Bonus Baby, judging by the size of me, is growing well (23 weeks tomorrow!). I’m getting regular internal gymnastics displays, which are really reassuring, and I’m starting to let myself plan more. I’ve got a line of jumpers and cardigans queued up, both in my mind and on Ravelry.com to make before May! My sister-in-law is hoping that I’ll be making a couple of matching jumpers for Bonus Baby and my niece – could be good, even if only for the photos we’ll be able to show them when they’ve grown up!

Next week will be all about planning for the move some more. I’ve worked out a couple more places that I could stack a pile of boxes in the flat, so I’m not quite so concerned that I’ll need to pile boxes up on the front lawn now! I’m also going to have to clear out some more rubbish, which on the plus side means I’ll have less to pack!

My three boys (I include my husband in that!) are treating me like a princess. Regular drinks and food are provided by one or the other, together with unlimited cuddles and back rubs. And when GG and Cheeky went out for bread and milk a couple of evenings ago, they came back with red roses for me. I could get used to this! It makes the stiff joints and the slowing down completely worth it!

I’ve had a lucky break with my job though. We are encouraged to use up all of our annual leave before we go on maternity leave, and so I’m actually finishing in three weeks time, although I’ll not officially be on maternity leave until April. Which means that I get two clear weeks before we move (if the date stays the same) to stay home and pack!

Already I’m 22 and a half weeks through this pregnancy, and she is kicking up a storm every day! Handsome and Cheeky felt her thumping away through my stomach at the start of the week, and they were so excited. I made her a little cardigan at the weekend, and yesterday I made some little flowers to embellish it, although I’m not fixing them on until I’m certain she is actually a girl!

I’ve been busy with my knitting recently, as I’m keenly aware that once I start packing, then unpacking and arranging, then when the baby arrives, I’ll not have very much time for crafting! So I’m making the most of January before life gets hectic! So this month I’ve also made some washcloths for Bonus, a pair of flip top mittens for GG and a shawl for noone in particular but because I wanted to knit up the yarn.

First, in September we had this;

And then, in December, we had this;

Since then, on Tuesday we had the main scan and a wriggly, strong baby is doing very well, with all the bits and pieces that a baby half way through the cooking process should have! We’re due on May 22nd, and with two birthdays in April already, this little one is most certainly not allowed to be more than three weeks early!

I’m off to plan my knitting now!

I have made no resolutions this year. I have aims, which are softer, less structured things with correspondingly less mental self-flagelation if I fail in any of them! I aim to stay happy and as unstressed as is possible (with a house move coming up soon) for the remainder of the winter. I aim to take a second before I speak and try not to snap at my children, although this will definitely be easier if I feel happy and moderately unstressed! I aim to cut down on my refined sugar intake, beginning soon. This will be challenging, especially with the amount of chocolate we have left in the house since Christmas, but I will have to try. And of course there are the yarnie challenges.

I’ve not thought these out very clearly yet, I just know I want to knit more! Last year was a bit of a non-starter for me, craft wise, and I’m hoping to pick up where I left off before the desire to make things vanished in the mist. I’ve made a good start so far this year, planning the cardigan I mentioned last week and picking out some other patterns that I’d like to try soon. I’ve also entered myself into a challenge on Ravelry to knit up 1500 yards of yarn a month. This is a lot, but at about fifty yards a day I think it’s achievable if I get back into the habit of knitting whilst I’m sitting down relaxing in the evenings. Most of the time my knitting doesn’t involve me studying a pattern to the exclusion of everything around me, so I’ll still be able to chat with GG and enjoy a couple of programmes on the TV whilst I work. I’ve already got a couple of projects under my belt.

These are slipper socks for Cheeky, who is seven and a half now and wearing (I think) size 12.5 shoes. They are made out of superwash blue faced leicester wool in a heavy aran weight on (I think) 6mm needles. The plan is to dye the socks, and Cheeky has asked that they be dyed red and yellow. Hmm, I did warn him that he might get some orange patches in between the red and yellow, but he didn’t seem to mind too much! Once they’re dyed, I have a bottle of this liquid rubber or latex or something which you apply to the soles of the socks in order to make them less slippy. I mostly knitted them at the end of last year, but I finished them on the 1st so the final ten yards can go into this year’s tally!

Next, I made these washcloths and soap bag. I bought a couple of packs of balls of cotton yarn from Lidl about two years ago and still have quite a lot of it left. So I decided that washcloths are always useful, and whizzed these up as a quick-gratification project. The soap bag is designed to prevent the problem of dropping a slippery soap. As the bag is cotton, the soap can be left inside and the whole thing immersed in water and used to wash yourself. I’m pleased with how they turned out, especially as I knit the little bag using the ‘toe-up sock’ method and so there was no seaming or grafting needed to finish it off!

