Oooh! Pretty Pink Dresses!


My Darling Luffly Daughter runs around in jeans and T-shirt coz I have NOOOOO fashion sense and I have a staple of Jeans and polo shirts in my wardrob and that is it :)

Recently however my daughter has been running around with anything pink and floaty on her head prancing about and saying 'me a princess, me a princess!'

You don't get much more of a hint from a 2 year old that the jeans just aren't cutting it anymore lol :)

So I ordered the Sew Baby Reversible Sundress Patternand got some really pretty fabric from my favourite fabric shop The Mad Crafter and made her a pretty dress to wear, Ta Daaaaaaa! (as my Luffly Darling Daughter would say lol)

It only took me one night to cut it all out and sew it all together and that included transfering the pattern for her size on to Vilene first. I was SO proud when I finished it (@1am) that I hung it on a hanger and chased upstairs to show it my Darling Luffly Husband (who wasn't feeling well and had been a sleep for hours, oops) He was groggy and said "Ooo yeah it's pretty" then went back to sleep. The funniest thing was he was all surpised at the pretty dress hanging on the wardrobe door in the morning as he remembered little of being woke up in the middle of the night hehe!

The that day she wore it to go to nursery. I'd said to the ladies there that she was going to grannies afterward to show off Mummys handywork, (modest ain't I lol) But when her Dad went to pick her up (that's a whole different post BTW) she didn't have the dress on anymore !?! Just aswell she had the T-shirt and Jeans on underneath, the dress had been a tad on the short side (my Daughter is tall for her age) and I didn't have any tights for her and it was cold outside lol :) Turns out the nursery staff were afraid of her getting paint on it!!! lmao

Pumpkin in The Dark!!!




pumpkin in the Dark 2008

Originally uploaded by BobbinD

This is gonna be a short blog, I dunno whats wrong, started 3 times and found nothing more to say than - here is my Pumpkin, I was well proud of it, my daughter was amazed by it and all the kids that came to Trick or Treat thought that it was ace.

So there it is... A Cheeky Jack O Lantern for my Daughters First Halloween.

Fall Back!

I forgot, I was told a fornight ago, I was told yesterday and I forgot.

Yesterday I forgot more than falling back in time. I was at the carboot and I saw something for my Son Christmas, it was quite big and I'd just arrived so I paid for it and asked the woman to keep it for me and i'd come back to get on my way out.... you guessed it, I forgot! It wasn't the money, although it was that too, but I really thought my son would have really enjoyed it for Christmas. Oh well maybe she'll be there next week.

Well after getting up early, the kids wanting to go to bed at 6 and having the longest hour of trying to keep them up til bedtime showed on the newly adjusted clock. Poor cherubs didnt' understand what was taking so long for bedtime to come, but they are all tucked up in their beds now and hopefully tomorrow will bring normality and theywill get up at their normal time and bedtime won't take so long to come around.

Frugal Bugal!!!

I am becoming more and more aware of how my pennies are being crushed by my Pounds.

Everytime I turn on the news I her about indexs falling and people getting scared because they might loose millions! Pah, if they've got it they can loose it in my mind.

My fears are simpler than that. What if I can't afford to buy Chicken anymore, I love chicken but it's expensive as it is, eversince that guy with the name I can't remeber coz it's too long stuck his neb into it. Two chickens for a fiver was just up my street thank you very much! Now you can't get enough breast to feed the family for under a fiver unless it's on offer!

Right now I couldn't care less for the underpaid seamstresses - warm jersey for my Daughter = £1- Thank you very much, I'll have 2! No light for 40days then they die chickens - Feeds my family for four days + a pot of soup - Thank you very much, I'll have 2 for £5.

Why does everything have to be soooo PC. In times of economic meltdown the only person I'm gonna be caring about are me and mine. Charity donations are at an all time low - no bloody wonder - Charity Begins at home in this house I'm afraid.

Another thing I can't stand is people moaning one week about how skint they are and then the next week they are flashing off another new pair of trainers while sparking up a fag!!!!

