Nic....writes better in her head.

I have decided what I need is a dictaphone to carry around everywhere with me then my post would be ace. I always think of great posts when I am bimbling around the place, think it will make a cracking post then when I get infront of the computer, my mind goes blank and all I write down is a load of blah.. In case you were wondering, I don't have the dictaphone so you will have to settle with blah ;)

We have survived the first week of the school hols. The second day saw a visit to A and E. Don't panic, J and L are fine, no shed climbing, bike riding danger antics from them. The poorly person was, of course, my darling husband. He went out for a bike ride with my bro, bro stopped infront of him, M went over his handle bars and landing on a slug and his shoulder. The slug said ouch.

I was sympathetic but that ran out at about 4am when I had had no sleep from all the rampaging around the bed M was doing because painkillers are for wimps. So Thursday morning J and L dropped him off at A and E. He has only sprained it but is still in a variable amount of pain. Variable because when he wants to play mending his boat and random other things of his choosing, he is fine but when he has to hold a childs hand or hold onto the back of said child while they are charging down a hill or get up before 1030am, his shoulder hurts too much.

So baring in mind this disability of Daddy, J, L and I have been doing various activities this week and enjoying the sun and lack of school.

J really is a great little boy at the moment and I am loving having him all to myself instead of him being at school most of the day. On Sunday he helped me dig and hoe some of the veggie patch in the back garden so that we could plant our leeks. We are stupidly late with leeks, sprouts and PSB but better late than never, right? Well actually maybe not, those leeks look more like chives and I don't know if they will do any good but we are trying.

While I was looking at photos on the computer the other day, I found a picture of the veggie patch when I had first pegged it out in March time. This is what it looked like then....

And now it looks like this.....

So we have made some progress. I also have my two greenhouses and various things dotted around.

Lou helped me pick some courgettes on Tuesday...

There she is, her sunny little self. She is suffering a bit this week, having to share my attention with J being off for the summer. She is dealing with it in the way that all little children know how; by being a little madam. We have sunshine and light when she is centre stage but when anyone else is talking, its a different story.

We went to town today, she was full of sillyness and trouble-causing in the car on the way there so I suggested that maybe we could leave all of our naughty and sillyness in the car. J told me that he had put all of his in a box, locked it and thrown the key out of the window. L said she had thrown all hers out of the window and she was a good girl now. We got to town, J was walking with us, being good. L, on the other hand was a spinning top, knocking old women over in her wake. I picked her up and was talking to her about behaving when she announced that she had found her naughtyness again and that she was keeping it. Hmm so we see.....

It is so hard when she is like this. I'll be honest, I really don't want to spend time with her when she is being naughty to get attention but what she craves is the attention and that is why she is being naughty but I can't give her my all, all of the time. I'm hoping she will settle down in the next week and realise that it is cool that she has her big bro home, after all she wouldn't have Prince Charming to rescue her from her bed if he were at school, would she? Kids eh ;)

Well bed I think. I'm at work in the morning so M will just have to drag himself out of bed before lunchtime and spend some time with his children, enjoying the holidays

I made it myself numero 3 :)

Wow, doing a weekly blog thing like this makes the week feel shorter than it already is. It has been a mad week here; the start of the week was spent madly sewing and doing other things (like hot chocolate with other Mums from school) that I wouldn't have as much time for once we got to Wednesday; summer hols!!

So, in all of that haste, I forgot to take pics of things before they were sent on their journeys to new homes and have been left wondering what to post tonight. I was out watering the veggies after tea (and hunting caterpillars which are eating my tomatoes at the moment), thinking about what I was going to blog and I decided upon this.........

These socks (you can just see the progress I made at knitting the second one,this afternoon with the 5 rows on the needles) are my knitting group socks. I was fed up of going along, sitting and chatting, reading magazines and stopping to eat cake and messing up the pattern of other things I took then coming home and spending twice as long putting it right so I decided that I would get some patterned yarn and make a simple pair of socks so that I didn't have to think when knitting ;)

As with all opal yarns that I have bought in the past, the ball of yarn that arrived on my doorstep wasn't quite as I had expected and I wasn't sure if I would like the colours, especially that browny colour but its knitted up ok and I think I'm happy with them...well I will be when I have finally finished.

And get me with matching handbag and sock knitting bag ;) It was getting a bit much making all of these bags in ace material for other people then turning up places with my knitting in a plastic bag. The only problem is that I am bored of flowers now. I think I might have to make something new for me soon ;)

As ever, go to Christy at her blog and be amazed by the other things people are making this week....lock up your paypal accounts ;)

International de-lurking day ;)

I am such a curious person, I love knowing where people who look at my blog come from, how they get here, what random search words they typed into Google to get to my blog. When I started this, many moons ago, I used stat counter and it was ok but over the last few months it has been telling me that no-one is reading my blog.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mind if no-one is and that would be better than some of the not so random people who were reading to start with (*cough* husbands new work collegues when he started his new job a few years ago....whoops!).

Anyway, the other day while I was titivating my blog to put new links and things in, I decided that I was going to get myself a new hit counter and stumbled across Google Analytics so I thought I'd have a go. Its ace.

However, dear reader, it now means that I once again know that there are people from all over the world reading my blog (Hello Konya in Turkey and Novo Hamburgo in Brazil!) which is cool but I want you to say hi so get commenting. Please ;)

Also, I know you are all dying to know about the search results. Well, would you beleive it, top of the list of random searching is 'Uuugggg'. I'd quite like to know what people were thinking they were going to find typing that word in because in our house, that is the noise that generally comes out of L's mouth when she is tired and looking for her beloved teddy.....

