Little Cotton Rabbits

Summertime, time for a break

This is a snapshot from yesterday - our first day of the school break. One naked son in the paddling pool, one lovely daughter drawing and playing in the tent and one mummy enjoying a little knitting in the shade. Sounds idyllic and this moment was, but I know over the next 6 weeks these relaxing moments may be few and far between.

I do find this time of year a difficult one. At the school gate all the mums were chatting excitedly about their plans for the summer break; visits to parks, picnics, holidays at the beach and so on. I stood there and said nothing because to be honest the thought of the long break makes me feel a little sick. Although I like the  calmer pace of mornings (no school rush) Toby has a hard time with the change in routine. His autism makes it really hard to do much of the normal family stuff and when we do go anywhere he needs to be so closely supervised to keep him from harm that poor old Amy gets no attention. He's not good with crowds, new places or loud noises and is oblivious to obvious dangers like lakes, busy roads, going off with strangers etc. Often when we go somewhere he freaks out and we have to come straight back home which is really unfair on Amy and makes everyone feel miserable.

This year we decided not to go away on a family holiday and so we're based at home for the 6 week break. Hopefully here things will be quiet and manageable although even at home Toby needs constant attention to keep him safe. Amy has a few clubs and activities to go to and she & I have planned a few overnight camping trips with friends and in the garden. I'm really lucky to have my Mum and Dad to visit - we'll go and stay for a few days and they'll entertain the children, take us to new places and generally help out.

Anyway, with all this in mind I've decided to have a summer blog break and concentrate fully on the children. I will be popping some little cotton rabbits and friends into my etsy shop from time to time and Amy will have fun helping me pack them up and take them to the post office.

I hope you'll pop back and see us in the autumn when I should have news of the baby hedgehogs and some chat about what we've been up to.

Wishing you a lovely August wherever you are and whatever you're doing,

Julie x

Preparation!

Well, here we are in the last few days of the school year and I'm desperately stocking up with everything that we might need to get us through the school holidays...

new lego for Toby who bites it to bits and then gets very cross when it doesn't fit!

new colouring books for Amy that will keep her busy for hours (I hope!)

and for me, gorgeously natural, ethically produced, organic alpaca yarn from Farm Yarn

and beads, ribbon and trim from my new favourite on-line haberdasher - Robson & Mason (I love that floral bias binding!)

I've also been jotting down ideas left, right and centre and found some great suggestions for keeping Amy busy over on Domesticali and Dottycookie. So, hopefully we're all set! Now I'm off to soak up the silence and cram in a bit of uninterrupted knitting before the fun begins!

school sports

Lots of running...

...jumping...

...skipping...

...and a few hoarse throats at the end of it all! I was proud of my girl who was a good competitor and had lots of fun despite not winning.The family picnic on the school field afterwards was lovely too and unusually for a British summer event there was actually sun!

nature's promise

There's a sense of expectation in our little garden. A ripening, quickening sort of a feeling.

Everything is green and lush after the deluge of recent rain and there are little fat buds, swelling fruits and new shoots all ready to do their thing!

Amy and I planted some strawberries and tomatoes back in spring and it looks like we'll have a few fruits of our labour, though it will be just a few - only 2 tomatoes so far!

Proof I suppose that I have woolly fingers as opposed to green ones!

Enjoy your weekend!

happy old bag!

Thanks enormously for all of the kind, supportive and very lovely messages about my last post. I suppose I was seeking a bit of external validation to help solve my quandry - your feedback definitely helped! I like how etsy is working out so far- there's a lot less involvement for me which means more knitting time (YAY!) and as Mama Urchin so kindly pointed out it is possible to subscribe to an RSS feed which is like getting an alert when anything new is added.

I do like how Vicki described my situation as a 'hobby gone wild' it's a perfect description of the way things have snowballed to slightly overwhelming proportions. I think if things were less intense on the home front I'd have jumped on that snowball and enjoyed the ride. I'd have taken up the book offers, the chance to appear on tv with my cakes (kept that one quiet didn't I!) and the other wonderful opportunities that have come my way but I don't have the drive anymore - just a longing for calm and quiet! Getting old you see!