I'll stop ranting now, can you tell that something ticked me off. :)

Comment if you want, just remember I'm not preaching it's just My Blog and My Opinion, you don't have to agree with it!

Chicken: SMASH!!!




Chicken Smash (8) crop


Originally uploaded by BobbinD

This is what we had for dinner tonight. It wasn't as pretty looking as it was on the cookery telly programme I got the recipe from Last night but I'll bet it was just as tasty!!!

Jamie Oliver called it Chicken Paramsan but my Darlin Luffly Husband affectionatly named it Chicken SMASH! :) The recipe is on his website and it's in a short video which means you get to see it all happening.

Well Jamie quotes £2.80 per head for this recipe!?! I about dropped off my seat when he said that and then added the "not too bad really!"

Well I used stuff that was in my freezer already, instead of RSPCA Organic Chicken I used ASDA Smartprice

Chicken, instead of Parma Ham we had good old fashioned Bacon and as the only Parmasan Cheese I had came dried in a tub I opted for freshly grated Chedder. I reckon that the whole meal which included mash and sweetcorn came in at about £5 and would have fed four but as my youngest isn't quite into chewing on stuff yet my Daughter, my Darling Luffly Husband and I kinda pigged out on it. Hehe!

After you layer it up, the Chicken, then the Cheese, then the Bacon on top, it'll look like a really cute parcel. But You have to cover it over with the Clingfilm and then SMASH! it with something big and heavy, like say a big heavy assed copperbottomed frying pan for example. Then after a couple of SMASH!s you'll feel much less stressed and the cute little parcel will look more like road kill which means it'll cook in under 6 mins and will get to the table quicker.

My DLH is wanting this for tomorrows dinner again and it's so quick and tasty I think it will take a permanant place on the list of things to cook for DLH when I want something new or expensive. :)

5 Minute Bread




5 minute Bread

Originally uploaded by BobbinD

I've been caught up and swept along in a craze. It's a bit late in getting to me as the book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, that started the tide rolling was published about a year back. The recipe I followed, Simple Crusty Bread was an adaptaion from the book which gives loads of variations for the basic dough recipe.

What appealed to me most about this 5 minute bread is that it doesn't need any kneading. I HATE kneading bread and it's put me off having homemade bread in the house everyday beacuse it's just to time consuming with the kneading and the proving and the rising and the re-rising etc etc but this recipe takes all of that away!!!

It's just four ingredients, Flour, yeast, Salt and Water, mix it in a bowl, set it aside to rise, shove it in the fridge till your ready to use it, pull some out, shape into a tin and let it warm up then shove it in the oven. I didn't believe that it would be so soft and nice and tasty with out Kneading it but I was pleasantly surprised.

If you have ago, leave a comment and let me know how you got on with it.

Good Luck!

BagLove




Handspun CPB bag


Originally uploaded by BobbinD

This is what my First Handspun on Halona, my Ashford Traveller became.

The pattern is called BagLove and it's perfect for holding a full centre pull ball in so it doesn't get tangled at the bottom of your project bag. The pattern is really easy, great for a beginner like me and brill coz it knits up into no time ( about 3 nights in my case but I'm a really slow knitter) and you get something really useful at the end of all your hard work.

I love mine and I love that it's made with my own handspun.

This spinning and knitting thing is more addictive than I could have ever have believed! I'm sooooo inl ove with my little bag coz I spun, knit and now I can use it and I did all myself.

WOOHOO!

More Handspun!


Here is what Halona can produce! She did it all by herself I'm sure. It's a lot smoother and easier to spin on that my first Wheel and this 100g or so of carded Icelandic wool seemed to go on to the bobbin so quickly, and then another bobbin went the same way so I plied them together and that was all done in one night (ish) I think I may have plied it the following morning but it all went to fast I forgot. lol :)

I'm well chuffed with it, it's not perfect but I can definitly see an improvement! I've got 200g of Corriadale that I'm gonna try next I hope I can do it justice :/

Introducing Halona!




