Harrys Vest

Harry's Vest, originally uploaded by Aussie Maria.

Hi everyone

Wanted to try a simple new pattern - who doesn't ???? ☺ ☺ ☺
And I wanted to check out this wool in a knitted pattern. I have used it repeatedly for crocheting and loved it and wanted to see how the fabric would turn out - WONDERFUL!!!!! is the answer to that

So I made this for a friends little boy.

Very simple and quick. But I still have to check sizing. This size is for a 2 year old. Now the little boy is only 13 months old, but we breed them big down-under. Hopefully I will be able to get a photo with him in it - if it fits!!!!

Details - Pattern here
Yarn - Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 8ply in Mulga, stripes are Bendigo's Luxury 8ply in Citrus - used a total of 118g
Needles - 4mm
Size - 2 years, measures 53cm around chest

Modifications - worked the front straps to 3" and joined, measurements were then the same as back, without the overlap for buttons.
I did not understand the patterns method of casting off, so I did it my normal way.

Definitely this one will be repeated in lots of sizes and colours. A quick knit for a baby or toddler

Bye for now

BTW - Anyone else have a Ravelry queue longer than their projects completed??????

Australian Rainbow Flowers

Hi everyone

I have had a thought spinning around in my head for quite a few days now, and yes, my head has been hurting with all that spinning ☺☺☺

So for no particular reason, other than to stop spinning, I am going to create my ......

RAINBOW
of AUSTRALIAN NATIVE PLANTS 

here just for you

and more importantly for me

So that when I get around to having a garden again, I will be prepared with my flowers

BTW - All of these plants are ones I have grown in my many gardens from time to time, a lot of these I repeatedly have grown in each garden.

First off, please note that none of these photos are mine, I went trawling through Flickr to find them and will give credit where due

So now for the
RED

this would have to be our Bottlebrush

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sara_michael/2102858022/

ORANGE

An Orange Flowering Gum

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26217912@N06/4298805549

YELLOW

would be for Wattle

http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgiesharp/4967144910/

GREEN

 While its not seen as a "flower" this would definitely be in my garden, as long as I have a shady spot
Green is such a hard colour to find in flowers

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aus-blick/4838280278/

And when I checked my first thought, which was the Australian Native Orchid, I found the flowers were whitish too

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tgerus/4941518088/
 
BLUE

A really hard colour for me to find anything, so I chose an Iris

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53stude/2479746085/

 

INDIGO

This is a very hard colour for me to find something, so I ended up with these - Bracyscomes, which I might add still seem purple to me

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26073031@N06/4907083846/in/pool-aussieflowers

 

VIOLET

for our Native Violet, which is tiny and is used as a groundcover in shady, dampish spots

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pearlphotos/250121652/

Hope you enjoyed my day-dreaming as much as I have

SIBOL

Hi everyone

Just a quickie post of some squares I posted to Sue for SIBOL Challenges
If the colours work for Sue, they are left to right -

• one granny square for the Bonfire Challenge
• one white square for the Black & White Challenge, pattern from Jan Eaton's 200 Crochet Blocks #64 Sunshine Lace
• one granny square for the Christmas Challenge

I bought the outside yarn because I loved the look of it in the yarn ball. While I still love the colours, I have found that it is better to work plain granny squares with them as the colour changes are so quick you would never be able to see any pattern.

Reworked Souths Blanket

Hi everyone

Some of you who have been around for a while may remember this

This was D3's Xmas blanket for her NRL team - Souths

She really wanted something bigger

So I undid all the borders back to this .....

So that makes it 7 x 7

Adding a few more squares, it became this

So big I could not get high enough to get a full photo of it  ☺

11 x 13 squares a total of 130 x 155 cm

And quite weighty

While I did love the outer border on the original blanket (which was worked in htr/hdc, one row per colour), I did not know if I would have enough wool left to even do one of this border.  So there is a small border of one row of each colour worked in sc/dc

The wool of course is Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic in 8 ply

I'm still waiting for input as to how it works for D3 - but she was most appreciative of what I had done ☺

Rainbows

Hi everyone

Firstly thank you to everyone for your recent kind words and thoughts.
Hubby has just got the results from the biopsy - And they were negative!!!!  So we will be celebrating tonight.  We will have to go through this next year again - but that's a 356 days away.  ☺

As they say LIVE IN THE MOMENT!!

Hubby brings the mail up on his way home each night.
Well last night he said - "You have a letter"
A quick look - it had the postmark - Devon
There was me looking a little confused - then the light bulb moment
Now hubby wanted me to open it straight away, but I was in the middle of cooking dinner and wanted to make an event of this opening.  But he kept on insisting, so I opened the envelope and found this inside

A wonderfully wrapped little package with a note

This wonderful little package was from Linda at Chalky's World and she had just celebrated her first blogiversary.  And all I did was mention my favourite colour of the rainbow, which was .......

All of them!!

So inside the wonderfully wrapped package was this

A rainbow of seeds to plant

I think its just in time too!!

