Author: Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)

knitter, peace-seeker, woods-lover, chicken-keeper, woolly-wearer, autism-mama and all round quiet time girl.
countryside · crafts & knitting · in the woods · wildlife

Hibernating

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)16 Comments

The first few months of the year always feel to me like a time for quiet rest and a gentler pace of life. Perhaps it’s the short daylight hours of winter which make me feel a little like hibernating and using less energy. In summer I might walk in the woods in the evening or we’ll be in the garden until after 10pm when dusk falls, but in January and February, with darkness falling before four o’clock in the afternoon, all I feel like doing in my free moments is curling up in a cosy corner by the fire and reading or knitting.

Along with bunny knitting I’ve been knitting lots of mittens. I have lots of wristwarmers, which I wear constantly throughout the winter months, but have been getting cold fingertips on my woodwalks and so it seemed a good plan to knit something a bit more cosy. This was a free pattern that I found on Ravelry and it’s perfect, knitting up very quickly and with such a clever and comfortable thumb placket. It’s called Garnomeras enkla vantar by Maria Samuelsson and I’ve loved knitting these in the ‘silver birch’  organic merino Viola yarn that I gifted myself for Christmas, a beautiful hand-dyed yarn which has so many subtle tones. In fact I love the pattern so much that I’ve knitted a second pair, also in Viola Organic merino yarn, colourway ‘frozen earth’. I have made a few modifications to the pattern (which is written for worsted weight yarn) in order to accomodate the DK yarn weight and I’ve added a little texture too – notes are over on my project page.

This morning there was a spectacular sunrise, which made me want to get up, dressed and out for a walk. So I headed off to the woods to see if the wood anemones were up yet but there was no sign of them, not even the tips of their leaves breaking through the soil. The woods are still deep in winter’s pause, and we’ve not yet had a cold snap so it will be a little longer before the growing season starts again, although tree buds are starting to swell and small bird songs were all around as they start to pair up ready for spring. At least I’m now ready for ice and snow if it does arrive soon, and my hands will stay toasty and warm in my new mittens.

 

crafts & knitting · new patterns

new year, new pattern :)

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)22 Comments

 

Hello and a belated happy New Year! I do hope that this new year has been kind and gentle to you so far.

I’m still getting back into the swing of things after the wildly out-of-routine Christmas break and I have some pictures to show you of the knitting that I did manage to work on in the quiet moments. But first I want to tick something off my New Year’s resolution list, something that I had hoped to have ready during November (in time for Christmas present knitting), but missed my self-imposed deadline. So here it is now, nice and early for a little Easter bunny knitting instead. Introducing Little Cotton Rabbits small rabbit pattern.

This little pattern was prompted by all of the messages that I received last spring following the release of the mini bunny and bear pattern when I was inundated with requests for removeable clothes for the minis and so I set to work making some scaled down versions of the regular sized clothing. I’d also received a lot of requests for mini versions of all my other animal designs and so at the same time I started working on those too. As I worked I began thinking that instead of adapting the minis for the other animal designs, it might instead be more fun to have small scaled down versions of my regular sized animals to wear the clothing. I’d made a small version of the bunnies back in 2007 when I was playing around with ideas for different sized animals and so I hunted through all my old notebooks for the notes that I made back then, and used those as a start point for a scaling down the little cotton rabbits design.

I’ve really enjoyed working on these small versions, they knit up more quickly than the regular sized bunnies and are a nice size for little hands to hold – they come out at around 8 inches (20cm) tall compared to the regular sized bunnies which are around 101/2 inches (27cms). Paired with the regular sized bunnies they make a sweet family group too. The yarns I’ve used are exactly the same yarns and needle sizes as I would knit the regular sized animals in – using a worsted weight yarn for the bunny, with the clothing in 4ply weight yarn (unlike the mini patterns, that are made completely in DK yarn on 2.75mm needles), so it’s easy to make a regular sized bunny and a matching little version too, all from the same balls of yarn. I can’t wait to see little cotton rabbit families appearing 🙂

