Friday, September 22, 2006
My Pirate Nickname
Check out this cool site - I am now Evil Mermaid Mary - according to my pirate nickname test!!
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Knit and Natter Club
Since June I have been trying to get a Knitting Club underway here on the RedcliffePeninsula.So far I have one lady from Kippa Ring, Jean, and the rest is made up from ladies from Knitting for Brisbane's Needy. We meet every two weeks at my house, and do a lot of nattering and very little knitting!! We laugh a LOT!! I live right on the seashore at Scarborough, with a beautiful park opposite, and we have plans to sit over there one day and knit, drink coffee, eat cake and natter - but - so far the weather has never been kind enough to allow us to do this!! Mind you we did start in our Queensland winter, which is never terribly cold, but there have been chilly winds and it was a bit too cool for sitting!
From left to right, Jean, Rachel, Me, Karen and Cathy. I will get some more recent pictures of more of us - the last time we had about a dozen of us and I forgot to take any pics!! Duh!!
The next Knit and Natter Session is on Friday September 22nd. We start about 10 am and continue till about 2pm or later. I really must stir my stumps and start advertising, there must be more people on the Peninsula who like to knit and natter.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Knitting for Brisbane's Needy
In January this year I joined a new group on Yahoo, Knitting for Brisbane's Needy, the brainchild of my dear friend Karen Croke.
Only 40 strong so far, already we have donated several hundreds of beanies scarves, toys, clothing and baby things to various charities in the Brisbane area. One of the charities is the former People's Mission, now known as Student Welfare. Reverend Barbie Bremner and her husband Paul work tirelessly for the homeless and the needy in Brisbane - giving up their time day and night, and using their own funds to give others food and supplies. Just recently Barbie asked me to make sweaters for three little kids, children of a heroin addict mother, who had been through a tough time. The children were very small for their ages, 4, 3 and 2 so I down sized the sweaters, and they fitted beautifully. I also had been given a huge bag of stuffed toys and found three teddies of similar size. Thought they would be nice to give to these kids, each with a scarf to match their owners' sweaters!
As I mentioned, the children were very skinny and undersized - and the mother at first thought that the sweaters were for the teddies - when Barbie visited them the teddies were wearing the sweaters, not the children. Here are the sweaters I made:
This is for the girl, aged 4 ( I had to make size 2)
This one was for the oldest boy aged 3 ( I had to make size 18 months for him)
It has little beetle cars for buttons on the shoulders.
This was for the youngest boy, aged 2 ( I made size 1)
This was a baby surprise jacket with collar, bands, and cuffs in seed stitch
When the mother realised the sweaters were for her children she was overjoyed - however it took some persuading for the little girl to relinquish two to her brothers - she fit into them all and thought they were all for her!!
I never realised until meeting Barbie that so many people were homeless or in dire poverty. There are people actually living in caves on Mt Gravatt and under the William Jolly Bridge. Even though some are homeless from choice, there are many who are homeless because of wrong business decisions, or just from the cuved balls that life deals us sometimes. There are homeless children as young as 6 - and addicted children as young as 8 years old. If it wasn't for people like Barbie and Paul Bremner, their world would be very bleak.
Karen is the dearest person in the world. She lives in the Glasshouse Mountains, right under Tibrogargan, on a half acre. The garden is her hubby Peter's pride and joy and is gorgeous. This is the view from her front garden!! In fact wherever you go in her garden, front or back, you get a view of one of three mountains!
I can't imagine living anywhere so beautiful!!
Karen works tirelessly for this group. She has been an inspiration to me, and is a fantastic friend. Through her and this group I have met Rachel Stacy, who makes the most wonderful knitted toys, Dawn Pendergast from Beerburrum, who although paraplegic, knits for the needy too, Dawn from Jimboomba, with the best sense of humour, Cathy Williams, a little human dynamo, Cassie Lewis, and lots of others who are truly caring, wonderful friends!
