Itty-bitty

A wee goodbye gift for my son's teacher who starts her maternity leave today. I didn't know that today was her last day until yesterday, so it was a little last minute: just some simple booties made from this pattern (here's the ravelry link) wrapped in a drawstring bag with French seams.

These booties are itty-bitty. How itty-bitty? This itty-bitty:

Just a bit bigger than a spool. How quickly you forget how small newborn feet are.

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She's getting a gift from the class, too, at a baby shower at school today, so this is just a token gift to say thank you, along with a note and a card from my son, who apparently realises that some babies are more troublesome than others...

I had better run. I finally finish my taxes only to realise that I have visitors coming next week and this house looks like a bomb went off in it. Ah, the joys of having children...

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PS. Thank you for all the sweet comments about my photo. Now I feel like a bit of a fraud for putting up one of the few good photos that I have ever had taken. I even briefly considered putting up one of the more usual awful looking ones, to prove my point, but luckily that moment of madness passed before I put anything so terrible on the internet for all to see...

Hi

When a blogger put a picture up of herself recently, I thought to myself how it is nice to see the person behind the blog - and then felt guilty as I have been avoiding putting up my own picture. I'm usually behind the camera and when I do get trapped in front of a lens, the results usually further my belief that I'm not photogenic (yes, I am that person at the back ruining the family photos). It took some searching to find, well, any recent pictures of me, let alone a good one, but here you go. This is me.
I'll still be avoiding showing my kids' faces, as they are just the innocent victims of my crafting and I want them to still be willing to talk to me when they are teenagers.
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Ok, that's enough procrastinating. I had better get back to doing the taxes...,
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dress up

The warm weather is back. Of course it is: after all, I made 2 more hats, in adult size this time. I'll write down the pattern for those of you that were asking for it - just let me finish doing our taxes first. It might be a week or so - I'm putting a lot of effort into procrastinating.

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I did get around to making this wee tutu-like thing for a little girl's birthday, as modelled by my bored 4 year old. I had a quick look for tutorials, but they all seemed to involve knotted flouncy ones and I wanted something a little plainer. I hope that she'll like it. At least it should be cheap to post across the Atlantic..

Translation of the day:

UK English: fancy dress party = costume party in US English.

So, if you receive an invitation to a fancy dress party, you might want to check what nationality the host is when chosing between the bunny costume and your little black dress...

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I had better run - got some cleaning up to do around here (I've been procrastinating on that front, too).

Exhibit 2

If we could just have a moment of silence for my old computer, please. After a brief recovery, it finally popped its clogs. Rather suspiciously, it shuffled off this mortal coil right around the time that my husband discovered that it couldn't run a new game of his. The investigation is ongoing.

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So, the last few weeks have been spent without Internet access. That had some advantages, such as finally getting around to painting my daughter's room. It turns out that my husband gets a tad restless without a computer game to play at all hours, though. I did miss the Internet. I like being able to instantly look up the answers to the weird questions that my kids ask (the moon weighs about 73,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg...) and whenever I can not access my e-mail, I become convinced that something terrible might have happened back in the UK.

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We've had a spot of rain, so the weather has cooled a little, but the previous post's 'exhibit 1' suggested that there might have been more than one reason for the recent hot weather and there was. I give you exhibit 2:

A hot water bottle cover.

The hot water bottle is my mum's old one. I've since found them online, but never in any of the local shops. I guess there isn't much need for them around here, but it comes in handy for easing my husband's back pain without my frozen veg getting involved. The day before we left the UK, (the point when I finally remembered that I had intended to buy one) my sister-in-law told me that Tescos were selling some that came with a cover that looked like a wee jumper (sweater). I didn't get to see one, but this cover that I made is how I imagined them to look.

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I knitted it in the round from the neck down, making up the pattern as I went along (meaning that I knitted the neck, knitted the 'shoulders', unravelled that and tried knitting the shoulders a different way, then unravelled that and knitted the shoulders the same way that I did them the first time, then I knitted some cables, then unravelled them and knitted a few extra cables... Still, at least there were no seams to sew). The back is in garter stitch to give a little extra insulation.Much better than the old stained tea towel that we were using.

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Translation of the day:

UK English: pop your clogs = to die in US English

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PS. I never did get caught up on answering e-mails and I think that my account deleted a few before I got to check them, so if you had a question and want a more prompt response, or if you don't get a reply in the next few weeks, please resend it.