Now that's a lotta stripes!

I'm currently half way through knitting the second sleeve of the little jumper for my friends new baby. I've never knitted stripes before but it's actually a lot simpler than I thought it would be... although having two balls of wool on the go at once, I do keep getting them all tangled around each other!

Rose had two of her friends around this afternoon for lunch, along with their mums who I'm good friends with. They all tired each other out, along with us Mums too! Rose went down for a nice long sleep after they left, I think I could actually have done with going down for a nice nap myself! I took the opportunity to get some sewing done though... my Mum's coming to visit tomorrow for the weekend (Yay!) and I'd like to finish what I'm working on before she gets here if possible.

We've been having a lot of family time together at one of our local parks... that girl Loves the swings! Whether it's on her own in the baby swing or on either one of our laps..!

We hadn't been to this park before and so Rose enjoyed discovering this purple tunnel to climb through... 

lots of new experiences every day!

We have some lovely neighbours and the elderly couple next door are always interested on how Rose is getting on, they gave her the sweetest little toy for her 1st birthday. I regularly have a chat with them when we're all out in our garden's (we live in a terrace house) and Rose can never quite understand how she can see someone through our fence in the garden. She always seems to get the giggles when I'm talking to them out in the garden and she spots them through the gaps in the fence. The other day she offered me some old toys and books that she used to have at her house for when the grandchildren came to visit, it was a lovely thought. :-)

Right, Rose is currently enjoying a little post-nap Cbeebies and a little pot of mini cheddars and she's nice and quiet... so I'm going enjoy a few more minutes of sewing!

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It's raining, it's pouring!

I took these photo's the day before yesterday when it was lovely and sunny outside. Today is a different story... it's just WET! It's been pouring since I was I got up with Rose at 6am but at least the garden is getting a good watering! It definitely needed it...

I have a friend coming round with her little girl for a cup of tea this morning and then I have a lot of sewing and knitting planned for this afternoon. I don't plan to leave the house AT all, no thank you! Not unless it suddenly becomes beautiful weather outside! 

I'm currently knitting a cute stripy jumper for my friends newborn baby and then have a couple of patchwork bibs to get on with. 

Rose has now fully discovered the joys of crayons and has a little desk all of her own, so is spending a Lot of her time squiggling away on her colouring pads. She's been a bit under the weather the last few day's and has been really grumpy so I was realllyyy relieved this morning, when I was greeted with a smile when I went into her room. We seem to have got our happy little girl back! :-)

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Our first trip to Wales with Rose.

Well it's me again! What do you know... nearly 2 weeks without a post and then 2 in one day! I seem to have had a blogging turn-around.

This post is wayyyy over-due. 

We went to visit my best friend Vicky and her boyfriend James at their new home in Wales last month and soon after we got back, I put all of the photo's together in this post but it's taken me until now to actually add some writing to it!

This was where I finished knitting Rose's 'Ring around the Rosie' dress... I'd had it nearly finished for ages but just lost the motivation to knit the edging, but with an almost 6 hour car journey there and quiet time in the evenings, I finally got around to finishing it off. It's Such a good feeling when you eventually finish off a project that should have been over and done with a good while ago..!

We went on a lovely walk while there... the views around Vicky's place are amazing!! Incredible! Very lucky. :-)

I'll admit that Vicky took a whole load of these photo's. I think she was enjoying having a play with my camera (she's a Photography graduate!) and I was enjoying having the lovely photo's to look over afterwards!

I think Rose fell in love with Myrtle the cat, she's not really had any contact with cats before and couldn't believe her luck when she spotted her. Poor Myrtle was probably very relieved when we left for Sussex and she didn't have Rose following her around Allll of the time!

Vicky and James live in the most lovely little cottage in mid-wales, it's been really well renovated and now they have the option of underfloor heating and solar panels. They even had an Aga! One dayyyy I might get one of those beauties! ;-)

See what I mean about the views!? Imagine having this right outside your front door!

Rose enjoyed being up in the rucksack carrier where she could see everything that was going on...

Ray Did carry Rose for the first half of the journey but she is a Very heavy lump and it was all up-hill so I offered to take her for the return journey where it is was mostly down-hill! ;-)

Rose loved spending time with her God-mother and I enjoyed seeing my best friend again. It had been quite a while...!! xXx Thank you for having us to stay my lovely xXx

I seem to have lost my blogging mojo!

It's been 12 day's since my last blog entry which doesn't sound very long but in blogging terms that feels like forever! I seem to have temporarily lost my blogging mojo!...

Rose and I made a last-minute trip back to Dorset for Easter as Ray was working for the whole of it. So I was away for a few day's and then just busy for a while, the trouble is that the longer you go without blogging... the harder it is to find the motivation to then sit at the laptop and put a post together!