On the needles at the moment is the second in a pair of flip top mittens for GG. He travels to work on a bus every day, and finds it inconvenient having to take his gloves off every time he needs to get change or bus tickets out, or fiddle with his phone (which he also uses as an MP3 player). Fingerless gloves were dismissed as the ends of his fingers would still get cold, and so he decided on flip top mittens with fingerless gloves underneath. And providentially, Ellie gave me a book of glove patterns for Christmas, along with a couple of sets of bamboo double pointed needles. I’ve put them all to good use, and found a pattern which suited GG. I’m up to the base of the fingers on the second mitten already, and hope to finish that by tomorrow evening. He tried the first one on yesterday evening, by the way, and pronounced them very comfortable and cosy! Hopefully I’ll have some pictures of the finished items soon. I’m knitting them out of a new-to-me yarn called Lang Omega which I bought in Big Knitters a little while ago. it’s a 50/50 blend of nylon and acrylic, and so they’re washable, and it is so soft. I think I’ll be buying this yarn again for future projects, so long as it stands up to wear. I’ll keep an eye on how the gloves go for a few weeks before I decide, but I’m always on the lookout for a nice reasonably cheap yarn, so this could be good.

Right, having already been awake for 2.5 hours (it’s 6.10am) I’m absolutely starving, so I’m off to find a yoghurt. I hope the new year is treating you all well!

Oh dear, I do sound old!

My knitting mojo definitely abandoned me last year. I did one large project, a baby blanket for little M, two little cardigans also for her and a handful of scarves and other small items. I’m hoping to really get back into the swing of things in this coming year, including getting back into dyeing again. Luckily I’d built up a decent collection of hand dyed yarns because I’ve not done any more dyeing since last spring. But my stocks are running a little low, so I’ll have to sit myself down and think of some good colourways shortly.

With regard to what I want to knit this year, I’d like to do my cardigan as soon as possible, so that I can get plenty of wear and enjoyment out of it before the weather warms up. I’ve been wanting to make GG a jumper for years and have never got round to it, so hopefully this will be the year for that too. I have plans for gloves or mittens for each of my three boys (GG is counted as one of my boys, obviously!) and something nice for my friend M for her birthday in September (I won’t say what on the off chance she comes and has a look!). I’m going to make a few things for little M, at least one jumpery/cardigany thing in each age range, which means at least three with the first one due in February when she hits six months old. Plus I’m planning some general non-specific items which can go on the stall once I go back to the market or can be put aside for next year’s Christmas presents. So, there’s enough to keep me busy for a while!

Reading that back, it sounds a bit optimistic. But I know that if I knuckle down, and don’t waste time in front of the TV in the evenings by having idle hands, I can get an awful lot done in a year. It will be interesting to look back in a year and see what I did achieve in 2012. Here’s to a good year!

• Christmas was lovely – time spent with the whole family, excellent food, happy children, not enough sleep. So fairly standard really!
• The house purchase is still going ahead, although the survey flagged up a couple of issues which we will have to have checked out in the new year. God willing they’re not deal breakers, as the house is fab and I really want to live there! But they would involve some serious work being done, so we need to get some experts to give us opinions.
• My niece is growing more gorgeous by the day. I’m loving being an auntie to someone so close by. Little M knows us all and beams at us as we arrive. She loves my two boys, and they adore her in return. They’ll happily spend hours acting the clown to make her laugh – long may it last!
• Speaking of the kids, they’ve been awesome this Christmas. They are unfailingly delighted with whatever presents they receive, be they small or large, and apart from getting over-excited from time to time (it has to be a rare child who doesn’t do that at Christmas!) have been very well behaved. Which makes our lives easier! Cheeky lost his second front top tooth today. The first one came out a couple of weeks ago, and so now he has a small lisp and a massive gap. But I think he looks a bit less like a pirate than when his gap was only one tooth wide. Hopefully those adult teeth will be along soon so that he can bite through food again!
• Every one of the four of us got a Lego set this Christmas – the ability to not completely leave your childhood behaind must be one of the best things about being a parent! I got a big Harry Potter set, so I’m thinking I might wait and build it once we’ve moved. Which would show considerably more restraint than the other three, who’ve already broken into their sets!
• I’m now on the hunt for new trainers (the Schuh sale let me down this year and my old Skechers are getting very shabby) so any tips for online cheap Skechers buying will be most appreciated! I’m doing my best to avoid having to go into town and fight my way through the crowds!
• Lastly, I’m beginning to line up my new year knitting and have a couple of cardigans in mind to knit. But my brain is drawing a blank on nice wools I could buy to knit them with. So help is needed for this too! I’m planning on knitting a colourwork cardigan in double knit yarn, so I want a yarn which comes in a good range of colours. And I’d like a recommendation for a decent aran. I have Christmas money to spend, and I thought I’d rather make something out of a reasonably nice yarn rather than finding the cheapest possible ones to use.

That’s about it for the updates. I know it was long for a summary, but I had lots to say! I hope you all had a nice Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrated, and that 2012 brings lovely things for you and your families (I thought I’d get that in there in case I don’t make it back online in the next four days!).