Anyway, nuff about all that and on to some knitting!

This week I've been in a mood for tiny things and have been making lots of teeny tiny toys and some snacks for them too! If you'd like to make your own tiny cake the instructions are now over with the pattern for the teeny toys.

I like the idea of making a few for Amy's friends, maybe with a little sleeping bag each or in a wee box. This lot are just awaiting their limbs - poor things look like little peanuts!

Moany old bag!

I love knitting toys. It gives me so much pleasure to make each one but whilst I'm immensely grateful that they are popular and that people want to buy them, the selling of them is a complicated and rather fraught activity. I've tried several different options in the past including supplying them to shops and more recently selling them myself through my little blog shop. I have an advance mailing list that I email just before I list toys in my shop but this is time consuming to maintain and now it's nearing 1,000 names so after each sale I get quite a number of frustrated emails from disappointed people. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's not working very well anymore and so I've decided to re-open my shop over at Etsy. This way I'll be able to pop toys in as and when I finish them which suits me very well but might not be so convenient for my customers as there will be no advance warning as in my little blog shop. Anyway, we'll give it a try and see how it works out.

I will be having one more timed sale of 10 toys in my blog shop before the start of the summer holidays (there is a preview of what's coming up here) and I will email the advance list before this goes live. Depending on how things go, I may continue to do occasional blog sales so as to give everyone as many options as possible.

I know that there are many, many people who think that I should just sell my patterns so that everyone can make them. I'm not going to go into my reasons for not currently doing so as that would be an open invitation for comment and further criticism. Let's just say that for now I just want to knit toys, so please don't hassle me! I am however thinking of writing up the pattern for the cakes and if I can get it into an easy-to-follow format then I will.

I know this post makes me sound like a moany old bag but in my defence I am now swamped with requests for patterns and special orders and I'm spending over an hour each day trying to keep up with emails and dismally failing. So if you've emailed me in the last month please don't give up on a reply - I hope to get to it soon!

Can you tell what it is yet?

I've been meaning to start on one of these for a long time now and then all of a sudden last week I was seized by a badgery moment! I still have to work out the ears and how to integrate a grey body but at least I have the head shaping done!

In other news, we had a great time at the special needs club. Toby settled very well and made a beeline for a big crate of duplo lego. I managed to get him to explore a little too and he coped ok with quite high noise levels. I feel fairly confident that he'll be ok there and the staff are great so I've booked him in from September to go regularly. It will be great as this will give H and I a few precious hours to spend with just Amy. Thanks for all of your good wishes - they obviously worked!

In hedgehoggy news things aren't so great although there is a happy ending! The babies came out again in the hot sun of saturday afternoon (obviously very hungry) and so I scooped them up and popped them in the cool garage with lots of mashed up food and water. After the children were in bed I checked on them with the plan of releasing them again but unfortunately while looking them over to check there were no fly eggs (maggots will eat a hedgehog alive!) I found that they were absolutely covered in ticks. The smallest one in particular had over 40 of them all around her eyes, ears and bottom. This amount of ticks would probably cause death in such a small hedgehog and certain would cause infection, anaemia and severe fatigue so I knew I couldn't cope with them and they needed help. Luckily Epping Forest Hedgehog rescue is only a 40 minute drive and they agreed to take them in. Amy and I set off very slowly in the car on Sunday morning and delivered the hoglets. They were immediately de-ticked, fed, housed and dosed up with antibiotics so hopefully they will all survive. They were 2 girls and a boy of 4-5 weeks old and we are looking forward to a phone call in 5 weeks or so to let us know that we can collect them and release them back into the garden - so I'll keep you posted! Having chatted to the experts there it seems unlikely that Herbert Hogwart would have been the parent (being him/herself only a late baby from last year) so he/she may still be around - there are certainly quite a few hedgehogs that visit our garden each night but it's hard to tell them apart. Maybe I should have knitted Herbert some socks or a scarf to help him stand out from the crowd?!