Not quite sure why I'm doing this at 3am, but I've just blogged this weekend's achievement on my blog. Which is here. I finished the top on Embie's quilt, which, y'know, I'll probably bring to show-and-tell next week anyway....

Goodnight. Sleep now... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Hot Water Bottle Cover Pattern

OK, I think I've got the pattern sorted out. Please read through it and see if there are any obvious errors. I've not yet tried it out, so it's completely out of my head! However I will try it out soon.

Here we go!

Kate’s re-write of the
Hot Water Bottle Cosy Pattern

This pattern is made to cover a hot water bottle that measures approx 12” long and 7.5” wide.

Materials: Red Heart Acrylic Yarn
Needles: 7US / 4.5 mm
Gauge: 4 stitches and 6 rows = 1 inch

I’m going to write this pattern in two ways – first just re-writing the pattern as it stands, knitted on straight needles. Then I’ll re-do it in the round, for working on either dpns or a circular needle. I’m also adding a band of ribbing on each side of the closure so that it doesn’t curl up, and button holes so it can be done up nicely.

K = knit
P = purl
M = make (increase either by lifting the bar between the stitches, or by knitting first into the front and then the back of the stitch)
K2tog = knit 2 stitches together

Version One, knit flat in two pieces, on single pointed needles
The first piece starts at the opening and goes up the body of the bottle, shapes for the shoulders and finishes at the neck. The second piece starts at the opening and works down to the base, completing the first side, before folding over and knitting up the other side to finish at the neck.

First Piece
Cast on 30 sts in 2x2 rib (P2, then K2 P2 to end).

Rib band
Row 1: Knit in rib, starting with P2, then K2P2 to end.
Row 2: Knit in rib, starting with K2, then P2K2 to end.
Row 3: As row 1
Row 4: *Rib 6 sts, cast off 2 sts*, repeat from * to * 3 times, rib 6 sts.
Row 5: **Rib 6 sts, cast on 2 sts**, repeat from ** to ** 3 times, rib 6 sts. You now have 3 buttonholes.
Rows 6-8: Rib.

Body
Continue in Stocking Stitch for another 36 rows, finishing on a purl row.

Shoulders
Row 45: K1, K2tog, K2 tog, K20, K2tog, K2tog, K1 (26 sts)
Row 46 and all even rows: Purl
Row 47: K1, K2tog, K2 tog, K16, K2tog, K2tog, K1 (22 sts)
Row 49: K1, K2tog, K2 tog, K12, K2tog, K2tog, K1 (18 sts)
Row 51: K1, K2tog, K12 , K2tog, K1 (16 sts)
Row 53: K1, K2tog, K10, K2tog, K1 (14 sts)

Neck
Continue in Stocking Stitch for 15 rows. Cast Off.


Second piece
Cast on 30 sts in 2x2 rib (P2, then K2 P2 to end).

Rib band
Row 1: Knit in rib, starting with P2, then K2P2 to end.
Row 2: Knit in rib, starting with K2, then P2K2 to end.
Row 3-8: Continue knitting in 2x2 rib as in first piece, omitting buttonholes.

Body
Continue in Stocking Stitch for 6 rows.

Base of first side
Row 15: K1, K2tog, K2 tog, K20, K2tog, K2tog, K1 (26 sts)
Row 16 and all even rows: Purl
Row 17: K1, K2tog, K2 tog, K16, K2tog, K2tog, K1 (22 sts)
Row 19: K1, K2tog, K2 tog, K12, K2tog, K2tog, K1 (18 sts)
Row 21: K1, K2tog, K12 , K2tog, K1 (16 sts)
Row 23: K1, K2tog, K10, K2tog, K1 (14 sts)

Row 25: K5, Cast Off 4, K5.
Row 26: P5, Cast On 4, P5.

Base of second side
Row 27: K1, M1, K10, M1, K1 (16 sts)
Row 28 and all even rows: Purl
Row 29: K1, M1, K12, M1, K1 (18 sts)
Row 31: K1, M1, K1, M1, K12, M1, K1, M1, K1 (22 sts)
Row 33: K1, M1, K1, M1, K16, M1, K1, M1, K1 (26 sts)
Row 35: K1, M1, K1, M1, K20, M1, K1, M1, K1 (30 sts)
Row 36: Purl

Body
Continue in Stocking Stitch for 50 rows, ending on a purl row.

Shoulders
Row 87: K1, K2tog, K2 tog, K20, K2tog, K2tog, K1 (26 sts)
Row 88 and all even rows: Purl
Row 89: K1, K2tog, K2 tog, K16, K2tog, K2tog, K1 (22 sts)
Row 91: K1, K2tog, K2 tog, K12, K2tog, K2tog, K1 (18 sts)
Row 93: K1, K2tog, K12 , K2tog, K1 (16 sts)
Row 95: K1, K2tog, K10, K2tog, K1 (14 sts)

Neck
Continue in Stocking Stitch for 15 rows. Cast Off.