So, news update; we’ve sold the flat at last! Or at least, because I feel uncomfortable with being too confident, we’ve accepted an offer and the solicitors are doing their thing preparing the documents and swapping details before an exchange of contracts. We’ve also found a house to buy which has a nice garden, a garage and an upstairs, all of which will be new for us! Please keep your fingers crossed for us that it all goes through smoothly, and that we’re moving into our new home in the early Spring.

I’m nearly ready for Christmas; all the present buying is done apart from the last minute things which I have planned to buy at various points through next week, the cards are written and posted and the decorations have been up for nearly a fortnight now. We’re all enjoying all the lights that we’ve put up, and will definitely be sad when they have to come down on twelfth night. I’ve got a list of festive recipes which I’m looking forward to attempting next week, especially as our lovely brother in law is doing the Christmas dinner, so I feel more free to do some festive baking. One thing I’m defnitely hoping to try is Joy the Baker’s chocolate peppermint roll – we all love minty chocolate things, and a bonus is that this recipe is gluten free. I have some good friends who have coeliac disease, and I’m always on the lookout for good gluten free recipes for them. Another is chocolate honeycomb (like Crunchie bars), the recipe for which I have in a lovely book my Mum gave me last year. In fact, there are so many recipes I’d like to try, I think I could bake a couple of times a day from here to new year and still not get through them all! Plus by then I’d have put my family into a diabetic coma!

My knitting has picked up pace a little in the last few weeks as I’ve been knitting slipper socks for the kids for Christmas. The first pair were knitted in a sport weight Mountain Meadow merino wool and are really nice feeling. It was good to knit with too; the only small complaint I would have was that the wool seemed to be full of little bits of grass that I had to pull out as I knitted through it! The second pair are almost done, and are made from an aran weight blue faced leicester. I had some undyed skeins and so I thought it would be fun to knit them up and then dye the socks once they’re finished. Then I can apply the liquid rubber to the soles so that they won’t skid everywhere!

Anyway, I hope you are all looking forward to Christmas and have a happy and healthy time. And if I’m not back before then, happy new year to you all! Here’s hoping that 2012 is filled with good things for us all!

Here’s to the next fifteen years!

This is the kids and their cousin, and I think they were trying to gauge how deep the river was, although I wouldn’t swear to it!

Having seen and coveted the London Bridge Lego set, they were suitably thrilled to see the real thing. After this we got a Thames Clipper boat back to the London Eye pier, and set off to meet my brother in law near the Royal Festival Hall to find some dinner. Each time I go near the Festival Hall I’m reminded of a visit when I must have been in my early teens and we went into the hall for some lunch. I remember very distinctly listening to a string quartet whilst eating the best bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich I’ve ever had! The things that stay with you down the years!

On Saturday, it was decided that we should visit the Natural History Museum. Unfortunately, I think that most of the south east of England had had the same idea, as we were queueing for a good half an hour to get in. Inside it was very much as I remembered it from my trip whilst I was in primary school, including the blue whale model and the different sharks suspended above it. I passed on the offer to look at dinosaurs (they’ve never really excited me that much!) and left the boys to it whilst I enjoyed a sit down, a drink and a catch up on my Dad’s latest blog posts (one of the comments on the first in a recent series of posts of his nearly made me cry in public, but I’ll leave you to find that!). After about an hour the kids (and I include their fathers in that category) emerged from the dinosaur exhibit and we made our way to the investigation centre, which was easily the best bit of the museum that I had seen on that trip, and probably worth the visit on its own. After booking in for a half hour slot, the kids were allowed to touch any of the exhibits, put them under microscopes or zoomed-in camera lenses attached to a monitor to examine them, play on computers and even handle some replica skulls. Nothing was off-limits in this room, and they had lots of different things to look at such as fossils, bones, antlers, insects in plastic housings, what looked like a very small stuffed alligator (do they come in miniature?!) etc etc. There was more than enough to keep them occupied for well over double the alloted half hour, and we could have gone back in but all four kids were getting weary and so we decided to call it a day and head back.

After a nice dinner it was time to get the kids to bed. On Sunday morning GG taught Cheeky the main elements of chess (I think he’s started something there, as Cheeky seemed very keen to keep playing!) whilst Handsome spent more time playing with the younger of his two London cousins. He’s always been very good with smaller children, and has a lot of time and patience for playing their games and reading them stories. I think he probably inherited this from my mother in law, as we always found it hard to keep her attention if there was a child in the room with us, as they’d always have top priority! After lunch it was time for the journey home. I don’t like the M4 very much, and so I was glad to spend a good three quarters of an hour asleep – it was well worth the stiff neck! We all arrived home ready to have a chilled out evening catching up on Strictly Come Dancing and making sure everything was ready for school. We’re not used to travelling very much, but it’s nice to get away for the occasional weekend. I’m very glad though that now my parents and my sister in law live in Cardiff so most of our visiting involves no more than a fifteen minute drive!