What I've been doing

Monkee Maker asked what I had going on the needles that was stopping me from sewing so I thought I would show you.

But then I thought about the amount of new photographs I would have to take in the dark and decided she would have to wait - I have lots and lots of lots of different projects on the go at once because I am such a butterfly brain.

The unifying factor is that they are all very small!!! Even if I have started knitting again I can't see myself being drawn into doing big things - they just take too long.

I am definitely still on the baby-slopes as far as knitting is concerned but it is very relaxing.

"Baby-slopes" is my attempt at a subtle link to this instead:

The knitting I did for Dorothy when I was pregnant.


I initially started knitting a few of the squares for this blanket as practice pieces to see how to make pictures in knitting (from Debbie Bliss' Farmyard Knits) and then I liked them so much I decided to do more and sew them together into a blanket (I can see now that they are not very good but considering it was a first attempt at intarsia I think I did ok!)


The blanket was swiftly followed by this cardigan from a magazine pattern (something like Prima I think) I remember some of the mum's from the aqua-natal group I had belonged to being horrified that I would dress a baby girl in such bright primary colours rather than the more fashionable (hmmmmmm?) pale pink and beige (yukkkk!)

She wore it to come home from hospital and it became a family tradition that each of the baby Lockets had to have it on when they made that first trip home.


Here is a picture of Fred on his way home via Granny and Grandpa Biscuit's to pick up Dorothy and Daisy.

I love this shot, where a day old baby is left by the back door with the shoes!

If you look closely you will be able to see that I had also made a little knitted bear with a jumper to match the cardigan. ( I was going to photograph this separately but it would have meant tidying the children's bedrooms to find it and I couldn't be bothered - I wanted to be able to publish this post sometime this week!!!)

Finally, a bit of madness for you.

The raspberry canes I mentioned yesterday arrived just after I had published my post. My friend Alison had ordered them for 4 of us to share and as they were bare root plants we needed to get them planted as soon as possible.

This meant rushing up to the allotment this afternoon after school pick-up. It was freezing cold and dark with the two of us plodging in soggy mud on our respective plots trying to plant as quickly as possible! Unsurprisingly no-one else was there!

I'm back in the warm now with the fire lit and a nice glass of red wine.

If you want to see what I have been sewing today you need to pop over to the Loo-sley Blog later!