of fabric, out jumped the most perfect, yellow, grey and off white chevron cotton. It would look absolutely perfect, and tied in the yellow yarn like a dream. So they both came home with me, and I set about doubling up on the sunshine yellow baby cashmerino for the stripe. You can see that it's doubled up if you look closely, but I can't see the baby holding it against me forever if I'm honest.

Once the knitting was all done, it was time to sew the backing fabric on. Now like I said at the start, knitting is kind of my thing, but sewing? I haven't got a bloody clue. So I consulted the one lady I knew would have all the answers, my dear friend Eleanor Ross, textiles extraordinaire. She came over one evening and with the help of mum's sewing machine (which I still haven't given back...I think sewing might be my NEXT thing) she hemmed the fabric for me and showed me how to sew it on.

It was no easy task. You see, the big difficulty came from the fact that the cotton was completely rigid, and the knitted blanket was gloriously stretchy. Even working out what size the fabric needed to be was a nightmare. At one point, after cutting and hemming the whole thing, we put the two together and there was a good 10cm deficit in the length, and we started freaking out about what had gone so horribly wrong. Luckily, upon moving the work to the flat surface of the floor, it did still fit, just. The deficit must have come from the blanket hanging over the ironing board and stretching out.

We temporarily tacked the fabric, and pinned it all around, and got down to some serious hand stitching. This part couldn't be done on the machine because of the differing tensions of the two surfaces. The machine would have stretched the knitting out too much. I had big plans to stay up all night and just get it done, but a poorly toddler soon put pay to that idea and I had to retire to bed with him and pick it up again the next day (after he had thrown up all over my bed at 6am...nice).

Eventually, I did finish it, and I fell in love with it all over again. Like the knitted side, the hand stitching isn't perfect, but for my first attempt I was pretty chuffed with how I did. The only thing we have left to do now is to remove the temporary tacks and put neat, permanent ones in, in order to hold the two sides together at various points across the blanket. Without them, it would just separate and that would piss me off. Hopefully Eleanor will be able to come over again soon and help me finish off that bit.

But for now, it's pretty much done, and I absolutely fucking LOVE it!

FIN

19/40

19 weeks pregnant! Who'd have thought it? The time really is flying far too quickly and I would very much like it to slow the heck down please. Not that I want it to be, but financially speaking, this may well be the last pregnancy for me and I just want to savour every moment of it.

I know that a lot of women get a really rough time of it in pregnancy, and not to sound like smug sally over here but so far I've had it pretty darn easy (with Beau too) and I love pretty much every second of it. It's such a cliche but it really is the most magical time, and while obviously it comes with it's downsides, the wonderful moments are abundant and if you can't stop and smell the roses and enjoy pregnancy for the wonder than I feel for you, you're really missing out. For example, we're having something of a heat wave here at the moment and the temperature has been in the 20's every day for quite some time. You wouldn't believe the amount of people who have looked at me with that ear to shoulder pity look and said something along the lines of "So how is it being pregnant in this heat? I bet it sucks right?". Maybe it's just because I'm not all that huge yet but I don't think it sucks at all! I'm loving this weather so much. Getting outdoors every day and seeing my usually pale skin turn a delicate shade of "toasted" is brilliant for the serotonin levels and if it gets too hot you just find some shade! Jeez people, I'm pregnant, not terminally ill.

I started feeling the baby move a couple of weeks ago (at 17/40) which is pretty cool. I don't feel it a huge amount yet and it's still pretty faint, but it's reassuring to feel those little flutters. And I won't have to call baby "it" for much longer either! This week we have our 20 week scan so in less than 7 days I will know whether Santa's Little Helper is an Arthur or a Martha. Haha, we're not actually using those names but I do rather like Martha :o) I've made no secret of the fact that I do have a slight preference towards having a girl, purely because this might be my last baby and I would love one of each. But obviously I'll be equally as thrilled with a healthy baby boy. I literally couldn't love Beau any more if I tried, so another little him would be nothing but a blessing. I don't really understand why some people think it's so awful to have a gender preference? I'm not saying I would be disappointed with a boy, I would be over the moon, it's just a preference. It's like choosing pudding from a dessert menu. Yes, I would prefer the banoffee pie, but the sticky toffee pudding would be completely delicious also. I know some people are a little more cut throat about it than that and are actually genuinely disappointed with one sex or the other, but for me it's just not like that. My name is Katie and I would like to have a daughter at some point...so shoot me.

Moving on...a few friends of mine are either pregnant too or having babies at the moment so my knitting needles are working over time and I'm loving it! My friend Emma is due this week and I knitted her a couple of little bits for her baby shower a couple of weeks ago. 

I've made this nappy cover a couple of time before but this time I added the leg bands so that hopefully it covers the actual nappy a little better.Oh and the "E" is her baby's initial, not just her's :o)

And these little sandals turned out far too girly (Emma is having a boy!) but maybe with the right outfit she can "boy them up" a bit?! 

These booties are part of a gift for another friend, Will, whose lovely wife Kim has just given birth to their first baby Arthur. I'm completely in love with them but they were hands down the fiddliest thing I've ever made! I love a knitting challenge though, and teaching myself new methods. The tuck stitch ridges were completely new to me and I had to do a little research to work out exactly what I was supposed to do. I think they were well worth the effort though...what do you think?

