Little Cotton Rabbits

winter woollies

Phew! After the illnesses of the last few weeks all has returned to normal here at our house and so I'm enjoying some quiet knitting time in the autumn sun. As usual at this time of year my thoughts have turned to Christmas and I'm busy working on a seasonal batch of toys with nordic jumpers like last year. I have set myself the difficult task of keeping them all different both from eachother and from the ones I've made before so I'm having fun playing around with combinations of various nordic designs and cables.

I've also been wearing my new wristwarmers on the walk to school each morning - it's getting a bit nippy first thing!

They're so easy to make as there's no shaping at all and they're comfy and warm to wear - a bit like having very long sleeves that you can pull down to your knuckles. Here's a quick pattern:

The Baby Cashmerino yarn that I used is 125m long and this was just enough (with around 2m spare) for the 2 wristwarmers so use any DK yarn but check the yardage.

using 3mm / 11UK  / 2-3US needles and any DK weight yarn cast on 54 stitches.

work 10 rows of K2, P2 ribbing (i.e K2, P2 on right side, P2, K2 on reverse)
Row 11 start the double moss stitch:
K2, P1, K1 to end
P1, K1 to last 2 stitches, P2
K1, P1 to last 2 stitches, K2
P2, K1, P1 to end
repeat these 4 rows 11 more times (giving a total of 48 rows of double moss pattern)
next row: K2, P2 to last 2 stitches K2
continue in ribbing for another 8 rows and then cast off.

Sew up the side seam with mattress stitch (which is virtually invisible) and pop them on!

Happy knitting and happy weekend!

wildlife!

It's been quite a while since I started working on a badger to join the clan but after making a couple of heads that weren't quite right he was relegated to the bottom of the knitting bag! I think that the arrival of autumn has renewed my interest in him and over the weekend he was at last given a body, ears and a tail.

The pictures aren't great as my little camera can't handle the contrast very well but hopefully I'll get H to take some decent photos soon. Now that I have a prototype I'm happy with, I hope to be adding little cotton badgers to the shop from now on.

Talking of wildlife you may have noticed that I've been rather quiet on the hedgehog front. I've not had any news from the wildlife rescue about the 3 little ones that we found earlier in the year. It could well be that they didn't make it as they really were infested with ticks and so far I've been too much of a chicken to phone and find out! We do still have 2 adult hedgehogs, Fatty and Herbert Hogwart (possibly?), who visit the garden each night and gobble down the mix of peanuts, cat food, seeds and raisins that we put out. I'll keep you up to date with any more hoggy news!

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!

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!