Birds, Babies & Blimey, That's A Big'un!

Throughout the summer I have been sporadically working on this jumper.  I saw this pattern through a post on Twitter I think and looked it up on Ravelry and promptly bought it.  I could not resist those wonderful birds!  

 

However, making it has not been easy.  Firstly, the yarn I ordered arrived and was not the same colour as it appeared on the photograph on the yarn store's website and they did not have another similar so I had to change my colour choice.  Then it took me three attempts to get the increases right before starting on the birds.

The chart for the birds involved being repeated 4 times in the round (did I mention this whole jumper is knitted in the round from the neck down?) and to make it a bit easier, I went through each line counting the number of light stitches and writing them down before knitting the round.  So I was getting through a maximum of three rounds in an evening.  Incredibly, I think I only made a couple of minor errors which hopefully will not notice and I did end up with the right number of stitches needed to carry on once the birds were complete.  Now it is straight knitting, which is a whole lot easier and much quicker, although this is being knitted in baby yarn so not that quick!  I might have this done by Christmas...

I also made some summer dresses for my grandaughter, one with farm animals on, one with dogs on, and the one previously posted with wild animals on.  Apparently they went down a storm and were ideal for the heatwave.
 

The garden has been struggling with the heat and lack of rainfall - it has meant a lot of plants dying off prematurely and my runner beans have been a disaster.  But I have managed to grow several of these enormous things!  It is a Tromboncino squash,and this one is over 2ft long.  You can cook them like a courgette but they are much tastier and not as watery.  I shall definitely be growing these again next year.

I am currently finishing off a couple of painted trinket boxes - painting the bases black and varnishing.  Not hard work but time consuming as it means literally watching paint dry.

And I might have quite an interesting little job coming up involving knitting and bears...

Otis...Again!

Yesterday I finally completed this one - it took much longer than usual, probably because there was a lot of detail to include, plus Otis has an awful lot of fur!

Watercolour on paper, a private commission.

My life seems to revolve around Otis at the moment - three more paintings of him to do, plus a couple of stuffed toys.  It's all good, who doesn't love Otis?
 

Sewing Small Things...

It's been hot...very hot...so I thought I would make my granddaughter some summer tops to keep her cool.  When my daughter was a baby we lived in Greece and summer was hotter than this and I used to make her little cotton summer dresses.  Now I am back in the UK and it is 30 or so years on and the selections of fabric are far better than back then.  This was the first set made with some material I had in my stash, just to see how the pattern worked out.  It worked out just fine!  I have two more little dresses half sewn in cute material with dogs and farm animals on - my granddaughter just loves animals!  I could not finish them yesterday as we had all our windows replaced and the house was in chaos, but hopefully I can get to the sewing machine today.