A birthday gift

Emma has a birthday party to attend tomorrow, and of course I left the gift to the last minute. Enter the 1-hour bag tutorial, adapted a little to be child-sized. I also appliqued a matching T-shirt.



I got 1.5 metres of the pink canvas for $1.50 in the remnant bin at my local fabric store, so expect to see a lot more of it, hehe.

Playing catch-up

I did manage a few small projects while in stress-induced hibernation.

A library bag/tote bag - a birthday gift for one of Emma's school friends:



I repaired moth holes in a pair of longies that had been sitting in my repair basket forever:



Just for fun, here are the same longies on Alastair when I originally knitted them two years ago - he would have been about 15 or 16 months old.



Oh, and I converted a woven wrap to a mei tai:



(although the body length is too long, so I need to find the motivation to unpick it and fix it properly)

Hello, out there!

*echo*

Yes, I'm all done with uni now, so perhaps I'll find time to blog (or even time to do something to blog about. My exam was yesterday and I've already finished a couple of lingering knitting projects that had been languishing at the bottom of the basket. Including a wedding present I was knitting for a friend. Her wedding was in November 2007. Oh dear.

We're doing a Nappycino knit-along for a headband, and what better reason to procrastinate on the uni assignment I should be doing??



Pattern: DROPS 86-10 headband
Needles: 4.5mm 40cm Addi Turbo circulars (circs not required, but it made the project more portable)
Yarn: some New Zealand 12ply felted lambswool leftover from another project

A nice easy knit, it only took me 48 hours and it's not as if that was un-interrupted.

And here's the zippered pouch I mentioned in my last post:

Mother's Day gifts

This year I bought two canvases, some paint, and let my six- and three-year-olds express their creativity for their grannies. It cost us very little, but hopefully our mums will appreciate it.

I also whipped up a little boxy pouch from this tutorial for my partner's mother, and added a nice all-natural soap from the health food store. I will do the same for my mum, although I'm actually not seeing her tomorrow (sorry, Mum!)

I must say that tutorial is simple yet ingenious. A perfect use for small pieces of fabric, perfect for gifts, and even I, who am extremely zipper-challenged, managed it without issue.

Product reviews

When shopping for my shiny new food processor recently, and with some other major purchases over the last couple of years, I've read a lot of product reviews. A great site for reviews by real users is Product Review Australia. You can earn reward points for each review you write - and if you join and use me as your referrer, I get reward points for each review you write too ;)

My email is georgina dot ker at gmail dot com, but really, I don't mind if you don't use it - it really is a useful site for many consumer purchases!

'Tis the season ...

... to make pants?!?

Well, the changing of the seasons tends to be the time when one needs to make things for children, when you realise they've outgrown all of last winter's things! I thought Evelyn was going to need a whole 'new' (i.e. op-shopped or homemade) wardrobe, but then I discovered three tubs of clothes in the shed, that I'd forgotten about. Woohoo.

I did still make her these two pairs of pants from the Little Comet Tails Crescent Moon Yoga Pants pattern. One pair is polar fleece with ribbing for the waist - it's only one layer of fleece so not really enough for a nappy cover, but cozy all the same. The other is a gorgeously soft wool jersey, slightly felted. I ran it through a warm wash, but not hot, so it's still stretchy. I used two layers in the 'crescent', and lanolised it, so it should hold up as a daytime nappy cover.



(The wool pair is showing the back of the pants, a perfect pattern for cloth nappies.)



Excuse the half-plastered wall in the background. We'll get it finished one of these days. I wish I could make the children stop being cute in front of it.

I made one more pair of pants last weekend for a little birthday boy (or not-so-little, since he turned four). He likes bright colours and bold prints: I think these fit the bill.



All these fabrics have been in my stash for ages.