birdie sling

Amy Butlers 'Birdie Sling' comes highly recommended.

It's a beautifully designed bag with wide contrast strapping, a big tear drop shaped body and two internal pockets. The pleats on the exterior and the interfacing of the bands and handles make for some satisfying sewing. With its modern styling and dynamic proportions, I know I'll definitely be making more.

I bought the pattern on line. You can get it here here and here.

The fabric I used for the outer main body, is a floral denim I found at Global Fabrics quite a while ago. It reminds me of the lupins through the Lindis pass in summer or a Monet painting in macro. I lined it in a baby blue cotton and used a dark navy denim for the bands and the handles. What have you been making lately?

murals on buildings part 2

Elvis is alive on Stanmore Rd

Old ladies having a laugh on the wall of Bronskis dairy on Ferry Rd

and the intimidating mafia thugs...

...with ear studs, cigars and attitude.

kids and cameras

On why you should let your kids loose with your camera occasionally.

They sneak mine when I'm asleep. And I love the surprises they snap.

weekending

homage to hotties

Hotties are god sent.

In times of need and distress they soothe and comfort.

In winter they warm our beds and our bones and all year round, the bassinets of our babies.

There is nothing more thoughtful or romantic than to slip a hotty into the bed of an unsuspecting guest or lover.

There are however, both good and bad things to be said about hotties.

Brand new hotties can be very stinky in a toxic kind of way. The best hotties therefore are the ones that are snaffled from grandmothers cupboards, their smooth skin having stood the test of time between flanettettes and flesh and lay waiting to be held tight once more. Or failing the ability to snaffle them, do check the new ones you are buying fit the stardards required here.

There are also tricks to filling hotties. My mother showed me how to pour the water in slowly so it doesnt spit back at you and how to burp the air bubble out of it at the end.

A good hottie needs to be at least half full, but no more than 2/3rds.

A hottie filled with boiling water will need to be wrapped inside something so it wont scold the skin. It will radiate its warmth for a good 6 hours or so.

Thankfully hotties still seem designed to a fairly universal standard. Which means that any hotttie cover you make will generally fit any hotty.

Here's how to make a basic hottie cover...

Lay your hottie out and draw around it leaving a good inch extra for seam allowance and ease.

Fold your pattern piece in half long ways and trim or reshape it to get it looking nice and symetrical.

Open it back up and cut this out in your choosen fabric. This will be piece A of 3 panel pieces. You can decorate this piece before or after you sew the hottie cover up, depending on how fussy you are and what you are adorning it with.

To make an opening to slip the hottie inside, you will need to overlap the 2 back pieces B and C. This is done by firstly folding the pattern in half and making a crease line.

Open it up and mark this crease with a pen. Then make another crease line on your pattern half way between the first crease and the top sholder curves.

As you can see, panel B will run from the very top of the hottie to the half way crease.

Panel C runs from the bottom of the hottie to the highest crease line.

Cut out both panel pieces B and C as shown from your fabric.

When you are ready to sew the hottie cover up, lay the 3 panal pieces right sides together with panel B in the middle. I used the blanket stitched edge of an old blanket as a feature of the opening. You can use any machine, either over locker or straight sewer or if its felt or felted wool your using you could probably just hand sew it together.

We were formerly using pillows slips to house our hotties in. The kids would drag them along the ground in the mornings, as if there was some stone cold blubbery dead thing inside that needed to be buried. I was worried the pillow cases would eventually rip or the hotties might burst their seams. Countless times, I have stumbled out of bed and stood on a tepid, cast out hottie, narrowly avoiding a small tsunami. Perhaps we are lucky but of all my years of accidentally standing on them and watching the kids do the same, we have yet to break an ankle or witness a hottie bomb go off. I imagine it would explode rather like a wet whoopy cushion.

I wonder...

Do hotties get mouldy inside?

Does anyone actually prefer a wheat bag warmed in the microwave?

I'm a hottie girl hands down. But I'm interested in your thoughts.

It's like talk back radio here today.

boy scarf

Imagine the delight if you will, for a knitting Mother, when her 5 year old son decides of his own volition, that the time has come for him to embark on his first (of many -hopeful) forays into knitting. Yes, it's the stuff of dreams I know. He implored that we must go forth

immediately to 'Knit world' so that he could pick out the exact type of soft, bright sky blue wool he had in mind. He was vehement about these details in the way children are and repeated them too many times over.

Continue imagining then, the pride and joy of wool shopping with the 5 year old first timer, the luck to happen across the perfect blue wool with just a smidgen of smokey grey woven within. He ...'was actually looking for one with a bit of grey in it too, you know!' he declared this at decibels loud enough to melt the hearts of all the old ladies abound.

The choosen wool was Patons Inca x 3 balls. That evening we cast on a simple 24 stitches with 7 mm needles and in a knit 2, purl 2 forming rib went about our merry way over several weeks until it was 1.5 metres long. Did I say merry way... errmm not quite...

I was determined that because he had committed to learning to knit and because I had invested in the wool, that I would only knit following a stint of him knitting also. That said, sitting and knitting with him meant that at times I was actually holding and moving his hands for him. If he held the needles himself it was akin to watching Andre The Giant attempt cross stitch or watching the Tin Man do yoga. His wee arms were like concrete and his fingers would get the wobbles and shake so he slipped stitches and he breathed very loudly with his tongue out! Yes, it was painfully slow. I think in the end he may of tallied up a modest 10 rows in total and after he had done his bit, he would always say that it was my turn to knit while he was in bed or while he was at school.

Imagine still, the slight disappointment when he announced upon the completion of the epic scarf, that he would only be wearing it in the weekends. Meaning he didn't want to wear it to school. And then in the weekends, it was always too warm to need to wear it. And I think he may have mentioned the dreaded word ITCHY.

But at least now when he is engrossed in watching me knit, I know that there is a new found appreciation for the kind of dedication and commitment and patience it requires. And that my friends, made it all well worth it.

the snood is in the hood

We've had weeks of grey, rain, hail and sleet.

Rainbows momentarily breaking through and occasional shards of sunlight casting dark shadows.

The fire has been glowing golden orange and I have been sitting there, knitting beside it.

With 7mm needles I cast on 60 stitches in a warm grey double knit and clicked away in garter stitch until it was 70cms long and stitched up the ends to make a tube. I hear these are called 'Snoods' - a hybrid of a hood and a scarf.

For interest there are 3 rows of laddering starting 27 cm along. This lacy effect is made by wrapping the wool around the needle 3 times instead of just the once and knitting the next row normally but letting the extra wool unravel. Then work 4 rows and start the new ladder row on the 6th row again x 3.

These days, every little bit of light we get sent is a kind of rare treat that can't be taken for granted. I have sat like a hunter, hungry and waiting for it to appear, capturing it, then in a moment of gratitude, happy to have it disappear again. I watch trees losing their leaves and becoming all the more bare and it feels as if we are all getting very quiet. We settle in, sleeping and snuggling for longer as we near the shortest day, nearly two weeks away. As always, this time of the year speaks to me of something promising. The quiet before the growth.

be warmer still x