small knitted dishcloth...plus an emily update

small knitted dishcloth
you will need
4 1/2 mm needles
lion brand cotton yarn

heres the pattern..again im calling it mine but happy to face the fact it could be out there somewhere...its based on a pretty basic knitting stitch. i didnt have a pattern.

cast on 37 stitches
knit 3 rows.

knit 3 then start pattern of k1 p1 until last 3 stitches and knit to end
repeat 10 times
knit 3 rows

repeat pattern 15 times
knit 3 rows

repeat pattern 10 times
knit 3 rows
cast off
weave in ends.

pretty easy to whip up...it was a melbourne day for us and i made 2 in the car. so quick and easy.
i will put these up in the market store $4 each or 4 for $12

yep it was a melbourne day today...back to the hospital. we went last week to, but i didnt deal with last week very well and was never in the right space to blog about it...still dont know if i will get through without crying...but todays news was excellent
last week we went, we were happy with the healing of the graft after a week of us looking after it and we came home with just a tube sock type dressing and instructions to do more of the same cream etc. that was great. as part of our session we see the ot, (she is fantastic) she wasnt quite so happy and was quite scared for our girls hand and wrist. as u can imagine alarm bells ring. last week her wrist was really starting to turn out to the left and her hand was sort of stuck in a claw like position...she was still using it, but it was resting in this horrible position. basically things we knew could happen were happening...from her original hand repair we have known that the muscle that her thumb tendons where contected to wasnt as strong as we all wanted. her thumb doesnt sit in the right position because of this, and its this tendon that is meant to help her wrist stay in the correct position...it wasnt doing this, the stronger muscles where taking over hence the left going wrist. fear was sparked that she would be back in surgery sooner rather than later to have the thumb repaired (something we were hoping they would wait until jan to do) we were sent home with new resting braces and new exercises to try and shock it awake and make it start working. our appointment made with our surgeon to review this and make a plan. EEEEK....i stressed and worried all week of course
move onto this week...all that worry and now they think its responding with the new everything and it may wait until jan. im crossing my fingers for that. all our news was so much better today. her graft is starting to soften (which is good for the gliding of muscles under the skin..or what she has left there anyway) her knuckles have made a reappearence (woohoo), her hand while not corrected has responded to the brace and its staying more or less in the safe position they want it in. her thumb is still an issue, but a day brace was made for this to help keep it in the correct position 24/7 without restricting her wrist movement which is getting stronger every day and finally she is healed enough to have her pressure garment (sp) ordered. woohoo. i had no idea how long u had to wait for it all to be ready for the pressure garment.
and the thing that really tells us she is on the right road...we dont have to go back next week..woohoo...her garment will be posted to us and we will go back for our surgeon appointment the week after. a whole week with no melbourne trip...we wont know ourselves!

It will be nice to have the travel break (seeing as we all have colds), in the mean time the hospital r trying to find us the right person so we can travel to ballarat for intensive rehab instead of going to melbourne. but it has to be the right person.

i think thats it for me..: )
but one last thing
pst we have had spring sunshine for two days...its so lovely!

10000 visits celebrations - large dish cloth pattern

I decided that i would really do the share thing this week, as in share patterns and put up step by steps for some felt food ive been working on and then end the week on friday with a felt food rak and also a knited cotton dishcloth give away.

I made old nappy dishclothes months ago, they work a treat even getting a rave review from the other cleaner in the house that must have this and that to do the job...thats a huge tick for me believe me!...husbands can be very fussy about the way they clean and what with...i go with as long as u do it i dont care....so a huge tick for me.

we have 6 of those and i wash them daily (which i just love being able to do) and sometimes they just dont last the day, if im real good with the washing the 6 do well, if im slack with the washing or we have days where i feel the need to follow my less dryer using pledge, then sometimes the clothes get backed up and i run out....so more were required.

my sewing machine lives in our stuido/dining room area. great during the day if i can get at it, not so great at night when its oh so cold in that room and the fire is a room away and so inviting...i end up not wanting to sit at the machine and go off in search of some other creative project i have on the go!...in my daily blog reading i came across the green blogs i often read and a cotton knited dishcloth pattern. so i was off to spotlight last week after emilys appointment in search of lion brand cotton. Ive made three...a straight knit one which is ok, and then a pattern i found off one of the green living blogs...i loved it and then a pattern of my own.