Thank you so much Linda

You really did brighten my day

Now I just need a pot to plant them in, so I will organise hubby for that.  I have the potting mix already.

So expect updates on their progress

As a Postscript - I would like to wish the lovely Kate from The Garden Bell a .....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

It's just clicked over (I think) to the wee hours of her birth morning

there is another girl who loves her rainbow of colours

Thank you

Just a quick update

Hubby's first annual check-up has now happened.  While we still have to wait for biopsy results, fingers & toes & eyes and everything else crossed  - all seems well.

Just played with my head a bit in the build-up

So a bit of this in waiting rooms

And not alone at that ☺

Thank you to everyone for their lovely comments and thoughts

Awards

I have been a bit remiss in not thanking MarieAnge from Gambits View for choosing me for the Award below

I feel very priviledged to be one in the list of bloggers she has chosen.

Just because of my personal preferences I will not be choosing any other bloggers to pass this award on to.  I am not intending to insult or hurt anyone by my choice.

But THANK YOU so much for choosing me

Hi there

Just a quick post to say, funnily enough, that I might be disappearing for a little while.

My focus at this moment will be with a health-issue of hubby's

Not sure when I will be able to post or surf

Have a great week

SIBOL

IMPORTANT

For all those who have contributed and to all those who are interested pop on over and have a look.

SIBOL - Sunshine International Blankets Of Love

One woman, Sue, co-ordinating

The rest of the world joined in

And look what is happening

Just shows the effect of butterflies

Mixed post

Hi everyone

This is a post with a little bit of this and a little bit of that and nothing much at all ☺

"Vintage Cross-Stitch"

and no I did not pick it up at a op-shop

I made it, for a school project, about 1975/76

And no, I did not iron it for its photo shoot.

The material is one of those really hard to iron linens, no matter what I try it never got that beautiful "just-ironed" look and so I did not bother.

Now, if I ever find where I have stored some other projects I did as a child, I will share them with you.  They are even older than this.

But it did start me on a crafting habit for many years.

Unfortunately I have not touched it for years, as time just was not available.

But I have had an "urge" lately, so they may start turning up here

That's if my eyes can "see" what I have to do ☺

Now on to something different

I told you I would rework this pattern, see here for details

No, its not the same one - tsk, tsk, tsk

Here they are both together to prove it ☺

And the second square in Knit4Charities KAL

Yep, it was a rattle

Currently working on the third square, but no ideas yet as to what it may picture

Knit4Charities also have a very small Flickr group here

Most members post their photos on the Yahoo group website

They can also be found here on Ravelry

Have a great weekend

Aussie Maria's Australia

Hi everyone

This one is a time warpy thing and we are heading way down south to the "The Great Ocean Road"

It was another one on our Bucket List that we were able to strike off.

I am taking you back to the year 2002

Which is when we made a round trip from the Central Coast of NSW, through Western NSW, North-East SA, down to the South and across to Victoria, then back through the Snowys and home - in 2 weeks.  Go, go, go.  Don't remember exact details now

The Great Ocean Road is a 243-kilometre (151 mi) stretch of road along the south-eastern coast of Australia between the Victorian cities of Torquay and Warrnambool. The road was built by returned soldiers between 1919 and 1932, and is the world's largest war memorial; dedicated to casualties of World War I. It is an important tourist attraction in the region, which winds through varying terrain alongside the coast, and provides access to several prominent landmarks; including the nationally significant Twelve Apostles limestone stack formations - courtesy of Wikipedia link

Now unfortunately we did this road in reverse - transversing from South Australia through Victoria to Melbourne, which meant that all the fantastic views through your windscreen were unluckily in our rear-vision mirror!!!  But we did make a few stops

For everyone else this is the start of the road

For us it was the finish

The Twelve Apostles

which by the time we visited were down to about eight or nine

But the title stays ☺

As more are getting created by the ocean and wind

View is from a helicopter flight

And those clouds you see cut short the trip as it closed in very quickly

And you do know the nursery rhyme - London Bridge???

Well down here, part of it did fall down

and now it is called London Arch ☺

You can see a photo of "London Bridge before 1990" here.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_arch 

The arch closest to the shoreline collapsed unexpectedly on 15 January 1990, leaving two tourists stranded on the outer part: they were rescued by a helicopter. Fortunately nobody was injured in the event. Prior to the collapse, the arch was known as London Bridge because of its similarity to its namesake

These photos were taken by an SLR Camera

Which is still in my possesssion

Though unused

Digitals are so much cheaper than printing ALL the photos I now take ☺

Does anyone else have a "Bucket List" or a "One-Day List".

If so I would love to hear about some of them

Let me introduce you to Percy

Elegant Shell Scarf & Percy, originally uploaded by Aussie Maria.

Hi everyone

It just occurred to me that you have not met Percy (I think). Don't know how he could have missed not appearing on my blog as I really love penguins, especially Fairy Penguins (just had another blog post thought, must remember ).  Anyway its appropriate that he wear a scarf as his native habitat can be so cold.

