knitting and catching up

September 11, 2013September 5, 2025 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)76 Comments

Thanks so very much for all of the comments on my giveaway post. I’ve really enjoyed reading all of the different ways in which we each take pleasure in our free time. I’ve left the choice of winners to the random number generator (see bottom of post) which has come up with…

359 Far From Harm Farm

178 Thistle

Sorry that the chance of winning was a slim one, I’d have liked to give something to everyone who regularly visits here and hopefully the knitters amongst you can make use of the cupcake dress design – I do hope to write up some more free supplements for the animal clothing in future too.

Last week I did manage to finish off the fox patterns which are available now.

The Patterns are on Ravelry though an account is not needed if you want to purchase. The patterns are also on Etsy for anyone who prefers to purchase that way.

Generally though I’m not very well organised on the knitting front at the moment (or on any other front for that matter) and I can’t seem to decide whether to knit and finish more animals or press on with more pattern writing.

I have been enjoying playing around with designs and comparing stranded knitting with Swiss darning / duplicate stitch. I definitely prefer duplicate stitch when working in 5 colours for these dresses.

And I have a lot of animals on the go, mostly heads though as I’m flitting between working on the elephant, monkey and mouse patterns and still have a lot of bodiless fox and bunny heads, poor things!

These are just the stuffed heads I have knitted, I have a lot more empty ones – a bit like my head at the moment!

Anyway, the result of my indecision is that both pattern writing and animal making are getting done but neither one very quickly. Hopefully I shall settle into a more structured way of working once we are fully back in our term time routines. Toby has started back at school in a new class (he’s now in the senior part of the school rather than juniors) and though he seems to be coping OK on the whole he is more unsettled than usual which is putting us all a little on edge. Things will calm down once the new becomes the familiar 🙂

Thanks again for taking the time to leave comments on my giveaway, I really appreciate you stopping by x

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Competition random numbers:

7 years

September 3, 2013 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)1,083 Comments

Hello again. It's nice to be back now that the children are at school again. It's been longer than I planned since I popped in here and I had intended to write another couple of blog posts over the school summer hols but circumstances conspired to keep me away from the computer. I will write up a post soon about my summer knitting exploits but today is a special day as it is my blog anniversary – it was exactly seven years ago today that I first dipped my toe into bloggy waters.

Candycoco

At the time I didn't have any long term plans for the blog. All I wanted was a distraction from worrying about Toby (who was having his very first day of school), a way of connecting with other people who like to make things (because it appears that none of them live very near me) and maybe a way of selling a few knitted things so that I had an excuse to keep making them. I count myself extremely lucky to have had all 3 of those wishes come true and so much more besides. I've made real life friends through this little blog, built a small business which does indeed allow me to justify buying lots of yarn and knitting each and every day and I have a lovely place to come to escape from some of the worries about Toby's future.

But all this would not have been possible without you – all you lovely visitors who pop in and say Hi, offer encouragement, support and generally just make me feel happy and part of a like-minded community.

As a small thank you I am giving away the two bunnies above (called Candy and Coco). To be in with a chance of winning one of them just leave me a comment below and tell me something you like to do with your free-time. I'll pick 2 winners using a random number generator a week today (Tuesday 10th September)

I'm also giving away a free supplement to my bunny girl/seasonal dresses knitting patterns. This is for the dress design on the bunnies above and includes charted and written instructions (please note that you will need one of my patterns as the supplement is just the design notes rather than the full instructions for the dress construction). If you'd like a copy you can download it for free here.

Thanks again for continuing to visit with me and for all of your lovely comments over the last 7 years, I hope you'll stick around for a while longer x

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As always after the long summer holidays I am woefully behind with replying to emails. I hope to catch up over the next week, sorry if you are waiting to hear back from me.

garden stuff · general stuff

snippets of summer: garden

August 7, 2013 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)44 Comments

I'm afraid I'm not getting much computer time
at the moment – young master Toby has other ideas for keeping me busy. Today though he is elsewhere so I
thought I'd pop in and show you some snippets of recent days in the
garden.

We've been…lazing in the hot sunny weather and blue summer skies and then
scrambling about like mad to gather in washing and toys in the sudden
heavy downpours, marvelling at the dramatic clouds as the storms blow over, eating chilled
nectarines from the farmer's market and homegrown salads picked fresh from the garden and enjoying the rampant growth of
everything in the garden and all of the attendant wildlife.

Doubleweb

Summer rain

Cloud

Blueskies

Nectarine2

Lettuce

Hydrangea

Violas

Frenchbean

French bean

Bee

As I mentioned keeping Toby occupied and safe is a full time job as he needs constant supervision to keep him out of mischief (thank goodness for CHIPs summer club and respite days that have given me some time off). Sometimes though the mischief is of the playful kind – I snapped this yesterday evening when I was making a cup of tea, I turned my back to empty the pot after warming it and turned back to find him wearing the warm cosy as a hat and sniffing the teabags (sniffing everything is his new thing at the moment). He found it very funny!

Toby tea

I hope to pop back soon with some snippets of summer knitting. All of
the hot weather hasn't made me feel much like plunging my hands into
wool but I have still managed to add to my large basket of stuff in
progress 🙂

See you soon, keep well and happy x