Giveaway time, at last :)

October 16, 2014 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)1,027 Comments

As mentioned over a month ago, I have just celebrated the start of my 9th blogging year!

I published my first blog post in September 2006 on the day before Toby started school – he was still 4 years old and much, much tinier than he is today! Amy was 6 and loved Disney princesses, colouring books and ballet. One of the first bunnies that I made for her was a ballerina bunny so it seems appropriate to bring that into this giveaway.

For all of you knitters out there I've written up a free supplement pattern for any of the girl animal patterns. It has instructions for a ballerina wrap cardigan and a simple circular net tutu. If you've bought a copy of any of my animal patterns and you'd like to knit up a ballet outfit for them you can download a copy here.

Ballet girls

For all of you non-knitters, I am giving away the two ballerina animals pictured above, one to each of two winners.

To enter the giveaway just leave a comment on this post and let me know what things are making you happy at the moment. I'll leave the post up until next Thursday (October 23rd) at which time I'll use a random number generator to pick two winners – the first number picked will be given the choice of the rabbit or the elephant so I'm afraid the 2nd winner will have to settle for whichever animal is left.

Thanks again for visiting here with me. Whether you're a new visitor or one who has been with me on my little blogging journey since the beginning, I really appreciate you stopping by. I'll leave you with a picture of some ballerina bunnies that I made back in 2006 and my lovely girl as she once was (now she's all eye-linered up and clad in black with purple Doc Martens – how times have changed).

Ballet bunnies

Balletgirl

PS: Just a quick note to say that if you are a knitter and want to enter the giveaway for the 2 animals, that's absolutely fine – I didn't mean to make it sound as if you weren't allowed x

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Thanks so much to everyone who entered the giveaway drawing. The random number generator picked numbers 257 which is Caroline Roberts and 926 which is Wanda (the winners have been notified).

autumn days

October 12, 2014 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)73 Comments

The last few weeks have been much busier than anticipated, mostly due to the complications of family life. In the meantime Autumn has arrived here, bringing wet and windy weather, falling leaves and cooler temperatures which happily has meant I've not been told off for lighting the fire (H must run hotter than me as I'm always chilly and like nothing better than snuggling up by the fire on a windy autumn day, whereas he's stripped off to a T-shirt and goes round opening windows). The biggest news is that I am now mum to two teenagers, with Toby turning 13 yesterday and Amy 15 last week! Doesn't life whizz by at an alarming rate?

The other stuff that has kept us busy is neither newsworthy nor of any interest to anyone else, so I'll not bore you with details but I am going to bore you with pictures of my homegrown red kuri squash, which I am rather proud of. I grew them as an experiment, fully expecting to have either no fruit at all or at best some the size of golfballs but in fact I managed to grow 3 whoppers – which leads me to the conclusion that they must be very easy to grow.

3squash

I've roasted them and made my usual spiced squash soup, which has such a lovely, warming autumny taste.

Roast squash2

Squash sou

Sqsoup

The colour of the soup has been featuring heavily in my autumny knitting too. In fact I've been just a bit obsessed with gorgeous mustardy-coloured yarn recently (as my friends who recently came yarn shopping with me might of heard me say once or twice).

Here, I'm using 2 skeins of MadelineTosh's new yarn home to make a really thick and cosy cowl. Pattern: Gaptastic Cowl, Yarn: MadelineTosh Home in 'candlewick', needles: 8mm

Scarf

I have made one change to the pattern – using double moss stitch instead of the single.

Double moss

and I might have a few other little mustardy projects on the go too…

Mustard stuff

Well, it's nice to be back here again and I'm looking forward to catching up with what everyone else has been blogging about recently – I feel horribly out of touch yet again. I plan to be back here later in the week with that giveaway that I promised weeks ago. And my work on the next patterns is going well – I'll give you a glimpse of what is coming up before the end of the month.

Thanks as always for stopping by, J x

PS: here's the birthday boy enjoying his helium balloon and laughing at his own reflection!

Tobybirthday

crafts & knitting · new patterns

Fair Isle cuffs

September 16, 2014September 5, 2025 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)59 Comments

Thanks so much for all of the good wishes for Toby. He did indeed pass the Custard Cream test and was back at school for the rest of last week with only a slight snuffle. And for those of you who asked, these are Custard Creams – a very British biscuit with a vanilla custard flavoured cream sandwiched between two shortbread halves and Toby’s number one biscuit of choice.

With Toby busy again I’ve been settling back into term time routines and have started pattern writing again in earnest. A couple of people have asked for a hint about which animal I’m working on and all I’ll say for now is ‘squeak’, but I hope to have some pictures to share on progress next week. I’m also working on a little free pattern accessory for the knitted animals which will be a part of my anniversary give-away later in the month, so more of that soon too.

The Fair Isle cuffs that I was working on in the previous post are now finished. I did smile at some of the comments and the fact that people found it funny I would say knitting Fair Isle is an easier alternative than pattern writing knitting. I think the reason for that is mostly due to the fact that I was making the cuffs for myself and so the pressure was off – if I made any mistakes it didn’t really matter. When I’m working on writing patterns I try really hard to get them error free, which takes lots of concentration on stitch and row counting and checking and it can be quite intense. But, I’ll also let you into a secret – Fair Isle knitting looks far more complicated than it really is. Each row has only 2 colours and these are repeated at rhythmically regular intervals. So if you look at the row you are on and note that you work 1 stitch of the first colour followed by 3 of the second colour then you’re free to day-dream or follow what’s on the TV. If you’d like some tips on knitting Fair Isle neatly, I’ve written a post here with how I like to work and there are loads of good video tutorials on You Tube too. Once you’ve got the basics you’re able to tackle any 2 colour knitting and Fair Isle projects are always nice to impress your friends with.

I’ve written up a chart for these which is now available. I hesitate to call it a pattern as I’ve just included a chart and this is simply a tube-type wrist-warmer with no shaping, but it’s there if you’d like to make a pair.