i thought i would kick off this week by sharing the kniting pattern.


now its just what ive done, as far as i know i havent seen it anywhere, but lets face it it could be out there somewhere! so while im calling it my pattern, im totally open to the fact that it could belong to someone else. I didnt have a pattern to use for it. I like this one because the cotton ends up with bobbles (yes tech term i know lol) and is good for cleaning up messes because of those! (im working on a smaller dishcloth pattern this week)





so here it is

MY LARGE DISHCLOTH PATTERN

i used lion brand cotton yarn (spotlight) - was on special this week too, im going to try get more on thursday

size 4 1/2 needles.

cast on 61 stitches
knit 3 rows

then start K1, P1 repreat until end of row.
repeat that row 10 times
knit 3 rows

repeat the pattern 4 times

cast off.

(PS just look at that sunsine..its worth mentioning being its such a fleeting thing here at the moment...it feels like spring is on the way today..but i wish it was warm to go with it)

ok im no expert knitter, but i worked on it during yesterday on and off between other jobs and the kids, and then once dan was home i knitted until it was done. so it didnt take very long. i would say im an average speed knitter! so a project just perfect for an afternoon of quick knitting.

i have decided to open another blog, a little market store blog...see the side bar...im still thinking of going with etsy, but cant decide quite yet. but for the moment on my market store im going to list a few of my homemade things that people have suggested i might be able to sell. basically i decided a no pressure thing, sometimes i might have things in stock and sometimes i might make to order...:)

Jacqui's Market Store

Dish clothes r the first thing im adding to the shop. My large dishcloth is $8 small dishcloth $4

i will also add some felt food, aprons, hotwater bottle bags (popular in this house!), cards, card folders basically whatever i come up with u will find over in the my market store.


i hope u all enjoy my week of celebrations...its all just for some fun...i love sharing how i make my things.
tomorrow i will share some felt food making tutorials.
strawberries
jam drops (requested)
and if i get it finished a bunch of grapes.

Its amazing

what being inspired by others can do!

was on Mel Goodsells blog this morning. its quickly become one of my favs to visit a number of times a week. anyway she had used up some towels to make some dishclothes. That started me thinking about my store of cloth nappies that we no longer use. I wouldnt give them to anyone and i dont expect we will use them for more babies so i cut a few up, and made them into dishclothes. i stitched two 8 x 8in pieces of the cloth together and then used some binding on the edges. (i did get in trouble from my dh for making them pretty when they would be used to mop up hehe)
while making the dishclothes i was looking at the scraps and thinking about mels next post which will be a felt food tutorial, this lead to me thinking about emilys birthday. We are getting her a kitchen for her birthday (more on that later as we r making it) and i want to make some of this felt food for her birthday, today i started on her birthday present by making her a kitchen set hehe...she has two dishclothes, 2 teatowels and some oven mits all made out of the scraps from my dishclothes for the actual kitchen.

dont u think they will look cute all hung up on her little kitchen.

i have been getting a collection of knitting needles that were all just floating around the house. So i created this folder for them. Dont look too closely its not great sewing i should of stopped i had had enough after the little set i made for emily...but i am glad i did it, its already in use. Im planning on adding a page to the middle to hold some of the other things i have gotten to aid my knitting as well as having a few extra needle holders there





ok i will be back later in the week to show off some of the progress we hope to make on emily's kitchen, we r getting all the wood precut for it tomorrow. wish us luck, we r hoping a little knowledge will go a long way! hehe and with some felt food too

knitting is addictive

i havent knitted much in years...like since my grandmother taught me as a kid...until recent weeks when i started with my knitted green bag and then a pillow for lilly as we work on making her room nice and pretty and hopefully tidy! (making it a place she loves is working on the keeping it tidy part woohoo)

anyway

i have NEVER knitted anything that is a guess wearable...NEVER had any idea of how to follow a pattern beyond knit one and purl one....until i bought a learn to knit book that told me what the parts to the pattern where.