Halona

Originally uploaded by BobbinD

I'd like you all to meet Halona. I've called her this as the meaning of the name is well suited to the circumstance she came to us under.

I blogged recently that I had gotten an old Spinning Wheel out of my Classifieds for £25 but what I didn’t then know was that if you run it Anti-clockwise to ply you ended up with the Bobbin, Flyer, and whorl all unscrewing themselves! lolSO it was time for a new plan!!!

I’ve been procrastinating with listing some stuff on Ebay but when my Spinning wheel broke the listings went up super quick as I NEEDED a new Spinning wheel.

Well Karma/Spinning Gods/ my Grandad looking down from above/call it what you will, was shining down on me today coz my Darling Luffly husband picked up another bargain at the carboot!!!

So, Here is Halona, She is my new Ashford Traveller with 9 Bobbins in almost-new-but-been-neglected-just-needing-some-loving condition. We got her for a heaven sent price of only £50 (honest) and she spins like an angel (shame I don't but I'm sure pratice is all I need)

P.S. Halona means: Of Good Fortune.

Tribble Trouble


This is what I made with my First Yarn - It's a Tribble - a knitting pattern inspired by some fluffy round thing in a sci-fi movie. The pattern called for cotton so at least you'd be able to wash the dishes with it. But what I wanted this pattern for was because it used a tiny yardage and meant that the 48 yards I'd spun would be enough to complete it :)

So here it is, my 48 yards of handspun is now a Tribble that if I tried to wash the dishes would decrease 50% in size and therefore become even less useful :(

I love it though, it's my first handspun project and I think it's a work of art!

My First Handspun Yarn


This is the first handspun yarn I've done on my £25 spinning wheel I got from Gumtree. I used Carded Icelandic wool From the Twist Fiber Craft Studio.

It's really over spun and it's really uneven in width and texture but I don't care! I've really chuffed with it :) even although it does feel like horsehair twine :(

The only Problem I had with doing this is that my Cheap Old spinning wheel is fine going clockwise do to the singles, However, when it came to running Anti Clockwise to do the plying the Whorl, Flyer and Bobbin all unscrewed from each other and made Plying very frustrating indeed as I had to stop every two mins to tighten everything back up. As you can see from the pick though... I got there in the end.

I present my first Skein to the world! :) :) :) :)

All Spun Out!




SpinningWheel


Originally uploaded by BobbinD

Look at my pretty Spinning Wheel that I got for the bargain, knock down price of...... only £25!

My Darling Luffly Husband is always on Gumtree see if there are any bargains to be had, he's after anything from computer games to campervans and the latest find... land in the highlands (Me thinks I better start knitting thicker Jumpers :) )

It was on one of his many trawls through Gumtree that he saw my soon to be new Spinning Wheel. I'd wanted one but the price was a bit off putting. I'm well known for spending loads on something (e.g. Lateral Thigh Trainer) and lasting a week at it then never using it again. I'd been looking at drop spindles but hadn't gotten one as i just knew somehow that wouldn't be the same, lol, a touch of Fiber Snobbery never hurt anyone, right?

So anyway, It needed a bit of work as the person selling it had never used it and it was a dry as a dinosaur bone. I gave it a new drive band of green twine (all I had at the time, but it's doing the job) I also had to squeeze about half a tin of oil into it to get it go round smoothly, I'm still having to heavily oil it every time i getit out so as not to pull a hamstring while treadling lol. So Far I've had fun with yarn barf, shabby singles and now I'm on the slow path to something that is starting to look a tad like it might ply up into something knittable.... watch this space!

ADSL, We are GO!




Tiscali


Originally uploaded by BobbinD

We registered with a new internet company recently and we had our phone and net line all changed over. The phone kicked in about a week ago and today the new router arrived. :)

I looked at the box and for a fleeting moment I set it aside for my Darling Luffly Husband to do when he got in from work. In the same second I changed my mind and thought "I can do this!"