Finishing
Lay out the two pieces, right sides together, with rib bands overlapped. Pin together, and sew up sides. Sew on buttons under buttonholes.


Version Two, knit in the round in one piece, on dpns or a circular needle
This time we start at the base and work up the body to the neck, all in one piece. Working in the round means that every row is knit, and it omits the need for so much sewing up!

Rib band
On single pointed needles, Cast On 30 sts in 2x2 rib (P2, then K2 P2 to end). Leave a long tail so that you can sew up with it.

Row 1: Knit in rib, starting with P2, then K2P2 to end.
Row 2: Knit in rib, starting with K2, then P2K2 to end.
Row 3: As row 1
Row 4: *Rib 6 sts, cast off 2 sts*, repeat from * to * 3 times, rib 6 sts.
Row 5: **Rib 6 sts, cast on 2 sts**, repeat from ** to ** 3 times, rib 6 sts. You now have 3 buttonholes.
Rows 6-8: Rib.

Keep this band on the single pointed needles for now and put it aside – we will pick it up later on.

Base
Cast on 28 sts, leaving a long tail to use for sewing up later. Join into a round. The tail also indicates where the start of the round is, for later reference.

Round 1: K1, M1, K10, M1, K2, M1, K10, M1, K1 (32 sts)
Round 2 and all even rounds: Knit all stitches
Round 3: K1, M1, K12, M1, K2, M1, K12, M1, K1 (36 sts)
Round 5: K1, M1, K1, M1, K12, M1, K1, M1, K2, M1, K1, M1, K12, M1, K1, M1, K1 (44 sts)
Round 7: K1, M1, K1, M1, K16, M1, K1, M1, K2, M1, K1, M1, K16, M1, K1, M1, K1 (52 sts)
Round 9: K1, M1, K1, M1, K20, M1, K1, M1, K2, M1, K1, M1, K20, M1, K1, M1, K1 (60 sts)

Body
Round 11-16: knit 6 rounds

Rib band
Round 17: K30, P2, then K2P2 to end of round.
Rounds 18-23: repeat as for round 17.
Round 24: K30, then Cast Off the stitches as you P2, then K2P2 to end of round. Pull the loop of the last cast off stitch to be quite large, and pass your ball of yarn through the loop. Pull to tighten.

Body
Round 25: K30, then knit from your buttonholed rib band on the single pointed needles.
Continue in knit for another 36 rounds.

Shoulders
Round 61: K1, K2tog, K2tog, K20, K2tog, K2tog, K2, K2tog, K2tog, K20, K2tog, K2tog, K1 (52 sts)
Round 63: K1, K2tog, K2tog, K16, K2tog, K2tog, K2, K2tog, K2tog, K16, K2tog, K2tog, K1 (44 sts)
Round 65: K1, K2tog, K2tog, K12, K2tog, K2tog, K2, K2tog, K2tog, K12, K2tog, K2tog, K1 (36 sts)
Round 67: K1, K2tog, K12 , K2tog, K2, K2tog, K12 , K2tog, K1 (32 sts)
Round 69: K1, K2tog, K10, K2tog, K2, K2tog, K10, K2tog, K1 (28 sts)

Neck
Continue in knit for 15 rounds. Cast Off.

Finishing
Turn cover inside out and pin base together. Sew up the end, leaving a hole (about 4 sts long) for the hot water bottle’s hanging tag to stick out. If your hot water bottle doesn’t have a hanging tag, sew up the end completely. Turn cover out the right way, and lay it out with the buttonhole rib band on top. Pin and discreetly sew the edge flaps down. Sew on buttons under buttonholes.

The original pattern can be found here.

Wow another post!

How about that - two posts in four days!

I'm rather chuffed that you all liked my first attempt at making baked apples so much. Here's the "recipe"

I cooked eleven granny smith apples, because, y'know, left-overs are good. Though I expect that quantity may be a little large for most of you at home.

So, wash the apples and remove any stickers. Remove the core (and save them for Bek's bunnies), and with a knife lightly score a line through the skin around the apple. This is so that they don't explode all over your oven when they're cooking (ie, a good idea!).

First stuff a dried apricot down the hole - it jams in the bottom and keeps all the rest of the filling in when you serve it. Fill the rest of the hole with assorted dried fruit. Last night I used sultanas, pineapple and date (chopped into quarters, half a date per apple), along with the apricot.