Just as with my regular sized bunny patterns, I’ve included different designs for the head – a plain coloured bunny head, one with an eye patch and a Dutch bunny head with a blaze down it’s nose. Within the pattern there are also 2 options for knitting the body, a plain naked body and a body with knitted on underpants. Included are 3 items of clothing to fit the small rabbits (though they will also fit the mini bunny and bear patterns too), there’s a dotty dress, a striped sweater and a pair of short trousers all included. I’ve decided not to make these small versions with mary jane shoes at the moment but I plan to play around with options and will most likely work on a ‘small ones’ shoe pattern to also include sneakers and so on, just like the optional extra shoes for the regular sized animals. There will be lots more clothing to come too, I am bursting with ideas, all I need now is the time to turn those into pattern form.

As always I’m brimming with excitement to see what you make from my patterns, so if you do give this new one a go please come and share your project photos over in the Ravelry group.

Right, I’m off to keep working on some small versions of my other animal designs and the clothing too. I’ll let you know how I’m getting on soon.

The picture below shows all 3 sizes of Little Cotton Rabbits now available. The largest is the boy bunny in a striped sweater (original sized rabbit) which is 27cms/101/2 inches tall, the middle sized is the new ‘small rabbit’ pattern which is 20cms /8 inches tall, and the smallest is the ‘mini bunny and bear pattern’ knitted in 4ply yarn on 2.5mm (US 1.5) needles and 14cms/ 51/2 inches small.

 

autism · general stuff

A gift of time

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)39 Comments

Well, it’s almost Christmas and so I’m going to sign off here for a couple of weeks. I have all of the presents for Amy and Toby wrapped, the larder and fridge are well stocked, the log pile is full and the christmas tree is up and decorated, so I think I’m organised. I’ve not had to gift shop for H as it’s been years since we bought Christmas gifts for each other – we learnt quite early on that he doesn’t know much about yarn and I know even less about bicycle chain sets and derailleurs. So it was by mutual agreement that we decided to buy our own gifts at Christmastime. This year he’s looking forward to using a new set of titanium spoked wheels and I’m going to be enjoying these goodies…

Devotions, The selected poems of Mary Oliver;

heavenly smelling ‘resurrection’ Aesop handcream;

beautifully bound Slightly Foxed editions of Adrian Bell’s triology of books 1920’s farming life in rural Suffolk ;

soothingly tactile mug for tea from Andrea Roman, A R Ceramics;

Viola yarn, organic Merino DK in ‘Silver Birch’ and Merino fingering in ‘Rosehip’ from Loop London.

However, the gift that we do always give to each other is one far more precious than any material possesions, and that is time. Over the Christmas period, when Toby is off from the routine of school, things can get intense and wearying and so each of us makes sure that the other one has at least 2 hours of free time each day, time when the other person is responsible for the constant supervision that Toby needs. For H this might be going out cycling or spending time up in the attic playing a computer game. And for me this sometimes means going out for a wood walk alone – seeking the peace that I always find in quiet natural spaces; sometimes it might be time for a warm bath (though often that doesn’t work out too well if Toby hears the taps running as it turns into Toby-bath-time instead, especially if there are scented bubbles involved); and sometimes it’s just space within the busyness of the day to sit quietly listening to music or watching a film and having some uninterrupted knitting time at home while H takes Toby out.

Over the next 2 weeks I’ll be looking forward to my little peaceful parcels of ‘me-time’ and curling up with one of these books, or casting on some mittens with some of this yarn. But before our holidays begin I need to go and pick up Amy from uni and then we can start our festive time altogether.

And with that thought, I’m going to leave you with the wish that your festive celebrations, whatever they may be, are full of small joys and that you are surrounded by those you love most and share many tender and happy times with them,

with love and my warmest best wishes to you for the holidays and for the bright new decade that awaits us,

J xxxx