AND I DID!

I am now writing to you all on my newly connected Internet that I did all by myself!

Altogether now - "Well Done, What a Clever Girl!"

lol:)

Centre-pull ball




Centre-pull ball

Originally uploaded by BobbinD

Ooooh how I love eBay.

I got a hardly used Knitmaster Wool Winder for a Bargain and I it arrived in about 36 hours which was sooooo fabby!.

I’ve been winding various bits and bobs of wool with it and I’m so impressed! Little balls of perfectness each one of them and no more wool getting tangled and dirty on the floor. WOOHOO!

All I need now is to save up and get me a Swift to go with my ball winder and I can start buying some of all that pretty yarn I see on ebay all the time that comes in the funny twisty hanks.

Man in Charge of the Kitchen?!?

Well last night was knit and Natter night again and I'd made Meatloaf coz I knew Darling Luffly Husband and my Daughter would enjoy it, it was quick and easy to prepare and it meant that I woudn't have to serve it up before I left and it gave me an hour of 'free' time to get ready and get other stuff sorted before I left.

As I left I did have a wonder about the success of my plan of leaving a man in charge of my kitchen. I had left full instructions on what to do when the timer went off and left him a tin of Baked Beans out as subtle stearing away from Meatloaf sandwiches :) My Darling Luffly Husband is an intelligent human being but ultimatly a man all the same so my wondering was valid I thought.

When I got home I was starving. I was expecting to go in to dried up meatloaf and a full can of beans but what I got was a pleasant surprise. My Darling Luffly Husband had covered the remaining Meatloaf and had left me a portion of beans so all I had to do was slice and microwave and sit down and enjoy.

So I reckon that leaving My Man in charge of the Kitchen wasn't the disaster that may have been in many other kitchens up and down the country. It's all in the training girls!!!

P.S. I love you Darling, don't ever change.

Meatloaf:

400g mince, a HUGE onion finely diced, Salt and Pepper (more than you think), 4 stale bread rolls wizzed in the blender mixed with a egg and some milk til it's squishy.

Put everythig in a big bowl and mix with your hands till it's all combined then add a big squirt of ketchup (a la Roseanne Barr) and mix it again.

Stuff it all into a greased 2lb loaf tin then bake for about a hour at 180 degrees.

Carboots & Festivals :)

The local 4 day festival is going on round here just now and the usual weekend carboot I go to was awful as a result. The fesitval is supposed to bring loads of visiters to the area and be great for the economy etc etc but... because of fear of the traffic jams and hoards of tourists the locals... stay at home hehe! :)

The result was though that although the carboot was smaller than usual :( and there were less people there to buy... I got a greater number of bargains yay! :)

If the weather holds out I'll be going to another carboot tomorrow morning so I've got my fingers crossed the rain doesn't come. so if it's sunny, check in for another bargain udate tomorrow.

Knit n Natter

I went to my first ever 'Stitch n Bitch' tonight and it was FABBY!

I was soooooo excited to go, I thought it was on TUESDAY but it wasn't so after a day or twos delay I got all excited all over again today, on THURSDAY, the right day for the knit and natter at my Local Yarn Store.

My Darling Luffly Husband was looking after our two kids for the evening so I was running round trying to do some last minute tyding up, putting jammies on the kids, getting supper ready so everything was kinda already done ;) Then I checked my watch and found out I was late.

By The time I'd got ten mins out the village I realised that all the running around had made me work up quite a sweat and I had.....BO!

ICK just what you want when you're meeting a bunch of new people for the first time hehe... sorry girls, I'll be more relaxed and leave time to shower next time .

There were so many lovely projects on the go, can't wait for the next one to see the progress. It's only 14 sleeps, hehe. I'm like a kid waiting for christmas to come around again.

STOP! It's the Holidays...



Everything stops at Holiday time round here.

