In need of an intervention?

July 30, 2017 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)42 Comments

Tea and toast socks

Umm, still sock knitting here, and a little obsessively truth be told. I'm not quite sure why, but it might be because the weather here has felt distinctly autumnal lately. Or maybe it's to do with the undemanding rhythm of knitting socks – just going round and round knitting two, purling two is rather relaxing and a nice break from the rigours of writing patterns which quite frankly is taxing on the brain. In either case, I do so love knitting and just sitting here doing it rather than working to the broken rhythm of noting down every stitch and fussing over wording descriptions so that others can follow instructions feels good, so I'm allowing myself a little holiday from pattern writing over the school summer break. It may well be that I have a shed load of socks at the end of these 6 weeks and whether I'll need a knitting intervention remains to be seen!

The pair I've just started (above) are from a really pretty pattern by Olivia Villarreal – Wild flowers and honeycomb socks which I'm knitting in beautiful The Uncommon Thread Tough Sock yarn in shades 'tea smoked' and 'toast' – perfect for a spot of Sunday morning knitting with a nice cup of tea. I've also almost finished the 2 pairs that I mentioned in the previous post (below) so am definitely making up for years of never knitting socks!

If you are waiting for my next animal pattern please forgive me for asking you to wait even longer and thanks for your patience and understanding while I take a little breather and indulge my newly found joy in sock knitting. Rest assured that there will be a new animal pattern coming up after the summer and I'm also working on extra ideas for clothing too, more news will follow. 'Til next time, wishing you peaceful days, restful nights and a little of what makes you happy xxx

A toe to go

Lucky sockss

knitting constancy

July 3, 2016 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)47 Comments

Throughout all the ups and downs that life can bring, knitting is always there as a comforting part of my days. Though I might have temporarily misplaced my blog voice I can always find something knitted to share with you, so I thought I'd pop in and show you what has been occupying my needles lately.

Bunnypair

As always there have been bunnies. This pair are mostly knitted from a discontinued ball of Rowan Scottish Tweed in 'porridge' that I had stashed. I love the little brown neps peppered throughout and am feeling rather sad that this is now all used up. Here I paired it with a strand of cream Rowan Kidsilk Haze for fuzziness and used a brown alpaca yarn for contrast.

Yarns do come and go and it's always a bit disappointing when a favourite is discontinued. My favourite yarn for knitting animal clothing has always been Rowan 4ply cotton (which was discontinued years ago) and although I still have a fair amount of it stashed I have been hunting around for a good replacement ever since. Happily I've now found it in BC Garn's Alba. This is a soft, matt, organic cotton yarn (not mercerised) and comes in a beautiful range of colours, some and bright and jewel-like and some muted, subtle tones (which are the ones I like the best). The knitted fabric drapes beautifully and I'm having fun playing with ideas for new dresses in this lovely palette of colours (the blue swatch below is a discontinued Rowan 4ply).

Bcgarn

I bought the colours above from Loop and Love knitting stock some of the colour range.

Clothes

There's also been excitement recently at the arrival of the morning post which in the last two weeks has brought me two wonderful magazines kindly mentioning my work. The first was the June edition of Australian Homespun which had a lovely write up about the cat patterns and the sweaters.

Magazine articles

The second is the current Issue 148 of Simply Knitting which has an interesting article on blogging, featuring interviews with 4 knitting bloggers (of which I was one). It's always a lovely feeling (and a little surreal) to see yourself in print and I'm hugely flattered to have been included in both of these publications.

Well, I'm off to make some breakfast and rouse the rest of the family, who are all still snoozing. See you soon and until then best wishes for a very happy 4th July to all my friends in the USA x

crafts & knitting · food and Drink · garden stuff

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