shivers

T was a shivery boy on Saturday. In the morning, it wasn’t raining so he went outside to dig with his trucks. I put him into his snow pants and boots and he wore his new hoodie and one of his new hats to keep warm. He kept running in with dirty trucks for me to wash and dry – mummy’s truck wash service – as they don’t work well when they are very dirty. After a while he came back in, saying he was “shivery”. I said I would get a warmer jacket for him to wear but he said “no thanks” and shucked boots and pants, hoodie and hat and ran inside, leaving a dirty pile of clothes and mud all over the kitchen floor.

Later, at lunch, he stopped eating his candy cane ice cream, complaining “it’s making my teeth shivery”. Ok. Did he want to give the ice cream to Daddy to eat? “No”. He waited until it was soupy ice cream and then ate it and there were no more shivery teeth issues.

How to make Candy Cane Ice Cream (curtesy of my sister-in-law, Kerry)

1 tub good vanilla ice cream
A quantity of broken up candy canes

Mix together until desired taste and consistency is reached. Keep frozen.

You may remember these mittens.

They have been given to their intended recipient – T’s little girlfriend, C. According to her mum, C loves them. Says they are “fashionista!” (She’s 3!)

knitting

My problem is (big confession here!) that once I start something, I get a bit carried away. Okay - a lot carried away. So, I've got a couple of projects already on the go - a red snowflake sweater for T that I just have to block and put together. Another sweater for T that is half knit. So what do I do? I go off to the craft store and get more wool to do other projects - mittens for Christmas for children.

This pair is for T's little friend C - who came over for a playdate this week. She's such a sweetie and so different from my wild child. She was wearing her new fairy shirt and got right into painting. The two of them have wonderful conversations - one about Auntie's dog by T was riveting. Not so much for the dog (poor Allie) but in the telling of the torn cruciate ligament tale by T. " My Auntie's doggie fell down the stairs and hurt her leg and so she had to go to the animal hospital for an operation and get a big, big bandaid on her leg". C was enthralled. I wonder what his take on Allie's post-surgical hydrotherapy treatments would be!

more knitting

More knitting this week. I love the mittens and the beanies as they are portable and good to work on while watching swimming lessons or waiting at the doctor's office.

I made a pair of kid's mittens

And another baby beanie.

I have a couple of bigger projects I'd like to do. I found some great patterns over at garnstudio.com. A boy's sweater and a sweater for me (using wool I've had for ages).

knitting projects

While going through my craft box the other day, I found a pattern for knitted mittens. I've knit socks for ages (although it has to be said, not lately) from a great pattern I found in a wonderful knitting store somewhere in Vermont, but I've never knit mittens. So using some leftover wool from a sock project, I tried the first one. And once you have one, you have to knit the second one. So here is my first knit pair of mittens.

My other use for leftover wool is baby beanies. A group of north shore churches started a project to knit or crochet 10,000 baby beanies for distribution to local and global hospitals, etc. I love these - the beanies are easy to knit, use up leftover wool and I get a feeling of accomplishment with each completed beanie. So far I've done about 15. Here's the latest one.