In a saucepan I put about 3 tbsp of honey, a dash (1/4 tsp?) of allspice, a larger dash (1/3 tsp?) of ground cloves, and an even larger dash of cinnamon (1/2 tsp?), and then poured in some water (maybe 2 tbsp?), and stirred over a medium heat until it started boiling.

Line all the apples up in an oven-proof dish and pour the honey sauce over them. Make sure you cover the skin on top (so it glazes in the oven) and pour a little down inside each apple too. Bake at 200C for an hour. Top with icecream and enjoy!


We had a big group last night, only missing Rosie, who was celebrating her second anniversary (priorities, girl :P), and Alana, who was feeling sniffly and tired.

Rebecca brought a show-and-tell. She has knitted a wonderful tea cosy with a rose and leaves on the top. So amazing, especially from someone who, when she joined us, had not knitted before. Definitely a natural.

Eleri went slightly crazy with the camera, so I shall post some of the shots of what we were all working on. I was knitting a pair of socks while stuffing up the lace pattern - after most of you left I had to take the needles out and pull out about 10 rows. Very sad.


I was also helping Viv start knitting her first pair of socks, and showing her the very funky crochet cast on method for starting socks at the toe.


Jocelyn was knitting with a lovely multi-coloured baby wool, while Bek began appliqueing a second red flower to her doona cover.


Emily worked on her cute sheepies (no photos! Sorry :( )and Rebecca took apart her hot water bottle cover to add ribbing to the closure. We talked about fixing the pattern for the hot water bottle cover, so I shall hopefully do that later today and post it here (OMG, a third post!!).


(To explain about the hearts, Viv 'hearted' us all... Lillian the cat also got one - it's still stuck to the cat flap!)

Eleri did important work by reading a magazine and wishing she'd bought a french mansion :) Though she had contributed greatly by providing us all with yummy grapefruit marmalade - thank you!

Slacker stitching

We've all been pretty slack about blogging recently - I last hosted on 22/4, which is now three weeks ago...

The previous week (15/4) we were at Princess Viv's castle, and I promised to blog her soup recipe as it was so completely yummy and able to be eaten by everyone! Better late than never, I often say.

Golden Austrian Cauliflower Cream Soup

• 1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
• 3 carrots, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup celery, coarsely chopped
• 2 leeks, coarsely chopped
• 2 tbsp VegiZest or other no salt seasoning
• 2 cups carrot juice
• 4 cups water
• 3 tsp Spike seasoning (I have no idea what this is!)
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 cup raw cashews
• 5 cups kale or organic baby spinach

Cover and simmer all ingredients except cashews and kale or spinach for 15 mins or until just tender. If kale is being used steam until tender. Blend 2/3 of soup vegetables and liquid with raw cashews until smooth and creamy. Add back to the remaining chunky vegetables and stir in kale or spinach. Spinach will wilt in hot soup.

The following week at my place, we had (I think) only Viv, Emily and Rosie in attendance, so it was a small cosy gathering. We ate vegan shepherd's pie and vegetarian invented quiche (both Viv-able) with a salad, and then followed by apple crumble. So much food!

We did eventually roll ourselves into the loungeroom to do some stitching... I'm not certain what everyone was working on after this long: I do remember that Rosie was working on knitting her lovely lacy scarf.

Anyway, what I planned to do here was post a photograph of the skirt I ended up making with the hideously expensive silk, and which I wore to a wedding in early April.

Not an excellent photo - Bron has been chastised for his photo taking, for taking all the photos from too high up (damn tall boys). The perspective on about twenty photos all make me look like a dwarf and my legs about 20cm long! The skirt really only goes to a little below my knees (not nearly my ankles as some photos make it seem). You can see the detail of the feature panels in the skirt... and the slightly crinkled satin...

I got chatting to a lady at the wedding who recognised the silk - she had a little jacket made from the white version for her wedding eight or nine years ago. We were thrilled at the coincidence and swapped stories - and ended up being placed on the same table.

I'm looking forward to getting back to stitching next week! I've been sewing and knitting to keep up - I've done one Della mitten, and have to start the second... right now. Bye!

The week before the week before last

I'm so totally slack, I hosted three weeks ago, and still haven't posted about it!

For dinner we had slightly disasterous Vietnamese 'crepes', which turned out not to be crepe-like at all. Everyone could eat them as they're made with rice flour and coconut milk, and they were relatively tasty and coconutty, but had a weird texture and we couldn't get them to stick together. The non-veggies ate them with chicken and assorted veg, and the veggies with cashew nuts and assorted veg. For dessert we had a LOT of strawberries - as I was leaving the market they were practically throwing them out - $2 for a kilo, so I bought 2 kilos and we ate lots of them. With cream, for those of us not allergic to dairy!

Photos of people doing projects are at home, but I *will* post them later, promise!