so this week i have been knitting my first piece of clothing, for emily. Its a cardie, and im pretty happy with it, it has all the errors u would expect from a learner, but its wearable
the pattern is from lincraft and its actually the easy baby jacket. It went right up to an 18month old size....i sized it up to 2 years, and its actually a little bit big on emily so will probably last this winter and into the next one. The pattern was easy to follow its basically stocking stitch with a little bit of shaping which suited my level of just learning all that type of shaping stuff. The flower came off another pattern for a beanie, which i think i will make to match the jacket for her and i will run up a pair of purple pants to go with or green too i think. U do need to know how to crochet for this pattern which was thankfully something i already knew from my first living in the country, cold winter experience.
any way i really enjoying the whole handmade experience this time around.. :)
i dont know what it is, but there r some cool wools around. While i picked a plain wool for the actual knitting, all the crocheting was done with thicker wool and all that fluffy stuff. Its certainly harder to work with but im getting better at using it

making

i have been all inspired by wool...maybe its winter and the cold. or its the better homes and gardens spread this month on wool, there r some really funky balls of wool around. I got all the wool iin the bag from lincraft. SUCH YUMMY wool on show
anyway i have a few wool projects on the go atm...but this one i finally finished this morning in a rare quiet moment. Its just a basic garter stitch bag...the one in the mag was fancy and while i wanted to have a go at that, it just didnt look right with the fluffy wool i picked. im happy with it, i havent knitted in years, and i really had to think about casting off, but we got their int he end lol

also been making these cute little rolls for the pencils to live in

and coveriing some of our art journals

no scrapbooking yesterday but thats for tonight, i have a scraploot dt comp challenge to catch up on

will be back to share that later tonight!

right now im off to make some bread with lilly

were home and inspired

were home
we had a fantastic week away in brisbane, we saw family, friends and met some new precious little people that i will share with you next time, (photo is on the usb stick i have to find it!)
i got some great photos of him.
on sunday we went to the paper convention in brisbane where i got to do a photography class with andrea thompson. It was fantastic and just the thing to help me take a leap with my photography. So i have now learnt a little bit more about posing people.

here r my two cuties on the planeon the way home, i caved and bought the pay tv...at 7 in the morning when they had been up since 5 it was the best decision i made the whole trip.

thanks to my parents that put up with us messing up their house for the past week. They were fantastic. Even giving me the sunday to go to the convention while allt he kids mine and cousins all together...brave nana....brave! hehe

my children ready out did their best behaviour while we were away. they were co-operative, did as they were told and put up with me taking them places, shops, coffee shops and all with little effort. We did of course have a few melt downs but nothing that stopped us having a great trip.

after getting off the plane people stared as they ran off up the walkaway and out and YELLED when they finally saw daddy...6 and a bit days is a long time without your daddy! it was so very cute.
and a big thankyou to the kindness of strangers. On the way down the poor lady sitting next to us gave up her seat for alot of the flight and did anything i needed done even when i said i couldnt possibly ask that. and to the man this morning that helped lilly onto the escallator (sp) this morning when she missed the step and had to let my hand go....he saved me from going through security to get her again.

and finally a big thank youto virgin....fantastic people to fly with...everything was oh so easy! we were able to get on and organised first which really is helpful.I HAVE BEEN READING THIS....oh my god fantastic book. we r already putting things from this book into play in our home. If you have children i guesson the smaller side its well worth the effort of tracking it down and buying it. I got it in australia after much searching from http://www.booktopia.com.au/ for minimal money too. it took about 2 weeks i guess to come from the states. i am loving the new lease of life its given me and the changes in our daily life its helping me make...and all for the better~!
here is lilly finger kniting, which is an activity from the book and the first step for me teaching lilly to knit. handing on those traditional crafts that my grandmother taught me. we have some sewing planned this week also and some drawing in brand new art journals with lovely art supplies that we shopped for before coming home. and today on the way home i shopped for some material supplies to make us all some art on the go bags. i will share some of my making later on...crochet a scarf on holidays and started a baby blanket for a friends first baby, most of my friends have something handmade from me for their babies.
If you are interested in the book here is the author blog http://www.soulemama.typepad.com/

for those that asked
we r now living in rural victoria in a town called avoca. Its in the pyrenees wine region of victoria and daniel is working as exc chef here. http://www.warrenmang.com.au/ YUMMY wine! it was a warm 14degrees upon getting off the plane this morning and it was worse as we drove home. im to scared to look now but im about to go get the heater organised!