Teeny Tiny Hats

Early one morning last week, I became an Aunty to a sweet little newborn baby boy. Well, if the truth be told, I became a GREAT Aunty! Gosh, that makes me feel so very old! But I promise you I'm not really. My sister had her babies in her early twenties, so those babies are all grown up now and have started having babies of their very own.

What better excuse do you need than a new baby to quickly cast aside all your other WIP's and make a start on a few new little baby things. The teeny tiny boy apparently needed some woolly hats to keep his teeny tiny newborn head cosy. And of course I couldn't resist and just had to knit him a hat or two.

The first hat that I decided to make was a vintage inspired, old fashioned kind of baby bonnet using the Patons Pretty as a Rosebud pattern. I'm not quite sure what yarn I used as I found it in my stash without a label, but it is a double knitting baby wool in a creamy colour. This one was knitted flat with two needles and seamed at the bottom of the crown. I decided to knit the ties instead of adding ribbon which is probably slightly more suitable for a baby boy.

The second hat that I chose to make him was a more modern beanie style hat using the Barley Hat pattern which is free on Ravelry. The yarn that I used for this one is Sirdar Snuggly DK in a baby blue colour called Sky. This one was knitted in the round using the magic loop method ~ avoiding any seaming, which I don't particularly care for!

You can see that I have just started the decreases here ~ those little dark coloured bits of wool attached to my needles are my make shift stitch markers. I do keep meaning to buy myself some proper stitch markers, but I never quite manage to get around to it. These little loops of wool do the job just as well though!

These teeny tiny hats were both really quick and easy to make and it was such an absolute pleasure being able to knit little baby things again. It seems such a long time since I knitted anything quite so tiny.

Just looking out the window and seeing the rain and hoping that it decides to go away sometime soon. Wishing you all a very lovely weekend :O)x

Seaside Walking

Although I didn't make any New Year resolutions as such, one of the things that I would definitely like to do more of this year is more walking. I am so lucky that I live in a beautiful seaside town on the South East coast of Scotland and I am absolutely spoilt for choice with walks, as there are two wonderful beaches to walk along. I decided to take myself off for a bit of walk yesterday ~ I toddled off at what I thought was a reasonable pace, but I don't think that I had gone more than 100 yards along the road when I was so out of breath! I knew that I was unfit, but didn't quite realise just how much!

Still, I persevered and managed to walk for around an hour. The route that I chose to walk was along the west bay of the town, which was looking rather beautiful, the sun was shining and it really didn't feel that cold either.

I stopped periodically along to way to admire the views and to catch my breath a little.

The little island that you can just see to the very left of the harbour is the Craigleith, which is one of four islands just off the North Berwick coast in the Firth of Forth.

It is one of a chain of four islands around the coast, the others being the Bass Rock, the Fidra and the Lamb. The Craigleith is the closest of the islands to our harbour and like the other islands nearby is a bird colony with my favourite seabirds ~ puffins ~ being just one of the breeds that live here.

Which reminds me about a little picture of puffins that I stitched many years ago before my eyes decided to go all "old lady on me"! Now it seems that I have great difficulty focusing on things that are too close up and not at least at arms length away from my eyes, but I am totally refusing to go down the line of getting glasses for reading until I really, really have to! Maybe I should just get myself a giant magnifying glass instead!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend :O)xx

New Beginnings

Well, here we are into a brand New Year and I can't think of a better time to kick start my little blog back into life again.

I must admit that I have really missed my bloggy space, but life got kind of busy towards the end of last year and unfortunately my blog was the thing that had to take a bit of a back seat!

We are slowly getting back to normal here, and this morning I had two fairly reluctant and sleepy smallish people to get up out of cosy beds and dispatch to school  ~ neither of them were really in the mood to go back quite yet. To be honest, I don't think that I was quite ready either, as going back to school means lots of ironing of uniforms and lunches to be shopped for and packed. Still, there is only five weeks to go until our half term! Did I mention that I absolutely LoVe the school holidays?

On the plus side it means that I have a whole day of me time to do exactly as I want, which will very definitely mean lots of tea and some crochet. I have unearthed my Little Boy Blue Granny Stripe Blanket and am ready to get hooking again. This blanket was started way way back in October 2011 ~ Over two years ago! How ridiculous is that? My poor little boy has been waiting more than two years to get his blanket and that makes me feel quite bad.

The yarn that I am using is the fantastic Stylecraft Special Double Knit in six lovely shades of blue ~ Denim::Aster::Sherbet::Royal::Cloud Blue and Turquoise.

I think that it is probably two thirds of the way done so far ~ there are 72 Granny Stripes which is 12 repeats of each colour. It is my intention to keep going until there are 18 repeats of each colour and then it should hopefully be more than big enough to wrap around my boy and keep him cosy.

Wishing you all a very Happy and Healthy 2014 ~ hope that it's a good one for us all :O)xx

Fruit and Nut Flapjack

At the beginning of last week I took delivery of a brand new cooker as my old one had decided that it was time to give up on me! I think it must of been about 30 years old, although I have no way of knowing exactly how old it was as we inherited it when we moved in to our house almost two years ago now. It was always something that we were going to replace eventually but had never quite gotten around to ~ so in a way it was quite a relief when the oven did decide to splutter to it's eventual demise.

