Hello and sorry to have been away for so long.

There has been rather a lot going on here recently in between the day-to-dayness of family life. Of course I’ve been knitting lots and have finished off a few animals which I’m hoping I have time to re-home before Easter. But I’ve also been busy writing, tweaking and compiling patterns and at last have 2 elephant patterns to share – a girl in a frondy frock and a boy in a textured sweater.

I’ve uploaded them to both Etsy and Ravelry if you are interested.

Whilst on the subject of patterns I’ve also published a new  free supplement to the existing animal patterns – this time for a little peter pan collar which you can attach to any of the dresses. It’s my plan to release plenty of free supplements to my patterns, so if you’ve bought any it’s worth taking a look on Ravelry to see what else there is to download. At present there are 2 extra dress designs and the collar but more will be coming.

It’s the school Easter break here at the moment, so I don’t have much time to chat but after Easter I’ll be back properly and now that the latest pattern writing is out of the way I hope to have some more regular posts.

I hope all is well in your corner of the world, see you soon x

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:

Well the patterns for the seasonal dress collection are done. I’ve bundled 14 different designs into one PDF pattern which includes 3 designs each for Spring, Summer and Autumn attire, 4 for Winter wear and a pretty lace dress for parties and special occasions.

The pattern has 19 pages including a single page with both colour charts and written instructions for each design, an index indicating level of difficulty (most are fairly easy with one or two trickier knits) and full construction details with pictures to show two different options for the sleeve. But if you’re worried about printing all of those pages out you only need to print the 2 pages of instructions and the single page for the pattern you’ve chosen to work on in order to make a dress. The rest of the pattern can sit on your computer for reference and like my bunny patterns all photos are zoomable if you want to see more detail on the fiddly bits. The pattern is available as instant download either on Ravelry or Etsy

I hope everyone who buys a copy really enjoys making their little cotton rabbits a wardrobe of dresses to wear throughout the year.

Now I’m off to do some quiet knitting, rest my brain and catch up with some blog reading – I’m really missing seeing what all my favourite blog people are up to. Thanks as always for dropping in and for supporting my work x

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PS: Lots of people have asked about the other animal patterns (fox, elephant, mouse, monkey etc) and I will be writing up these over the coming months.