What is with me? Am I in the wrong hemisphere, its not time to make scarves for gifts now ☺

This yarn was bought for a specific project and giftee, unfortunately it just did not work (the project).

But the yarn has been sitting there and I really wanted to use it.
So I did!!!

Although this is sock yarn it is very soft and feels wonderful around a neck.

It just may yet be gifted to the original attendee but not at least another six months as they will have ABSOLUTELY no use for it until then.

For those interested the yarn is Regia Design Line by Kaffe Fassett 4ply 75% Wool 25% Polyamide.

Bit lost without a BIG project on the go, so I have lots of little projects going at the moment.
Bit like my mind now, keeps swapping and changing direction ☺

Oops almost forgot to give details of where to find the pattern - Elegant Shell Stitch Scarf
Very, very, very simple.  I modified it by working half the length then rejoined to the start and kept on working.  This gave the same finish on both ends of the scarf.

Only difficulty I had was working with 4ply yarn, it took me at least half the length before I was getting the hang of working with it and not for it to keep slipping off the hook.

I take my hat off to those who prefer to work with this and finer yarn, especially the knitters and their beautiful lacy shawls.  Just not for me - back to my 8ply/dk, maybe 5ply/sports yarns ☺

KAL Update

KAL Nov 2010 Baby Bottle, originally uploaded by Aussie Maria.

Hi everyone

Here is the result of the first KAL for one Knit4Charities Nov COM (Charity of the Month)
In case it doesn't show correctly, it's a baby bottle

And here is Day 3 of the 2nd KAL.

I'm still a little confused as to what it might be, but thinking logically I'm GUESSING a rattle?????

Thank you to everyone that left a comment about their Crochet Quirks.  I had been wondering if I was alone in my adaptations to patterns and now I know.

One thing I have learnt is that I really should have titled it "Crochet Innovations" ☺☺

Crochet Quirks

Hi everyone

Ok, its time to tell all

My Crochet Quirks -

• I will use a plain granny square to explain this one - when working I only do one chain in a corner and none between the tr/dc groupings.  No idea why, but if I do what the pattern says, it becomes very stretchy and out of wack if I do.
• Read somewhere when joining your stitches at a corner, instead of doing a slip stitch, work a dc/sc.  For me this works beautifully and makes my corners much neater

Remember I am a self-taught hooker.  I love reading and I am able to understand what is explained this way, so that is how I learnt.  Now none of these things bother me, I just have to adapt patterns i.e. reduce chains between clusters/groups and corners

Come on anyone else want to 'fess up to a quirk!!

A reveal

Hi everyone

I have been working on a gift for about 4 months now.

There was no hurry, so I could do it in my own time.

Purchased the wool as I needed it - which did cause me a few problems when they discontinued one colour and another colour dye-lot's changed.  Thank goodness for Ravelry!!!  I was able to buy a full ball from another member

But I was able to work around it and modify the blanket.

I have given you one very small glimpse of the colours

Colours were chosen to blend with D1's home decor

But as I worked on it, the colours started to appeal even more to me

It made me feel a balance between sea, sky and earth

So it was named (in my head only)

"Ying & Yang"

But for the full impact

Here we go

The edging

A close up of the colours chosen

Squares which I turned into diamonds

On my lounge

Oh, look at that - it matches!!!

Maybe I should have kept it ☺

On full display

Details -

Bendigo Woollen Mills 8ply Classic -

Colours - Turkish Blue (discontinued), Prussian, Iris, Mulga, Pampas & Raffia

Hook - 4mm

Weight - 1,750g!!!!!!!!!! Quite heavy, kept me warm while working on it

Measurements - 1.25m x 1.26m

Most importantly D1 loved it!!!!

And it now has pride of place on her lounge

And .......

I miss it

100 years ......

HAPPY WATTLE DAY!!!

Above image is from favourite Australian Author - May Gibbs

Did you know that today is our National Wattle Day!!!

Well, I for one only found this out recently

1910

On the 1st September 1910, the first Wattle Day was celebrated in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne and was significant as being the first organised demonstration on a definite day ever witnessed in Australia.

Australia's Native Flower

Emblem of Patriotism and Love

Let the wattle henceforth be a sacred charge to every Australian. Let us foster and protect and cherish it. Let us plant it in all our parks and reserves and pleasure grounds, so that we may make pilgrimages to its groves in blossom time. let us give our schoolchildren wattle plants, and offer annual prizes for the best grown trees, that there may be no Australian who cannot link it with his childish memories....

To the native born Australian the wattle stands for home, country, kindred, sunshine, and love - every instinct that the heart most deeply enshrines.

Sydney Morning Herald, September 1, 1910

The above information came from this site

Found this fantastic photo of a wattle tree through Google Images

And if you would like to see photos of wattle in bloom check out this post at Lady Helsie's Happenings. 
It is only one of a few she has on our beautiful native flora

She also has a great example of the wattle as her header

Wattle is also the inspiration for our sporting colours "Green & Gold"