Today I decided that it would be a good idea to test out the timings of my new oven by baking a batch of yummy Fruit and Nut Flapjack ~ this is how I made it ::

You will need ::

250 grams of oats
250 grams of unsalted butter
125 grams of soft brown sugar
125 grams of chopped soft stoned dates
  60 grams of chopped walnuts

First weigh out all your dry ingredients and put them in a large mixing bowl.

Next melt your butter in a saucepan and once melted mix well with your dry ingredients.

Press the mixture into a greased baking tin ~ mine was about 9 inches square.

Bake for 20 minutes in a pre heated oven at 180 degrees until golden.

Let it cool slightly in the tin and mark out into finger sized pieces before it is completely cool.

Once it is completely cool remove from the tin and enjoy with a nice cup of tea :O)xx

Yarnspiration

Just recently, I've been desperately looking for some yarny inspiration and think that at last I may just have found some!

This rather fabulous photo of  local statue Ben Sayers appeared on my Facebook news feed this morning and made me smile. He was apparently yarn bombed as part of last years Royal National Life Boat Fete Day which is held annually in our little seaside town. I absolutely love his knitted life jacket, fishy bunting and woolly beard and think he looks very fetching indeed!

Woolly bunting seems to be very popular in blogland just now, thanks to the very lovely Lucy of Attic 24 who is rallying the troops into making Granny Bunting Triangles for Yarndale. With that in mind, I finally motivated myself into picking up my hook again, dug out my stash of Stylecraft DK and made a start on some Granny Bunting for the Yarndale cause. As I am lucky enough to stay beside the sea, I think I am going to try and stick with a seaside inspired colour palette of blues and greens and might also add some seasidey embellishments to my bunting at a later stage.

As with all the Attic 24 patterns it is really easy to follow and is the perfect project for using up all the little odds and ends of yarn which aren't much use for anything else. I'll keep you up to date with my woolly bunting progress as and when it happens!  :O)x

Woodland jaunt

It was a glorious day here last Monday, so we decided to make the most of the good weather and headed off on a little jaunt to a beautiful local woodland ~ Pressmennan Wood ~ which is looked after by the Woodland Trust Scotland.

This wonderful woodland is just a short 20 minute drive away from us, and it was somewhere that I had wanted to visit for ages but have never quite managed it before. It is believed to be one of the last traces of Scotland's ancient oak woodland, and the views across the East Lothian countryside and the Firth of Forth are absolutely fantastic. The woodland is also the secret home of magical creatures called Glingbobs and Tootflits.

We set off from the Yellow Stone and made our way past the Wavy Wood Post along a path beside the lake ~ if you look really hard you might just spot a grumpy and reluctant teenage daughter striding ahead of the main walking party!

Nestled amongst the trees is this wonderful woodland home of magical creatures Odon Poolittle and Bombi Noffnuff ~ little doors and windows carved into the trees. Aren't they just lovely!

After we had walked for a while we stopped and had a bit of a rest on a beautifully carved wooden bench.

Despite the fact that it was Bank Holiday Monday there was hardly a soul to be seen and we enjoyed the peace and quiet as we walked along the woodland paths.

Further along the path we past the half way point at the Holey Posty and came to another little wooden carving called the Meeting Point.

Following the sign posts at the Meeting point we found the home of Jenfrey Hoolups ~  I really wish that I had discovered this place when my not so little people were smaller!

The Frog on the Log is the last thing that you see as you finish your walk ~ you can leave the frog a penny or two and make a little wish.

The weather here has turned rather cold and wet again ~ I'm wishing for a some warmth and sunshine to return again sometime very soon. Maybe I should have told the Frog on the Log that when I left him my penny!!

Hope you all have a very lovely weekend :O)xx

It's now or never

I haven't blogged in an absolute age and to be honest with you the longer I leave it the less inclined I feel to actually do it! So ~ and I know that you are not supposed to start a sentence with so ~ this morning I decided that enough was enough and that if I didn't sit down and write a post now then I probably never will.

Life has been pretty hectic around here recently and there has certainly been a lot more of the horrible work stuff and very little of the "let's play around with some yarn today" stuff. There has also been a considerable amount of procrastination and a lot more time than is necessary spent looking for yarny inspiration on Ravelry, Facebook and Pinterest.

I am desperately trying to dodge the urge to start a new project and concentrate on completing one of my many WIPS ~ and let me tell you that there are definitely quite a few WIPS to choose from :: Summer Garden Granny, Little Boy Blue Granny Stripe, Jubilee Socks to name but just a few. But I can hear the yarn calling and fear that I may just have to cast on something new!

A couple of weeks ago I got a wonderful package through the letter box from the very lovely Bunny Mummy as I had entered her PIF ~ Pay It Forward ~ which now means that I will have to send three more packages to spread the bloggy love to others within a year ~ so watch this space.

Here is what my PIF parcel contained :: a pretty flowery tin, a Yankee Candle melt, a birdy badge, a ball of merino AND my very own original Sunburst Crochet Owl which I just adore.

Here's hoping for a bit of dry and warmish weather and that you all have a very lovely weekend :O)xx