Quick knits

Hello again everyone,

Thank you very much for your kind messages on my knitted socks last week. They gave me enough confidence to maybe attempt knitting a third pair...at some point in the future :-)

I had some sock wool left and decided to attempt knitting some cute little baby booties for a friend's baby. I used a pattern found in this book,

, a book that had been gifted to me while I was expecting Baby Suisse and which I had already used to knit him a woolly hat last winter. I really like the colour of the booties although I can't believe how small they are (how quickly one forgets how tiny babies' hands and feet are). Using some more wool I had kicking about in my stash, I decided to slightly adapt the pattern for a hat I had used in the past for myself (which you can also find on Ravelry, follow my link on the side of the blog) and which I posted on Handmade Monday in October 2011.

The giant button on the front of the hat has always been my favourite part of this hat. It is obviously to big for the little baby girl just now but it'll be handy to survive the Glaswegian winter in a few months time. Once again, waste not, want not, I used the left over wool to make a neckwarmer for one of my nieces for this winter too (pattern found on Ravelry page once again). 

All items have been posted to their new home this week. After the socks' debacle, it was very satisfying to get not 1 but 3 projects done in a short amount of time! And no, there's nothing wrong with being a little bit smug from time to time :-)

Come and join me browsing at Handmade Monday!

Once bitten, twice shy... not I!

Despite my best intentions, I have actually managed to set a new record for the longest WIP project on my knitting needles after 2011's disaster of my first pair of knitted socks. That first attempt had taken 6 months and I had sworn never to bother with socks again.

But it's true that home-made socks are so warm and comfy in winter, and I thought that I was bound to improve my timing with the second lot...ha,ha,ha...erm...

Started in October 11, I had managed about half a sock by the time I got pregnant with Baby Suisse. As the first trimester of my pregnancy was spent wanting to sleep, and the subsequent two were spent pretty much the same way, I got very lazy craft-wise and half forgot about them. I then had dreams of a super productive maternity leave during which I could sew/knit/cross-stitch/bake/have a life and those dreams were fairly quickly shattered. Four months is not a long time and I was then off to work. To cut a long (and boring) story short, I got annoyed with myself for letting this happen again in February 13 and I picked up the project and finally finished it in July. Yep, a whole 20 months later...

At least, I had learned from my mistakes this time and grafted the toe properly! Looking at Baby Suisse's socks, I still feel his are way cooler! Nevermind...and yes, it is another ball of sock yarn in my craft cupboard...please don't ask me why! (or when!!)

Pop over to Wendy's super blog for some "up to date" craft in Handmade Monday :-)

Here... there... everywhere!

I have felt a little bit that way in the past couple of weeks and have missed out on my self-imposed bi-weekly blogging...grrrrrr!! With winter behind us, I had hoped that Baby Suisse would be relatively healthy for the next few months until the start of next winter but it seems that germs don't take holidays. We have been through 2 anginas and 1 stomach flu in the last few weeks which has been unsettling for Baby Suisse and for us as we had got used to our undisturbed nights... Couple this with 2 weekends spent abroad and here we are mid-July in the blink of an eye. In between rushing to work/nursery/home/doctor/abroad, I have had a little bit of time to:

1) make some strawberry jam (unfortunately not from our own strawberry plants which have so far this year produced a grand total of 6 berries...)

2) Finally use the chimenea we bought last year second hand from a expat who was leaving Switzerland

3) rejoice in the fact that the plants have finally picked up and started to produce small crops...about time!

4) picked a few kilos of cherries from our tree in the garden and turned some of them into a delicious cake (clafoutis if you're curious) which I brought to work.

I need to sort my pictures from our various trips to share with you soon...stay tuned :-)