Easter and Anzac Day ....

The weekend started with some of these ...





And ended with this .....






Hope everyone had a happy one - weather permitting!

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Two sizes up ...

I have an order for 3 x 2 year old vests/cardy's and it's been a shock! I am so used to knitting little things ...









Jumping up two sizes has been interesting, but fun. These are presents so I've been pretty much left to decide colours and styles - I do know that one of the girls is fairer than the other and the boy has dark colouring and is big for his age. His has been the easiest one - just adapting my baby vest to a toddler's size and I had these really great train buttons and the lovely dark blue wool.

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Feijoa's ....

I think I'm feijoa'd out. We've had feijoa cake, feijoa crumble, I've taken bags of them to work, I've made three lots of feijoa chutney - one with apples, one with dates and one with apples and dates - just to be daring - and still they fall off the tree.

I think it's been a bumper year for all fruit as our plum tree yield was huge this year and I made pickled plums which was the easiest pickle to make as you just washed them, left them whole, pricked them in a few places with a toothpick and then poured the hot syrup over the top and left them for 3 months. They are divine but of course I made the syrup using three different recipes and can't quite remember what I put in it ... typical me. Add to this the two bags of peaches from our next door neighbour which have been turned into peach and mango chutney and never in my whole life have I pickled and chutneyed as much as this summer.

And in between time I did some knitting! Last week I had a "replacing stock" week as between the Devonport Craft Market and a couple of commissions, I used all my stock of black bootees and little fair isle newborn beanies - not to mention the little cerise and green set that sold at the market before I could even attach a label to it.






And thru all this busyness, Madam Isabella did what she does best ......

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Thwarted but eventually happy ....

Last week I matched (as far as I could, given I was buying yarn a 1/4 of the price of this Debbie Bliss range) these colours to more affordable wool and happily made a newborn beanie which looks TERRIBLE ... So terrible in fact that I can't bring myself to take a photo of it. I suspect it's the way I used the colours and rather than changing colour every 1st or 2nd row, I think I need to use the base reds, pinks etc, for 4 rows or so and then every now and then have one of the stronger colours just for one row. So there's a few more hours of fiddling around to be done there.

In the meantime I grabbed the beautiful cerise Touch merino and made a beanie and bootee set, using some gorgeous little rosebuds I had stashed away and I popped a narrow green stripe every few rows on the beanie. The reason I'm describing it rather than just putting up a photo is because I didn't bother taking one (even though I was heading to the Devonport Craft Market yesterday) as I doubted whether it would sell quickly, being such a strong colour for a newborn. Eddie said it would and that it would be the first to go and guess what, he was right !!! This is all I have left .....



Also sold my little charcoal baby cardy which happened to have one of my favourite buttons on it - hard to see from this photo but it's a beautiful dark grey mother of pearl shell base with heart shapes etched into it. I love it when these strong coloured baby items sell.



Last word from Isabella who, as you can see, cares nothing for my knitting quandaries as long as she has her tennis ball!

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