Only 40 strong so far, already we have donated several hundreds of beanies scarves, toys, clothing and baby things to various charities in the Brisbane area. One of the charities is the former People's Mission, now known as Student Welfare. Reverend Barbie Bremner and her husband Paul work tirelessly for the homeless and the needy in Brisbane - giving up their time day and night, and using their own funds to give others food and supplies. Just recently Barbie asked me to make sweaters for three little kids, children of a heroin addict mother, who had been through a tough time. The children were very small for their ages, 4, 3 and 2 so I down sized the sweaters, and they fitted beautifully. I also had been given a huge bag of stuffed toys and found three teddies of similar size. Thought they would be nice to give to these kids, each with a scarf to match their owners' sweaters!
As I mentioned, the children were very skinny and undersized - and the mother at first thought that the sweaters were for the teddies - when Barbie visited them the teddies were wearing the sweaters, not the children. Here are the sweaters I made:
This is for the girl, aged 4 ( I had to make size 2)
This one was for the oldest boy aged 3 ( I had to make size 18 months for him)
It has little beetle cars for buttons on the shoulders.
This was for the youngest boy, aged 2 ( I made size 1)
This was a baby surprise jacket with collar, bands, and cuffs in seed stitch
When the mother realised the sweaters were for her children she was overjoyed - however it took some persuading for the little girl to relinquish two to her brothers - she fit into them all and thought they were all for her!!
I never realised until meeting Barbie that so many people were homeless or in dire poverty. There are people actually living in caves on Mt Gravatt and under the William Jolly Bridge. Even though some are homeless from choice, there are many who are homeless because of wrong business decisions, or just from the cuved balls that life deals us sometimes. There are homeless children as young as 6 - and addicted children as young as 8 years old. If it wasn't for people like Barbie and Paul Bremner, their world would be very bleak.
Karen is the dearest person in the world. She lives in the Glasshouse Mountains, right under Tibrogargan, on a half acre. The garden is her hubby Peter's pride and joy and is gorgeous. This is the view from her front garden!! In fact wherever you go in her garden, front or back, you get a view of one of three mountains!
I can't imagine living anywhere so beautiful!!
Karen works tirelessly for this group. She has been an inspiration to me, and is a fantastic friend. Through her and this group I have met Rachel Stacy, who makes the most wonderful knitted toys, Dawn Pendergast from Beerburrum, who although paraplegic, knits for the needy too, Dawn from Jimboomba, with the best sense of humour, Cathy Williams, a little human dynamo, Cassie Lewis, and lots of others who are truly caring, wonderful friends!
Lots of little things!
This is my latest addiction - a tiny version of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket. This makes a gorgeous newborn sized jacket in about three hours , go to whoa!
It is the brainchild of Mariella on the knitbabysurprise group - and it is the best little stash buster I know! Takes under 50 grams of yarn, so marvellous for using up all the odd balls.
I found an amazing shop in Toowoomba called All Things Local, and they will take anything I can give them in the way of knitwear to sell for me!! So I am stockpiling lots of nice little things for next winter - these little jackets are going to go down big I think. The blue sweater is made in Wig
gles yarn. Here's a better pic of it.Isn't it the cutest yarn - has all these little wiggles of colour through it - a friend in Boston sent it to me - she sent two balls each of red, blue and yellow - so can't wait to knit some more!
I have done a bit of tweaking to the original Tiny Version - can't leave a pattern alone, me. Now all I have to do is get it written down before it disappears from my head for the next time. I made all of these little sweethearts in a week by the way - one a day!!
Catching up
Okay - I know it's been far too long between posts!
So what have I been doing??
This is the most recent finished item - made for a friend in Newfoundland having a radical mastectomy today. Thought it would make her feel better when she comes home to have something soft and cuddly to wrap herself in.
I started with a rectangle in feather and fan, using some Twilley's Capricorn in Jade Green and Mint stripes, then I crocheted around the edge with white and Jade, then picked up and knitted a border in Angoretta Mint Green using a circular needle - and mitreing the corners as I went - then I got really smart, and found a knitted lace edging that was originally for a baby's top - using Jade Capricorn , then at the end of every right side row I picked up a stitch from the Angoretta border - this created a gorgeous afghan with no seaming. I knitted the centre very quickly, but took about two weeks to work out in my head what I was going to do next to make it larger, as the centre was only baby blanket sized. I had been knitting lots of a tiny version of Elizabeth Zimmermann's BSJ, and it came to me that the mitred corners would work well on the blanket too.
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