I can't wait to knit some gorgeous stuff for my little one once I know the sex! 

xo

Beau's Blanket & Learning to Knit

I decided just after Christmas 2011 that I wanted to teach myself how to knit. I am an avid Pinterest pinner and I had seen so many cute knitted items on there and always though "oh, if only I could knit" then one day it hit me...teach myself! I had knitted when I was a little girl because my Nan was hands down THE BEST knitter in the entire world. She would sit at the table, watching Eastenders, knitting away, without so much as looking at what she was doing, and everything came out perfect and beautiful. To me it seemed that all she did was to click the needles together, because she did it so fast that that's all you could see! So she taught me how to knit at various times while I was growing up, but as with most things (apart from riding a bike, as we all know) I forgot how to do it because I didn't keep it up as a regular hobby.

When I decided the learn how to knit again, my first thought was naturally of my Nan, and how sad I was that she is no longer around to teach me. She passed away in 2001 from a lung condition and I miss her very very much. I knew I couldn't afford to take lessons, so I decided I would have to look to my friend and tutor of EVERYTHING, YouTube! With the help of some fantastic tutorial videos from people such as K1P1TV, The Knit Witch and Knitting Help I learnt how to knit, at a very basic level. Once I had learnt the Knit and Purl stitches, I wanted to have a go at knitting an actual pattern. I had seen the diaper cover from ezcareknits on Pinterest and so I had a look at her Etsy shop, and came across her cloth squares. They were the perfect first pattern for me, as they looked simple but fun and creative. I went ahead and bought some of her patterns, and went about knitting up the little squares. I had a few random balls of yarn lying around so I just did the squares in those various colours, and was thrilled with the results! 

Once I had knitted my first six squares, my Mum said to me "Kate they're fantastic, but what are you going to do with them?" I hadn't thought that far. I was just knitting to get used to following a pattern, but I thought they were pretty cool, so I wanted to make good use of them in some way...

One thought was to get them framed individually and have them up in Beau's room as some wall art. Then Mum suggested that I should make some more, and sew them all together into a blanket, what a great idea! I love blankets, and what could be better than hand knitting one for my first born baby? So it was decided, and I set about knitting more and more squares.

I had long been obsessed with anything fair isle, and decided that I wanted to learn how to do that myself too. This time, my Mum taught me. We sat at her house one evening, with a simple little heart pattern I had drawn up, and Mum recounted the story of how she had once knitted a fair isle jumper for my Dad (under the watchful eye of my Nan, who taught Mum how to knit too) and she won first prize for it at the Rusthall Village Fete in the late 70's/early 80's. To my surprise, fair isle knitting came pretty easily to me, and it wasn't long before I decided that I wanted to incorporate some into Beau's blanket. I would use the ezcareknits patterns as a template for size, so that they all coordinated on the blanket, and I used excel to create my patterns. This was the first one I did:

Then I made one with his name on it:

I also adore cable knit, and once again I was determined to learn how to do it so I could put some into the blanket. Trusty old YouTube served me well, and after a couple of botched attempts, I got the hang of it and  designed a little square to fit in with the others I had already knitted. This was halfway through the first one I completed, and I have to say I was pretty thrilled with how it turned out!

Eventually, 6 months after I had started the project I got to a point where I had knitted enough squares to make a decent sized blanket, and in the process I had taught myself a number of invaluable techniques and found a new hobby which I absolutely loved!! Next on the curriculum was learning how to sew it all together...

I spent HOURS agonising over the layout. I knew how the fair isle row would look but with the rest of it, I knew I didn't want any of the same two colours or designs next to one another and it was a lot harder than I had imagined to find a layout which fitted all my self-imposed rules. Becs (my sister, who has a keen eye for detail and design) helped me shuffle the pieces around and around like one of those frustrating jigsaw puzzles where the squares slide up, down, left and right until the picture is complete, until eventually we got it right, and I pegged all the rows together and numbered each stack so that they didn't get out of their perfected order. 

I used a couple of different YouTube tutorials to learn how to sew seams, and once I started, it actually progressed really quickly. Once it was finished, I wrapped it up and gave it to Beau as a birthday present on his first birthday :o)

Here are some photos of the finished article:

During the process, Becs asked me to make one for Ivy and my friend Jemma asked me to make one for her daughter, so I'm now working on Ivy's and will do a post once it's all done!

If you would like any of the fair isle patterns or the cable knit pattern please ask in the comments section and I would be happy to share them with you. The patterns for the other squares are all available from ezcareknits Etsy shop.

Please let me know what you think. Would you like to make one for your child or someone else you know? 

Big love x

New Knitting Blog

Hey followers!!
I have a new blog! As you can see, this one is a little a lot neglected of late. In (large) part, this is due to all the knitting I've been doing. Now believe it or not, I actually really love blogging, so I've decided to combine both passions, and blog about knitting! I'm hoping to still write the odd post on here, but mostly I will over at my new residence, which I've hilariously called My Name is Purl. Don't you just hate people who find themselves hilarious??? I do. Anyhoo...it can be found here for anybody who would like a read, and if it's not for you, please pass it onto any of your knitting/crafting friends who might be interested.

Thanks guys & gals

Big love x