Both my Kids are under school age and I am totally unaware of the dates of school terms so it seems that everytime we get settled into a routine of toddler groups, nursery days and mamma-meets it all comes to a grinding halt coz... the schools are holiday!!! Grrrr. For Seven... SEVEN weeks, those of us without kids at school are left in a kinda lonely Limbo. My Husband is still working regular shifts, we ain't going anywhere on holiday and if I go out with the kids it's just me and the kids. It's not all the other kids in the village to play together and all the other Mums to chat with. :(

May the next seven weeks pass as quickly as they did when I was a kid at school, hehe! I wait eagarly for the recommencment of all the toddler groups, nursery days and mamma-meets. :)

All In a Ravel

Ravelry.com

Hiya, I ain't been blogging in a while coz I got all caught up at Ravelry.com



For anybody who doesn't already know, Raverly is a knitting and crochet community for all the lovely crochet and knitters out there looking to chat with and be inspired by other crochet and Knitters.

When you sign up first they send you an invite to your email address and then when you answer the invite you get to enter the world of everything that is Raverly.

My Username is BobbinD look me up when you get there :) Have fun, Hope to see you there soon.

The Elusive Crochet Pattern



I recieved this blanket as a gift from an elderly friend of mine when my first daughter was born. I asked for the pattern but I never got it so after we moved I started to look for it on the internet. I found out that it was an old pattern called 'The reversible shell afghan' from Lee Wards who went out of business in the 1990s, :( I also discovered that I wasn't the only person after the pattern.)

My Daughter is 2 years old now and I also have a 6 months old son and I was getting desparate to track down the pattern so I could do a blue one for him. The funny thing was when I gave up looking and started to look for another project for him I stumbled across the pattern on Freepatterns.com. Although the pattern calls for crochet cotton and a tiny hook size but I'm working in DK on a 4mm hook. I think it looks pretty much exactly the same. :)

I can't wait till it's finished and hugging my son at night.

Please leave comment if you find this pattern link helpful.

Lazy Sunday!?!





Sunday Morning was Fabby. I got a lie in til about half nine then I was awoken with Breakfast in bed by my Luffly Darling Husband and my Beautiful Daughter, this, however was the end of my Lazy Sunday! )
After Getting up my Luffly Darling Husband crashed on the couch and then decided it was his turn for a lie in so when he took my Son up for his nap at half ten he turned in for one aswell. I sat down with my Daughter and we watched a bit of telly while I tried to get some crochet done, that didn’t work. I went into the kitchen and decided to start a messy job.

I created this mess with flour, egg and breadcrumbs with garlic on turkey pieces:

Messy Kitchen

to Create this for lunch, Homemade Chicken Nuggets:
Chicken Nuggets

but by the time the oven was preheated it looked like this and lunch was smelling fabby.

Lunch is Ready

So after Lunch was done and tummies were all full the phone went and the Mother-in-law AND the Sister-in-law were coming to visit. Thinking they were only 10 mins away at a local farm shop/cafe I jumped up off the sofa and started scooting round the house tidying and washing and hoovering and dusting, dressing the kids, doing my hair, changing my top sticking my ear out for the door chapping… An hour later they still weren’t here!?! When they do arrive it turns out my visit was being tacked onto the end of a shopping trip, they hadn’t said that on the first phone call -)
Well, goodnight for now, maybe tomorrow will be on a slower pace… here’s hoping.

Ooh It's Exciting!

Welcome to my first post on my first weblog.

I hope to use this as a personal journal, a daily diary of daily things.  A note of all things Kids, cooking, crochet and a like.

I'll try to keep it interesting if only for my own sanity so if I'm ever to re read it all I dodn't feel my own life is boring and uninteresting.

I'm not saying it will be fascinating or checkback-worthy. I won't claim it will be updated everyday or even every week but only when I remember and if I've got time.

It is going to be honest and to the point, If it happened the post will be without bells on and if it made me happy, angry, sad, tired, manic or bored I'll say that too.

Happy Reading and Please post comments. I want your own honesty too. Tell me how you feel reading my blog and as long as you are polite about it I won't delete anything.