Ottobre goodness!

Oh my! Not just one but two Ottobre magazines landed on my doorstep this week and I can't wait til I have some spare time so I can get sewing!! :D :D So many great things to sew up and heaps for winter too which is fab! Even Patrick was excited, he wanted to start RIGHT NOW!! But what to do first??? Maybe first I need to figure out how to use the patterns LOL. All the patterns go over the top of each other but in different colours so you can see what you are doing (I guess that is the theory anyway), so I got some tracing paper to see if I can make sense of it all. Wish me luck!

Patrick's Bag WIP

So far not too bad on the pink rainbow handbag for Patrick. I am totally loving knitting with double strands on big needles, it knits up sooooo fast, I'm stoked to get through so much of the rainbow already, I will easily get it finished before Patrick starts school next week. I decided against using the pink the whole way through and instead I am changing colour every five rows, but each colour gets 10 rows, so hopefully when it gets felted, it will all blend nicely into a varigated type rainbow. That's the plan anyway ;)

Back from camping

Emerald Beach was just lovely, rained pretty much the whole time, but we didn't mind and the kids didn't mind, so it was all good. We love the campground there, so nice and relaxing and just lovely to go to sleep with the sound of the beach. It was mega stressful getting out of here though, I didn't sleep at all the night before we went away, cos I had sooooo many packages to get done up. I would love just one holiday where I didn't have to try and cram a whole weeks work into the two days before we go, just so I can have some time off. Will have to make sure I plan future new product launches a bit better too, not the best plan taking off less than a week after the d'lishes started out with a massive sale LOL.

We had lots of wildlife friends at the camping ground, including a giant monitor lizard, some kangaroos, lots of smaller lizards and cheeky possums trying to eat our food lol. Patrick thought the monitor was amazing, Maia wasn't so sure ;)

I got a bit of knitting done as well, finally got the i-cord done for the Russia PK shorties, put in the elastic for my boardies, although had to leave it safety pinned up cos I forgot to bring some needle and thread, plus did two ballband dishclothes and a heap of Maia's skirt.

It was just so nice to come back feeling like a human and not a stress machine. I've got sooooooooooo much work to catch up on and emails from probably back in December even, my mission is to get caught up on that stuff first, our BAS is disgracefully late, I'm surprised the accountant has not hassled me about it actually. Plus I have some friends who have just had, or about to have babies that need nappies for their stashes, so I need to get on to that too. Even with lots happening, I've got to keep the stress down though - my motto for 2008 is no stress!

Current WIP's

Wow four posts in a row - can you tell I am procrastinating about getting stuck into the packing ROFL.

Currently on the needles I have a knitted skirt for Maia. I'm just using plain colours (pale pink, eggplant type colour and sage in random thick/thin stripes) as I didn't want to use one of my pretty wools in case I stuffed it as I started this on NYE and I couldn't be bothered looking up a pattern. I could have gone to Ravelry (sp) for the first time, but I was too worried that I would get sidetracked with all the fab stuff and not actually get the skirt started - I got my invite about five weeks ago, but have been too scared to look until I get some currently unfinished projects out of the way - I would end up with about 100 WIP's lol. Anyway, I decided to just use my shorties pattern with an enclosed waistband and continue my increases past the hips and to the bottom of the skirt instead of stopping them at the hips. I'm tossing up whether to put some short rows in or not - I might on the next one if I think I need it. Hopefully it will work OK. It's nice and easy and should knit up pretty quickly.

I also have to do the i-cord to finish off my russia PK soaker and get that off with the other collection of stuff I have here, one package went last week and I hope to get another off this week.

I want to finish my boardies before we go camping and if possible make another pair for Brad - this time with the fabric around the right way, so he doesn't look like he wants to be back in the eighties with shiny shorts ;) I also want to do a shirred top for me, cos I think it will be pretty hot and I don't really have any singlets or anything that aren't daggy as, I've got some great voile so it will be nice and cool.

Tomorrow I will try and finish off the curtains for patrick and maia's shelving. The curtains are all done, but I changed my mind on the applique when I saw it. I was just going to do 'P' and 'M', but there is plenty of space for their whole names and I think it will look better. I went and got some more vliesofix today from spotlight so I can finish it off (plus got some more fabric ssshhhh hehehe).

Maybe a skirt for Maia as well, she's had a growth spurt and although her old skirts and dresses (the size 0 ones lol) still fit her, they are getting a little short, so she often just runs around in a t-shirt/singlet and nappy/undies/nudie bum. Not sure everyone else at the campground will be as happy for her to run around nudie all the time as we are ;)

Phew - that is so much! I'm sure I can get it done though, five more sleeps til total relaxation that's what's driving me, ahhhhhhhh can't wait!!!

What a night!

8pm tonight my new range launched and I tell you what I was so totally nervous, I had that whole fastheart rate, flushed thing happening. Not sure what I was so nervous about really - maybe that no-one would want to buy them or something, especially after I copped a bit of flack about the manufacture. I expected that though, there does seem to be a stigma about MIC, but at least I know I am doing it in the best way possible.