Keen posting!

My computer was right there, the camera was next to it, and I could actually find the uplink cable. So before I forgot to, I've decided to blog it tonight!

We were looking forward to welcoming new stitcher Rosie, but she didn't end up coming - perhaps my "see you tomorrow night" - written late on Monday night - confused the matter. Oh dear. So it was a small gathering tonight, with just Princesses Eleri, Alana and Kate in attendance.

Princess Eleri brought along a fabulous show-and-tell with the completed top (minus border) of her wedding ring quilt. Only has to be finished in a week or so - thank goodness there's a long weekend coming up!

And here's a close-up of one of the rings. The fabrics and sewing are just fantastic - all those curved seams. Wow!


Once the top had been ironed, photographed, draped and adored, it was time to contemplate the border and how to apPLIque it to the rings. Quite difficult, really.


Poor Princess Alana is sick with a head cold again after staying up late baking for the bake-off, but she still managed to work industriously on Prince Ed's jumper. Nearly one ball of wool finished (sssssh, only 16 remaining). Estimated completion date by winter 2009 :)


Princess Kate had intended to work on her interim emergency project (another gypsy skirt made from charm squares) while her fabrics wing their way from the US (brilliant website: http://www.hancocks-paducah.com/ for all your quilting needs. Hide your credit card first!), however conversations of fabrics and stashes distracted her, and so she spent some time searching through and sorting old boxes of fabric. After looking in the box labelled 'Evening Fabrics' (and finding some amazing and forgotten pieces), she resorted to opening the box labelled 'Mending and Incomplete' to find the 80cm of $120/metre embroidered silk that she'd never dared cut into. It was originally purchased for a corset, along with all the boning, piping and ribbon, however the prototype didn't fit and was too much of a pain to resize. So ideas were discussed about what to do with this incredibly expensive and stunning fabric - feature panels in a skirt, I think we decided.

Interim emergency project:

Very expensive embroidered silk:
(reflection from the silk is a bit strange - it is actually black).

Last week I was so inspired by the apPLIque jumper I was sewing for Della, that I stayed up late once I got home and kept working on it until the wee hours. Silly me. Here it is:

(oops, I see I should have flattened it better before photographing it - the arms don't actually have those big wobbles in them.)

I've been thinking of setting up at Etsy store for clothing like this and the skirts - what do people think?

Finished projects

It has been rather a while since I've done an update on this blog... Sorry princessi :(

Among other things, I promised I would post some photos of the firefighter quilt:

The finished quilt! I photographed it on our bed, so you can't actually see the borders or special corner squares...

A close-up of the border fabric and one of the corner squares. The corner squares came about when I realised that the pattern was ginormous and completely too insanely big, so I reduced the number of blocks (was 7x8, reduced to 6x6). Of course this was after I'd cut out all the pieces and made all the red squares. *sigh*

The label, and a view of the blue-flamed backing fabric (which was so completely JJ and was the inspiration for the rest of the quilt). The wording on the label had been all nicely spaced out, until a party a week ago when a number of people came up to me to ask if it was still OK to go in for the present. Teach me to be organised and to finish it well ahead of time! So I had to squish a whole lot more names on - including up the side too. Ah well.

Oh, to explain the 40th/10th birthday thing: her birthday is the 29th of February, so while she was turning 40 years old, it was only her 10th birthday.

JJ was totally amazed by her gift and absolutely loves it. Her father has said that the family now has a new heirloom :)

I had also promised to post the recipe for the apple crumble I made a few hostings ago. Hmmm. I tend to make this one up every time I make it, so I'll have to experiment to work out approximately what I did. It would have contained something along the lines of:

1 cup wholemeal flour (unless I used wheat-free flour?)
1 cup coconut
1/2 cup raw sugar
sesame seeds
sunflower seeds
walnuts/pecans
enough melted butter/margarine to make it the right consistency.

Not a particularly clear recipe - but Good Luck!

I thought I might also post a picture Della's skirt that I quickly ran up one night a few weeks ago. It didn't make it to a SnB night, as it was quicker to make than I expected.


I bought a pack of 25 pre-cut 15cm charm squares at Lincraft - and I had to add two of my own to make the proportions work right. The longest part of making this was working out the layout of which squares was going to go next to which. The pack contained fabrics that were the same pattern but in different colours - I managed to keep them from being next to each other in the rows, but failed dismally in separating them vertically! No matter. My overlocker made this project very simple, though the gathering was a bit of work too. I've bought another couple of packs of these squares, as I think they'll make nice (and cheap - the pack of squares cost $9.95, and the elastic would come to only about 40cents or so - so all up under $11) preschool presents - I'm sure Della will be invited to a few parties at some stages of this year!