Happy Valentines Day!

The little flowers made these at nursery this week.  Ava took a little convincing to get paint-dirty and Chloe apparently ate as much glitter and glue as what is on her card.  I can't believe that these 2 little chickens will soon be 4 and 2....!

New Yarn

Progress has begun, again, on my Attic24 ripple blanket.  It has been ages and ages since I last worked on it.  My colour selections have been alternating warm and cool colours and last night I found that I needed a new cool colour.  With only 2 blues left sitting in my bag.  The last few colours were blues, so I needed something new.  Like I needed an excuse to pop into our local yarn shop!? 

Want to see my new colours?

There are a whole bunch of new Sublime Extra Fine Merino colours.  Yay!  Some lovely bright orange to reds...I must confess that the pinks were starting to get a little boring for me...as well as some new Spring pastels and gorgeous metallics.  So, I bought 3 orange-y, pink-y, red-ish balls and another green.

Want to see the possible colour line up?

...and the gorgeous bag that I took it all home in....?

...and another shameless plug at one of my gorgeous goodies....

I also bought these....!

Hoooked Zpagetti!  It's a rather dull shade of brownish grey, but it is intended for this.  One day, the wall behind where it will hang will be a lovely shade of sea green, so grey seemed the sensible sort of choice.  The shop didn't have many colour options - white, ivory, navy, a gorgeous coral-y orange, light and dark grey.  I book marked that pattern ages ago and when the Zpagetti saw me it shouted and screamed at me to take its gigantic self home.  The bag/basket will be used for stashing hats and gloves - which are presently all stuffed into one of those Crocs bags that you get with their kids boots.

So...you noticed that lovely printed green linen then?  No?

This one...!  The ink is a really lovely pearly white, slightly on the grey side so as not to dazzle the eyeballs.

These fabric pieces are destined for gorgeous bags or zippy pouches.  I haven't decided yet.  More like this one maybe?

What do you think I should do with that fabric?  Have you made anything with Zpagetti?

Childrens Reward Chart

We have tried Ava on a chore chart before.  It was a very simple hand drawn thing, not pretty but it did its job.

In an effort to getting back on a good, well behaved sort of track (i.e. making Flower Daddies life a little more tantrum free and easier on the mornings of my working days, in the getting dressed sort of department) I put a new one together on the computer.

Again, not beautiful - but clean and simple and neatly customisable (and not full of annoying commercialised characters).  Most importantly, it won't suck up all my printer ink in a single print!

I printed ours on to white paper and then stuck it up with pretty washi tape.  If you are feeling like you need a little bit of help in the small person department, please feel free to download a copy here.  {For some reason colour is missing from the download preview.  When you download it is should look like the picture above.}The colours are less pink, more orange - gender neutral I think?
Not sure how to fill it in?  Well, here is my suggestion:

Ava's responsibilities this week are:

* to get herself dressed in the morning {the picture says what she needs to put on - t-shirt, panties, pants, socks and shoes}

* to be kind and gentle to her little sister 

* to check and top up the dogs food and water in the morning and evening

* to not suck her fingers

We are using 1 of the many, many, many sheets of stickers that we happen to have in the house.  But, I have seen these cute ones here and another here.

She has to get 20 stickers to get her reward.  She chose to go to the park as her reward...crickey!  Makes me feel like I deprive her of park visits!!

Let's see what it looks like at the end of this coming Sunday...

Some Sunshiney Holiday Photo's

Just a few photo's from our holiday in South Africa, the first 2 weeks or so that we were away.

Gotta love those legs...all of them!

Beachy fun at Gordon's Bay, near Cape Town



Heaps of people kite surfing at the Strand, near Gordon's Bay.  Check that huge blue sky....sigh....

Too much fresh air and sunshine does this to a person.

Penguins and a dassie at Betty's Bay.

Nemo fish...and a little Ava head....at the V&A Aquarium in Cape Town.

Humungous crabs!

Whizzing down a slide at a lovely little play area outside the aquarium.

Lovely mountainous scenery on the drive inland.

Monotonously straight Karoo roads.

