Oliver Boliver

Phew - what a week!

I knew things were going too well when I managed to cross all my things off my To Do List by lunchtime last Monday. I then pottered about for a bit thinking how lovely it was to enjoy some guilt free knitting and waited for Daddy to collect Oliver from nursery. When he arrived home Ollie was being a bit needy, which was fine and we had a cuddle whilst watching some mindless cartoon drivel on the tv before bedtime. It was all going far to well until I noticed whilst getting him ready for bed that he was covered in spots! You may remember that he had chicken pox last year and so I didn't think it was that, but had no idea what it could be.  12 hours later and Dr W confirmed another bout of chicken pox and said that it's not unusual for little ones to catch it twice especially if first time round they've not built up enough resistence to fight it off again.

Great.... a week off nursery and officially placed in quarantine for us both!

Poor little man. Well, I think we've managed to watch almost every episode of Bob the Builder and the Zing Zillas and we've drawn about 57 houses and probably 73 cars. He's painted almost every plain piece of paper in the house and has done his jigsaws so many times he can do them in the dark! Thankfully he has managed to sleep lots and even his daytime sleep has returned, although I suspect that's only temporary...boo. 

He went back to nursery today which has meant catching up on a weeks worth of To Do lists today!

I had a lovely surprise last Tuesday when I received this mysterious package from a courier....

  

Curiously, I took a peek inside....

And discovered, 2 beautiful lavender trees......

I then checked the gift card and to my surprise they came from the Bitch and Stitch Girls as a thank you for helping them make the chickens, snowmen and scarves over the last 12 months! I couldn't believe it! They are beautiful and now sat out on the patio so thank you very much, ladies!
  
 

Happy 1st Anniversary Bitch n Stitch Girls!

I've not blogged much about my knitting class as I've never taught anyone to knit before and to be honest I'm not sure any of us thought it would last beyond practice squares! Basically, I was strongarmed last year by "Friend with a Strongarm" to teach a small group of my colleagues from work who I've known for so long now that they all belong in the close friend category than co-worker. 10 years ago I'm sure we would've all been horrified had we seen what our bitch and stitching future held but it would appear that for one Tuesday every fortnight we hang up our dancing shoes and our drinking arms and sit and ... knit! (We also watch VH1 so we can feel like teenagers again!) Some would say that most of us gave up doing those things long before we started knitting but it's not my place to say!

I'm so proud to say that we met last night for our usual fortnightly session and it was discovered that we have been bitching and stitching (mostly bitching!) for exactly a year now! I wished I was organised enough to have made a note as it would have been nice to have something fizzy to celebrate. Instead we'll have to have a belated celebration next session instead. Anyway - well done girls!

I seriously thought the group would become tired of me or of knitting but probably mostly of me making them knit but a year on and it's still going strong! Together we've made (although some have not finished but that's the real side of knitting isn't it?!) snowmen Christmas decorations and a whole flock of chickens from Rowans Organic Cotton Cotton Kids Collection. I've been meaning to take some pics of their FO's so I'll do that next time and let you see how they're getting on. Here's what Rowan think they should look like........

The next project is a scarf. It might sound basic but I think I might have finished them off doing the chickens and they've asked for something easy to do so they can watch TV at the same time! So some are doing garter stitch scarves for their babies and some are doing the same but for themselves. "Friend with Voracious Knitting Appetite" has already finished her baby's scarf and is ready to knit something for herself.  She's going to tackle my Holy Moly Summer Cotton Skinny Scarf which I've posted on Ravelry and on Etsy. It looks harder than it is and is a 4 row pattern repeat where every even row is a knit row. Because of all the "holes" it knits up really quickly and uses about 75g of yarn. I think I'll do a wider one with really chunky wool for the winter too. If you buy the summer pattern I'll send you the winter update free once it's ready!

Here are some pics of Holy Moly which I hope you like too...