knitting, nature and living with autism in the family
The weather here has yet to turn really cold but it has been a bit wet and wintry over the last few weeks and so I’m really pleased to have finished one of my pairs of mittens at last! I love this pattern and made these in Rowan Scottish tweed (not the softest of yarns but lovely and tweedy and warm). They’ve been keeping my hands snug when I nip out first thing in the morning to collect the eggs – the chickens seem to admire them too!
This week has been a bit manic as I’ve tried to finish off some of those projects I have on the go. I have managed to finish a couple of hedgehogs that have been hanging around for a while. I thought it might be a nice touch to sell a few as ready made pincushions and it seemed appropriate to make some little leaf toppers for the pins.
If you fancy giving them a go here’s what I did: used a couple of frosted shrinkle sheets and hand drew some leaves, coloured them with pencils and punched a hole in them. Then I shrank them in the oven and shaped them with a slight curl before they cooled and hardened. I’ve threaded a ball-topped pin through each hole to hopefully look like berries – I can’t decide just yet whether to glue the leaves and pins together.
I’ve also been making more hedgie families by knitting my hedgehog pattern with different yarns – chunky for the largest on 4.5mm needles, DK yarn on 3mm needles for the middlesized one and 4ply yarn on 2.25mm needles for the tiniest.
I still haven’t finished those gloves but hopefully the weather won’t be turning too cold just yet!
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had a lot of fun sorting through images of some of my favourite little cotton rabbits and putting them into a calendar for 2010. I’m going to be giving some of these to my friends and family at Christmas time but I thought I’d also make the calendar available to buy for those of you who’d like a copy.
You can preview or purchase it here over at the very excellent Redbubble.
If you’ve thought yourself of doing a calendar, greeting cards or T shirts with your own images then I’d definitely recommend Redbubble. Their print and paper quality are great (my photos don’t do them justice thanks to a murky day!) and their prices are good compared to other online print companies. They also have a great range of existing designs for cards and calendars to buy from some very talented artists and photographers.
Anyway, I thought I’d have a little giveaway to celebrate my own little calendar launch and I have 3 copies to send out to winners. If you’d like to be in with a chance of winning one please leave a comment below and next Monday (November 16th) I’ll draw the 3 winners at random.
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little cotton rabbits 