Sooo... Rose is upstairs having her afternoon nap and Ray is being a brilliant husband and is busy cooking a roast dinner in the kitchen (they say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach but this is also very true in my case as well!) So I'm taking the opportunity to sit down and get typing! :-) I always feel so good when I've clicked the 'Publish' button so I just need to get on with it... I'm sure blogging is better than some types of therapy!

We had lots of lovely little trips out while I was back in Dorset, on Easter Sunday afternoon my cousin Josie and I took Rose to Abbotsbury farm park. Both of us used to get taken there when we were little and it is Such a lovely place to take young children. 

There are all sorts of animals for the kids to see and feel. Rose even got a chance to feed a baby goat! (Admittedly, it did end up being me that was holding the bottle... not that I minded!) My auntie Lettie used to  live on a Small-holding and it brought back lovely memories of  my cousins and I going down to feed the baby goats/ lambs before going to school! :-)

On another day we went with Nan and Grandad to the Subtropical gardens. We spent a lot of time in Abbotsbury over the weekend! There were some beautiful plants there and I couldn't resist taking some photo's.... so prepare yourself for a lot of flower photo's! 

I've been trying to catch up with my time on the laptop and have been going through my emails. I had a shocking amount of old emails that needed going through... I went from 2651 down to 19 and that was just in one inbox! I'm now working my way through my replies to comments. I'm sorry I haven't been very good at getting back to people's emails lately... life kind of just got in the way!

I've been using Instagram a lot lately... if your on there I'm countryrosecrafts. I only have the iphone 3GS at the moment so am extremely excited about getting my upgrade in August sometime! :-)

It's good to be back!

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Finally got around to...

...to making myself a new sewing machine cover.

The cover before was only the cheap plastic one it had come with and it was looking rather tatty and worn, plus plain white is far too boring for my liking!

I was having a browse on Pinterest at the different types of sewing machine covers for ideas and I particularly liked this one, which then led me to this brilliant tutorial.

It came together really quickly, it only took me a little time yesterday evening and then I finished it off this morning when Rose was having a nap. It's such a simple design, just a rectangle shape of patchwork squares backed with fabric and fastened with 8 ribbons sewn to the sides of the cover.

The fabric I used for the patchwork squares was from my Sophie layer cake from Moda and the pink backing fabric was from my visit to The Make Lounge in London.

I made this drawstring bag for my Sister-in-law, she wanted something to keep all her finger-puppets in for her class (she's a reception teacher). 

Here are a few photo's of our garden at the moment...

The tulip's are about to bloom! :-)

I'm going to carry on with my paper-pieced patchwork I'm working on at the moment, it really is the best little project to have on the go while curled up on the sofa watching a little tv! :-)

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Baby lambs with a bit of dishwasher surfing thrown in!

I uploaded these photo's on Friday but it's taken me until now to be able to write the words to go with the photo's! It hasn't been a particularly manic weekend, just one of those ones that doesn't give you enough time to sit down and relax with the laptop for a little while..

On Thursday Ray had taken a day of annual leave and we had a little family day out. We drove up the road to a place called Gaston farm where they currently have open-lambing taking place. They do it every year but this was the first we had heard of it and didn't really know what to expect..!

All of these ewe's were due to give birth to their baby lambs at any given moment, the farm has hundreds of lambs being born round the clock so you had a good chance of seeing one being born and luckily we did! We thought we had been unlucky and wouldn't get to see anything but after a trip around the farm we popped back to the lambing area to see if anything was going on and fortunately for us they were just about the lamb a sheep and they were going to try and foster an orphan lamb with the new mother. The birth was incredible to see up close and they successfully managed to foster the orphan lamb which was lovely to see, I won't put the photo's on here though as they might be a little too graphic for some people! haha

This photo isn't particularly flattering of either Ray or I but Rose looks so cute about to stroke the lamb that I couldn't resist!

These lambs were just a couple hours old.. awww! :-)

I jumped at the chance to hold one of the orphan lambs, I think this was actually the same one that was fostered to the other ewe. It was so calm and relaxed laying on my lap and at one point was actually sleeping  on me. There were little children holding the lambs but I think I may have actually been more excited than any of them! haha Very mature!

Rose got her first opportunity to stroke a baby chick whilst Daddy held it, she kept going all shy and grinning after each little touch of the chick. 

Very sweet and I was relieved she was nice and gentle with the little thing!

We had a really lovely time at Gaston farm on Thursday but what made my whole day even better was that I got recognised from my blog for the first time! I don't think I stopped mentioning it to Ray for the rest of the day but I thought that this is the closest I'll ever get to feeling like a celebrity so I'll enjoy it! haha 

It was a lovely lady called Georgie who was there with her reception class and she was ever so friendly, thank you for coming over Georgie..! She has her own blog here, pop on over and say hello of you can. :-)

....and just to leave you with a quick snapshot of a daily occurrence these day's. This is what I have to deal with whenever I want to empty or fill the dishwasher!!

Who knew dishwasher surfing could be so much fun!??

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