Playing in the Murraysburg lei water.  {Lei water is water that is fed through parts of the town, via furrows that line the streets, from the local dam.  Each property is allowed to open a sluice to allow water in to irrigate their gardens during certain parts of the day.}

Playing in a make shift paddle pool in the shade of a tree.  It was blazing hot.  The water was from my dads borehole and was very chilly.

On leaving Murraysburg there were masses of these beautiful cactus flowers.

....more photo's still to come!

Its finally finished....or maybe not

I know that I promised some lovely summery South African holiday photo's....but we took so many while we were away, that we had to download them on to Flower Daddies laptop.  So, I need to get my dirty mitts on to his laptop to repossess my photo's.  All of that will hopefully happen this weekend!

In the meanwhile, I am super pleased that I managed to finish my flowery blanket last night.

* drum roll please *

Ta-dahhhhhhh!

Dinky, but pretty - no?  It is perfectly lap and leg sized.

/

Did I say that I was pleased with the result?  It has been almost 2 years in the making.  

It would have been nice to have had more flowery squares.  There are already 52 of them in there.  {Yup, just counted them.  I thought that there were at least 70?!}  They were pretty time consuming and I was getting desperate to see some amazing progression.  And, it would have been nice for the beige joining colour to have been a paler shade of cream - but Sirdar Calico DK doesn't come in a paler shade of cream, so I had to make do.

This is the first blanket that I have ever crocheted.  Should the rippled edges bother me?  I honestly have no idea.  It is what it is and I rather love it!

***

Actually...I have a confession....

See, this is the back side...........it really isn't finished.  Not by a looooong way!

There are so . many . loose . threads to weave in, I kind of lost the will to live.  So, I shelved the weaving and jumped to the edging.  You can actually see in the photo of the whole back that I have made a good dent in the weaving process.  But, there are still so many to do.

Anyhow, that is a job for another gazillion nights.

My ripple blanket is really no different than the last time I mentioned it.  I should really tackle that one head on, as soon it will be summer again (in like another 4 or 5 months....sigh....) and I really won't want to be anywhere near it.  Now is the time!

Marching Elephants

Just before we went away a lovely lady requested an elephant design from me.  I already had an elephant design....so, together we came up with a variety of colour options, 2 elephant sizes and a few different layouts, then I uploaded them to Spoonflower for her to purchase.

Here are a few of the colourways....







There are quite a few colourways.....if you have a few minutes to kill, you can see them all here.

I'd love to hear what you think of the designs as well as the colourways.

Blazing Heat to Freezing Cold

Hello...hello!  Happy New Year - yes, yes, I know, 22 days late.  Better late than never....

Well, it was mad rush getting ready to leave our house for 5 weeks.  Remembering to pack the necessities, as well as Christmas presents and doing our best to leave the kitchen sink in the kitchen at home.  That was 7 weeks ago already!  We have been back for a little over a week now.

After a wonderful 5 week visit home, we left Cape Town on a gorgeously warm Thursday evening, arriving in London early on a relatively warm Friday morning, only to be plunged into below freezing temperatures on the weekend.  A few days later the chilly weather produced some snow for us.

Cold + wet + low grey skies = ick!

Freezing + cold + snow = YiPEE!

 

Walking to work on Monday morning was lovely.  I grinned for the whole 20min walk, even a grumpy old man moaning about the snow couldn't take my snow-happy-grin off my face.  I took these photo's around 8am, before the snow had been trampled to sludgy brown moosh.  The top picture is of Russell Square.  There are lots of paths in that park - this was the only path visible, the others were still completely covered in lovely fluffy, crunchy, fresh snow.

This one is Bloomsbury Square.  See the snowman?

...and the snow cat?

I love that some smarty pants used a bin for his hat!  He was a happy sight, bringing smiles to a lot of people...there were still some grumpy pants that couldn't crack a grin....

I won't share with you what that lovely snow man looked like by the end of the day.  Some kids obviously had a wonderful time slicing him into bits.  The cat too.

Our garden is still covered in white.  I am surprised to see white every time I look out the window... weird.

I am having a hard time keeping up with 2013, but I hope to share a few sunshiney pictures of our holiday soon.  Also, after travelling such a long distance with the girls, I have a few hints/tips/insights about travelling with young children to share.  All in good time...

In the meanwhile, how is your 2013 treating you?