Now I want a baby girl too

Early last month I started this little dress and I'm pleased now to say that it is finished.
It will be sent off for baby Amelie this week and now that some more wool has arrived in the mail I can get onto finishing her little blanket. I hope her mum likes it! I think it would look fabulous in black & white photos with a little teddy bear too. ... sigh.





I'm not the best on the photography front so they are a little blurry. I'll have to do a night class or something to hone my happy snap skills.

Was going to say, I hope you have a great week but then I realised it's Wednesday already so enjoy the rest of your week. :)

A peak at Townsville

Having my father in law visit recently was a great opportunity for us to get out and check out some more of what Townsville has to offer. We have been here since January and have seen more of it's surrounds than "The Ville" itself.



This is Townsville from Castle Hill, you can see the Ross river snaking through the city.



This picture was taken from Mt. Stuart and you can see Castle Hill to the left of the city and Magnetic Island behind Castle hill. We haven't been to Maggie Island yet but we will, most likely when it's not stinger season so we can enjoy getting in the ocean and playing around in the sand.



We took a short trip up Hervey's Range road to the Heritage Tea Rooms. There you can buy a $50 cup of Kopi Luwak... Cat poo coffee! Nope, we weren't brave enough to try it, maybe next time. Apparently its quite nice. It sure is pretty up there and what's even more awesome is that you have to go past a cute little fabric shop in a caravan park that is the only place I've found so far that sells Amy Butler fabric & the likes. : )



We are quite surprised at how flat Townsville is considering all the Hills & Mountains surrounding it. It's great for bike riding & running and is very green right now. It's just about the end of wet season though so it will be interesting to see what the dry is like in comparison.

It's here it's here it's heeeyer...

Look what arrived today...



So beautifully packaged and wrapped with pattern paper...



The more I unwrapped the more there was to find....

sweet little handmade 100% gluten free cupcake pins & star pins tied up in ribbon.

a needle book, oh my goodness you have no clue what this means to me. i don't have a needle book and it's so soft and the colours are lovely.

then i unwrapped the paper pattern wrapped parcel and inside was the prettiest little teacup pincushion with fabric in my favourite colours. just devine.



Thank you muchly to Selina from Selina's Vintage for being an awesome pincushion swap partner and for all the lovely gifts that came with it. You're the sweetest.

I also want to thank Kate from Foxs Lane. How sweet that she organised this pincushion swap and I just found out she wasn't even in the swap!




Just for fun... I tried to make him look like he was smiling... i get silly when i'm happy!

Check out the pin cushion swap pictures on flickr.

My creative space

This week I'm trying to finish this baby blanket.
My beautiful friend Dani had a baby girl Amelie on Easter Monday, this is for her.
I saw a blanket like this somewhere in blog land but cannot remember where. I loved it so much and now I know how to get crochet on to fabric, thought i'd give it a go.



Four more squares to go.




Meeka has created some lovely Owl drawings (she did 3 all up, pink, purple & green) they are on her bedroom walls now and certainly brighten up her room. The little Dman kept running through the shots...



Con has been coming up with some lego beauties. He likes me to guess what they are and I always get it wrong! Can you guess what it is?






This is a cannon ship with a star wars clone flying it. It is a cannon and it flies.

The home of Creative space's is over at Kootoyoo, check it out.

Craft overload

Townsville had the craft expo come to town this weekend and I went on Saturday with a friend then decided to go back Sunday to grab a quilt kit I decided I just couldn't live without. So I took the twins along and they found the craft corner where they could paint a figurine and I was left to do my own thing. Perhaps it was a good thing that the shop had sold out of what I was after because the kids painted for 3 hours and I did laps of the expo while they created their masterpieces.

I got to chat to the lovely Prudence Mapstone and asked her many questions about crochet and picked up some super soft tencel yarn, markers, patterns and even a tunissian crochet hook. Ahh bliss.

Then I found some absolutely divine japanese printed fabric and realised that my new favourite colours are blue & white. I'm going to attemp some Sashiko and make new couch cushions.

And I also couldn't go past a gorgeous Morris & Sons crochet pattern & hand dyed felt to finish off my pin cushion swap gift.

This is my haul from Sunday only!



Feeling utterly inspired and happy now I had some good felt on hand I set to making a needle book to go with the pin cushion for the swap. I'll say good bye to this cute little guy tommorow and cross fingers that his new owner thinks he's alright.

Easter trip to Mackay

Still recovering from Easter here having had too much chocolate & alcohol & not enough water.
Thank goodness it only lasts a weekend so now it's back to watching the weight and running.

This is how our Easter went...

Grandad arrived from Perth on Good Friday night then next morning we took off down to Mackay for a short break.

The hotel we stayed at had an easter egg hunt for the kids on Easter Sunday and the kids all had a ball finding the eggs Inside the hotel & out in the garden


We then ventured out for a bit of Geocaching to walk off the sugar rush..



This cache was found just over the edge. It turned out to be one for the adults only.




We found this beach but sadly you can't swim in the water because of the poisonous jellyfish that like to swim here too.



The rain came in so we headed back to the hotel.



Monday morning we went up to Airlie Beach but it was very rainy so we didn't get out. It was just so grandad could say he'd been there.

An hour north was Bowen.

Well Bowen are famous for their big Bowen Mangoes...



And of course Meeka spotted some wildlife, she just loves lizards and stick insects!
Grandad got to have a hold too. Dman thought it was fab but wasn't quite brave enough to have a hold.



We stopped at Horeshoe Bay in Bowen for lunch before heading home. The next day a tourist was stung here by a jelly fish.



Two more hours in the car and we were home safe. the traffic was really good, there is such a big difference between how the city drivers behave to the country folk here. And I like it a lot.

Hope you all had a lovely relaxing easter too xox

last one I promise!

So I decided that I'd try making a pincushion that wasn't crocheted and found this gorgeous little pattern in an old Woman's Day Handicrafts Book. It looked easy enough and all I had to do was make a larger pattern from the one in the book. I did this in an art class in high school! Yes, finally something I learned in high school was used in my real life!
It took me only a few short hours. But looking back now I probably shouldn't have started at 3pm and neglected to make dinner! It made Fox very unappreciative of my constant crafting and pin cushion perfection that has been occurring since I joined this darn swap! But it did manage to get some leftovers used up from the fridge. So win win really. Right? lol






And now I'm finally done! This is it. Definately!