Other randoms......'How to swap out a toilet'...I'm not even sure what that means?! Maybe it was from the time M decided that he needed to take the bathroom to pieces and we ended up with the toilet on the landing and bath on the back grass? Who know? Its funny though ;)

There were lots of variations on the theme of yoghurt raisins and if they were good for you, how many calories, etc. If you come back here, I feel your pain in finding out that even though your new favorite snack includes fruit and yoghurt so in theory *must* be good for you, is actually jam-packed full of fat and is about as bad as eating a bar of chocolate and then a tub of ice cream.

So there we are. I like to think that this post is in keeping with the newspapers silly season; you know that time in the summer where there is no real news so they just fill the pages with random cack? Well here is said random cack. School breaks up in 45mins, our summer hols start very soon so we are going to celebrate with a walk to the windmill and ice cream. Yum.

In the meantime, delurk, comment. I promise I don't bite :)

I made it myself.....again ;)

I've been really restrained after the first 'I made it myself' last week; even though I looked at all of the lovely things that people were making, I didn't go mad and shop like a woman with $s burning a hole in her virtual pocket but I'm not sure I can resisit this week.

So what have I been making this week? All sort actually but I only have one photo to show so at least I don't need to choose what to show off. I made a dpn roll and matching zippy bag for a friend on Ravelry. Here is the roll.....

Look at how the pattern matches on the flap and pocket...I didn't even notice that until I looked at the photo and then I had to go and have a look on the roll because I couldn't beleive it. It was a pure fluke. It does look good though. The sewing gods must have been shining down on me that morning :)

I normally put more dpns in here to show the roll better but it was blowing a gale outside and it was a bit difficult to keep the lining paper on the grass, even with bricks all around it so it was a quick photoshoot. There are ten pockets, 5 1inch ones and 5 2inch. The roll is ideal for dpns as well as crochet hooks, scissors and circular needles.

It look quite smart all rolled up too and is nice and dinky to go in your knitting bag;

I've put another set of this pattern on my Etsy shop so if you fancy a gander, its here. I also made myself a button this week, take a look on the sidebar ;)

Don't forget to go and look on Christys blog to see all of the wonderful things people are making and take some will power with you if you don't want to find loads of goodies winging their way to you ;)

OK, I promise to blog again later in the week with tales of veggie patches, children and other entertaining bits. Just let me go and find that missing extra 5hrs that I need in my day to fit everything in. Luckily the school summer hols start on Wednesday so I will have extra hours by not having to walk up to school between 2 and 4 times a day. That does mean that J has finished his first year in infants school and starts year 1 in September *wah*

I made it myself.

I so often want to blog about what I have been making and never get around to it then I stumbled across I made it myself on The Crafty Conservative blog and decided that it might help me to blog a bit more often and show you what I am making.....maybe?!

The idea is that every Saturday (I know, its Monday but I am late this week, ok?)you blog about one thing you have made that week.

This week I am blogging this pirate bag that I made for Miffy.


I was so excited when I got this material. I showed it to my Aunt and I swear she thought I had gone (?) mad. 'No, knitters like pirates. Well some do....' My Auntie gave me that look that means that you ought to shut up before she whips her phone out and rings up the men in white coats so I did. Then the next week told her that someone wanted my pirates ;P

So there we have it. I am in the process of making more for my Etsy shop and co-ordinated things.

Woolfested!

I'm back!! This time last week, Gemma and I were in a hotel room in Carlisle, eating scones that tasted like eating a bag of flour (thanks to the lack of butter) and a cup of tea. So good of us to have not gone out and sampled the nightlife of Carlisle before Woolfest started. Maybe next year but this year we took the wise advise of Wyesue and had a quiet night since we were a bit overwhelmed and didn't really know what we were going to expect the next day.

I managed to escape home on Thursday morning so I drove over to Keswick. While driving across the Lakes, windscreen wipers going as fast as possible, I realised that I had managed to go away for a weekend in the Lake District, the place that has the most rainfall in England, with only my Birks for shoes and no coat. I looked sooo cool wandering the streets of Keswick in a t-shirt and flip flops on, while it chucked it down with rain. Still I had fun and was really proud of myself, surrounded by so many outdoor shops and Fatface and didn't really buy anything *cough* two new t-shirts and sleeping bags for Jack and Lou *cough*

I met up with Gemma outside the Livestock centre, we went in to see where our stall was, had a quick scout around, got a bit scared by the seriousness of it all and cleared off to Cockermouth for a 'planning meeting'.

An hour or so later, filled with hot chocolate, cake and having bought garden canes (not sure what we were going to do with them) we got back to the centre and got cracking. A few hours later everything was looking lovely. We only had a few minor hiccups. Like when the huge box of yarn fell off Gemmas very useful trolley thing and nearly ended up on the wet, freshly dis-infected floor.

Friday morning came and we were both ready for action. It was lovely to meet people whose blogs I had read and I knew from Ravelry and all of Gemmas lovely Stitch and Bitch girls. It was a bit freaky looking at peoples badges as they walked past the stand and knew stuff about them but had never met them.

I'm afraid I have no photos of the inside of Woolfest, I kept meaning to take loads of pics but it just didn't happen but lots of other lovely bloggers have so look at Babylonglegs here to start with ;)

Saturday afternoon came all too soon and we were packing the stand up. I really had a great time helping Gemma sell some of her lovely yarn. I didn't manage to buy any of her yarn because I couldn't make my mind up what I liked most. I did get some fibre though because I sucummbed to the voices telling me to get a spindle. (photos of spindle and my first spindling action when the computer will play ball :( )

Right I have an offer over on Etsy for the rest of the week (Well shall we say till next Monday?), free postage for everyone from the UK on all purchases. Just incase you couldn't get to Woolfest or maybe you came home with money to spare (does that happen??) so go there now!!

I'd better go and get ballons blown up and into bed. Its Js 5th birthday tomorrow!!