Luckily, there nothing to be nervous about in the end, they seem to be well recieved and the orders are as I had hoped, now I just have a HUGE packing night ahead of me, might have to get another coffee ;)

Why you should never delete anything from a memory card without checking 100 times that you have it saved elsewhere...

It's official, I am an eeediot. A few weeks ago I was cleaning up the memory card, because I got sick of all the different folders on there from when we swapped the card into other cameras - I could never remember which folder was the one to look in, so I deleted what I thought were folders we didn't need anymore.

On Friday night I realised that one of those folders I deleted, was in fact a very important folder, it was the folder that had all our pics of London, Nickster and Mark's wedding, all pics of Vicky, Chris and Georgia, all the holiday pics from London, China etc and all pics we had taken of the kids from about March until now :( :(

I just about cried when I realised what I had done :( Such a stupid thing to do for something so important - it's not like you can get pictures like that back. Luckily we had the SLR with us while we were travelling so we have some pics, but I think it would have been 100 or more pics that I deleted.

Luckily the NC gals came to the rescue and Rebecca found a program on the internet that restores things off your memory card and yay, some of them can still be restored!!! A lot of the older ones and the ones from the first part of the trip (the wedding *sniff* and London stuff) are gone. I am relieved to have some of them back though! I wish the new pics I had taken had gone over all of brad's pics of rotton fruit for his uni assignment, that were restored lol.

So I am going to go and buy a couple of new memory cards tomorrow and one will just be for the camera and will not be used for ferrying stuff from the desktop to the laptop etc - just for the camera! I will download all pics regularly and make back-ups - things like this are just too precious to loose!

Chrissy Pressie for meeeee :D

I've been trying to decide what to spend my Christmas and Birthday money from Mum on and narrowed it down to a knitpicks set, a dying starter kit or an ottobre subscription. I've been looking for a single ottobre magazine for ages, so I could see what it was like, but have had no luck. I decided to check out the website again after someone on EB mentioned it (haven't looked for ages) and I didn't realise that you could actually look up each of the magazines and see what patterns are in each one. They look awesome and heaps of stuff for boys which is great, because I am pretty sure it won't take long til I am sick of the same old shorts pattern ;)

So Ottobre is my decision, I'm very excited - please fly fast to me lil magazine :D
www.ottobredesign.com if you want to have a squiz.

The Black Rainbow Shorties

Irene from Jolly Jumbuck (http://www.jollyjumbuck.net/) is a genius and I have her to thank for getting me well and truely hooked on knitting! She owed me some stuff from a trade we had done earlier in the year and when we first organised the trade, I was going to get her to knit some woolies, but I decided that perhaps I could trade for some addi's and wool instead and knit something myself.

Well what I got was spectacular, the black rainbow wool was to die for, vibrant rainbow colours, it looked like licorice allsorts. When I started knitting it up, even Brad went wow for real (and not just to make me feel like he is interested in what I am doing lol). I also got some Spring Zing and Ice Cream Princess on Maia - just had to have that one cos of the name - they both still need to find suitable projects.

The black rainbow was crafted into my third pair of shorties and I am happy to say that my knitting was up to the standard this gorgeous wool deserved - no mistakes at all :D Here are some pics - this is over our biggest night nappy - a large lotus, they somehow fit just as well over training pants which is awesome. I wasn't 100% happy with how the frill came out, but I think that is just my perfectionist nature, cos I don't hate it enough to frog it ;)

Thanks Irene!

Happy New Year!

A bit late, but that seems to be the way it is with me at the moment ;) Maybe that should be one of my new year's resolutions, no more being late.... hmmm not quite sure how to make that happen hehe.

NYE was pretty quiet for us, Brad had to work, so it was just me and the kiddies. We went into town with Leah and fam to watch the fireworks. Kids loved it, although Maia got a bit scared and was happier sitting in my lap than jumping around like Patrick was.

We came home afterwards and although they told me they weren't tired, this was my two beautiful cherubs by the time we got back, awwwww. Then a spot of knitting whilst having a bacardi breezer watching the fireworks on telly and that was it - very tame!

I have a couple of resolutions for the New Year as 2007 had it's ups and definately had it's downs, but the worst part is that it seemed to fly by so past, I've misssed out on so many things. I've been a very slack friend and not been in touch anywhere near as much as I should have with my friends and family, so I want to make sure that is a priority in 08. I also want to declutter our house and get our budget back on track - there is no way we will be going to Italy next year if we don't start seriously pulling finger and saving some $$. We have to get rid of our crap too, because paying storage fees for crap we barely use is such a waste and really, if something has sat in a box for 5 years, do you really need it ;)

And most importantly, I want work to be more like a job and less like my entire life, there is no point having a fab business if you are going to kill yourself with overworking. I've been feeling so overwhelmed with it all for the past few months, I really want to get past that and be able to have a few nights off, instead of working every single night (unless I fall asleep with the kids because I am too tired). Which brings me to my last resolution - get more sleep, I would prefer to look like I am on the young side of my nearly mid 30's, not the old side ;)

Happy New Year!