Miss Aine

‘ handmAid ‘ is a craft day in aid of relief for the famine currently happening in the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, and neighbouring countries). Be there! Saturday 3rd September 2011, in Damer Hall on Stephen’s Green, from 10.30am to 4.30pm; it costs just €5 entry & under 12s are free. All proceeds are going to the Oxfam appeal. If you can’t be there in person, but would like to support Oxfam through the event, you can use this handy ‘My Charity’ link here . Text taken from the handmAid website. Click on red writing to be brought to their site. Unfortunately I can't make it to the actual day as we're to be down in Wexford visiting the folks, so I'm donating some toys for the market stall.

A while ago I had a message through Ravelry from a lady in the UK raising funds for epilepsy. She wanted to know if my free patterns could be used to make toys to sell for the charity (which I am happy for anyone to do with any of my patterns for any charity, period). Her story had me in tears that night, not least as my own sister had epilepsy as a teenager. To think that something similar could have happened to her was quite distressing (thankfully she kind of out-grew her version, it was just due to sleep deprivation mainly). Deb has toys for sale through her website, and also takes custom orders. Click on the picture above to get through to her site.

Stole stitch amount from this pattern . Knit with lovely cotton from Lidl which feels so nice when knit! Finished with some fabric from her granny.

The Loopy Soother pattern from The Knitted Nursery . A quick and easy baby gift.

Another quick knitted gift to tick of my Christmas list - I'm so going to be more prepared this year as last year I was a mess. The Leila Shrug . This pattern was really quick and quite easy. Really just a rectangle that you sew together at the sides for a little bit. It would be a good pattern for someone just getting into lace knitting as the pattern is very repetitve and easy to follow.

The erratic blogging continues. To be honest I have so many things I want to make at the moment that I try not to be on the computer for long in the evenings or else I have no time for knitting! And other nights I'm in bed soon after the kids I'm so knackered. The joys of parenthood! This pattern, The Funky Ski Hat by Suss Cousins , was a great knit as it was really quick so its one thing ticked off my list. You have to knit a front and a back, which I didn't realise when I first read the pattern. If I knit it again I'd probably knit it in the round or at least both parts together. Modelled by Emily but its meant for an adult.

Myself and the kidlets headed down to my folks in Wexford for a few days this week. Thankfully we had some fairly decent weather so we got to the beach two of the days.

One of our regular knitters at the Celbridge group is relocating to the UK so we planned a little party for her send-off. I offered to make a cake, but ended up making cupcakes as they'd be less messy and wouldn't need plates and forks. So much time was spent 'googling' knitting-themed cakes. And good old google came up trumps with the VeganYumYum blog and her beautiful ' knit night cupcakes' . I made fudgey-brownie type cupcakes topped with white chocolate icing. Then I used Lolo's tutorial to make the marzipan balls of yarn and added little cocktail stick knitting needles. Very happy with how they turned out!

I've been giving washable nappies a go this time round (while also using disposables when we're out or when the washables are in the wash). I just use some prefolds that I got off another knitter (!) and some wraps. However, at the moment when Oliver does a poo it goes everywhere so I have to change the wrap as well as the prefold. So, onto Ravelry I went to get patterns for nappy wraps and soakers. The WHW Plain Wrap is the one I found that looked most like the traditional nappy wrap. I wouldn't fancy trying to take a soaker off him if he'd pooed. Now that would be messy! This pattern is really quick and easy to follow. I did have to order online for the aplix for the fastenings, but the general consensus seems to be that it is better than Velcro. Now I just need to lanolise them and get them to work.