Seven down, Zero to go!!

Yippee!!!!!!

I've finished all 7 blankets and it's only taken me 10 full months.

Back in January I decided to make a throw rug for each of my nieces and nephews for Christmas this year.  I gave myself the year to do it and after many ta-dah moments throughout the year, I give you the final blanket.

This one is for older Master J and this one suits him a lot more than one of the previous blankets I made that I thought of giving to him.  It's a bit of a retro ripple blanket with a picot edge.

The edge gave me a bit of grief actually because I was running out of the green yarn. In fact I got nearly three quarters of the way through twice when I realised I didn't have enough so it all had to come undone and I had to think of some other finishing edge.

I'm not as happy with this little picot edge as some of the others but it does look good and most importantly, I just had enough yarn to finish it.  Yay!

I just love all the ripples.  In fact, I really love making ripple blankets so I know this won't be the last one I make.

Would you like to see all 7 blankets piled up?  Of course you would.  Here they are.....

Lots of work and sometimes frustration but also a hell of a lot of fun to make.

What to do now?

Well I really do have to admit that I'm re-doing one of the blankets.  It was the first one I made and is the black, white and red speckled blanket. 

The original is quite small and I really stuffed the border up.  When I say really stuffed it up, I mean REALLY stuffed it up and it can't be fixed.  The easiest thing to do is remake the blanket and I can pull the other one apart when I have some more time.

So even though I'm re-doing one of them, I really have finished all 7 so I'm very proud of myself.

Then I'll be trying a pretty huge project.  I want to make a blanket for my bed and I want to try some hexagons.  I already know exactly what I'll be doing and what colours to use but I just need to get them first.  I'll definately keep you posted on that one.

Hope you all have a great week.

xxx Susan

A fluffy penguin

Little Miss R received a penguin present for her birthday and I told her we had to wait for the weekend to do it.

First of all you have to get all the flat cardboard pieces out of the box and build the penguin.

Then you have to pour the special solution that comes with the penguin into the plastic bowl at the base.

After a couple of hours, the penguins body starts to sprout funny fluffy white crystal stuff.

After another hour or so, the white fluffy stuff has really grown.

Then after most of the day you have a really fluffy baby penguin.

It was pretty cool the way it worked and the kids loved watching it grow.

The only problem is that I now have powdery, white crystals all over my table.  At least it wipes off easily.

xx Susan

Doing my head in

I am trying to remain calm........I'm not succeeding very well.

Since the moment the kidlettes got out of bed this morning it has been one drama after another.

Frankly, I'm getting a bit sick of the word 'mummy' today.  I really think I'm going to change it and just not respond...if only that would work.

My two cyclones have been at it all day.  Every time I turn around the house has virtually been destroyed.

There have been constant fights, niggling and just plain annoying each other.

Master M continually is leaving taps running because he can't turn them off properly.  Every time I walk into a room it seems that a tap I had turned off only 5 minutes before is running again.

He also found a stamp and proceeded to stamp nearly every wall in my house with red christmas writing.  Most of it is coming off.

This is only a small part of my day so far and I'm really not sure I want to know what else is in store.

Hubby is home tonight and I'm REALLY looking forward to that......and the bottle of wine I think I'll be opening a little later.

Until then I will try to continue to be an octopus with eyes in the back of my head. 

Wish me luck and thanks for listening to me whinge!

xx Susan

School concert

Monday night was the Prep to Year 2 concert at Little Miss R's school.  I had no idea what it was going to be all about because Little Miss R refused to tell me as it was going to be a big surprise.

Luckily for her, it was her father's last night at home before going back to work so he got to come along too which was so exciting for her.

It started off with a small group made up of all the classes singing a song and setting the tone for the rest of the night.

The parents waited with anticipation to see their children dressed up and singing on stage.

It was a colourful, musical night.

Then Little Miss R's class came out dressed as soldiers and did a fantastic job.  I'm sure they were the only class that you could hear as the other's were so quiet the taped singing sort of took over.

We did get a lot of amusement out of the fact that we could hear our girl clearly from halfway down the room.  That girl sang her heart out and was very LOUD!

My nephew's class came out as sheep and did their song with some very cute little actions.

Then it was all over after the big finale and encore and it was time to go find my girl. 

She was beaming as she ran up to me saying "I was soooo good!"

It was very cute and cracked me up as only my girl can.

xx Susan

Ouch!

12.00pm  I hear a bang & crying. 

Master M walks to the top of the stairs holding his head.

 I'm about to scold him for slamming the back door again when I realise blood is pouring down the side of his head.

12.02pm  We're in the car, reversing out the drive on our way to the doctors

12.16pm  We're on our way home from the doctors.

No stitches although he really could use them.  The doctor said that the cut will scar but the tape sticking the cut together is less traumatic for a 3 year old than stitches.

The afternoon has been filled with lots of cuddles, bugs bunny movies and freddo frogs.

Scarves

For a change of pace, I'll stop writing about birthday's etc for this post and go back to crochet.  Not very original I know but there you go.

If you've been reading over the last couple of months you would know that I'm making scarves for Little Miss R's teachers.  The first one I made was the higgledy-piggeldy one which you can see in this post.

Then I decided that it might not be quite right so I found a ball of wool, alpaca and silk mix in my stash in a gorgeous burgandy colour and made an open weave scarf.  I do so love this one.

Then because I liked that one so much I ferretted through my stash again and found a beautiful soft wool/cashmere blend and did another similar scarf but not quite so open this time.

I'm so glad I decided to make these two as I believe they are perfect for her teachers.  Little Miss R thinks so too and in her forthright manner has told me which of the teachers must get which scarf.  Luckily we are on the same wave length and I agree with her choices.

We went to the Prep to year 2 concert last night which was a bit of a classic.  I'll let you know more in a future post. 

Until then, have a fantastic week.

xx Susan

An unexpected day

We honestly hadn't planned to do much on Sunday.  We'd had a big enough day with the party on Saturday and decided that a quick visit to see hubby's mum was on the cards and that's about it.

Hubby really needed a new pair of shoes so instead of coming home from Caloundra, we headed to Maroochydore where the particular shoe shop we wanted was.

It was such a beautiful day that we decided to enjoy the beach for a bit and headed to Mooloolaba for some fresh prawns and fish and chips for lunch.

Yum!

After that it was a walk down the beach to enjoy this gorgeous day.

We studied shells on rocks.

We studied jellyfish.

We also studied the waves.  The kidlettes didn't have their togs on because we weren't expecting to go near the beach but that didn't stop them getting soaked.  They had an absolute ball in the water and luckily I'm organised and had a change of clothes in the car.

On the way home we called into Skippy park (the venue for the birthday party).  We didn't have our bikes with us either but went out the the oval in the middle and threw frisbees for awhile.

It was such a lovely family day and a great time was had by all.

xx Susan