Hats, hats and more hats

This week has been taken up with knitting hats.

This is a lime one I started and have now finished (but no finished picture yet). I've also done a dusky pink, red and halfway through a cream one - phew!! Not quite as bad as the week I had 8 to do but still a fair whack. The biggest issue with the hats is they're keeping me from my ballet cardi that I'm designing - just when I get all excited about it I have to be a grown up and do what needs to be done rather than what I want to be done haha.

Over the weekend I have some socks and Mary-Janes to do and then I can go back to the Cardi - well at least while Mark and I are watching TV I can, as the knitting will have to give way for some sewing in the next couple of weeks. My Niece has asked me to make her a ball-gown for the end of July. That will be a challenge but it will give me a very good excuse to get my new toy out of the box (that's it to the left!)

I bought it about a month ago and as yet it's still sitting in there. Grand ideas to do clothes for myself and Britt but with all the knitting not a chance. Sam's dress will do the honors of being the first item on it :-)

Feedback

I only have time for a very short post today but I wanted to share part of a couple of e-mails I received in regards to my hats:

'Thanks for the beautiful packaging – only to be outdone by the hats themselves. They are a really good fit – some months left in them, just perfect for winter'

and

'the hat arrived on Saturday and it is so cute. I really love it and the fit is just right. She will get to wear it all winter and best of all she does not rub it off. I have already had comments on how cute it is.'

I really love getting this sort of feedback from people. I can talk up my knitting all I want but these comments are really what counts.

I have a banner!!

WOOHOO - it went up a couple of days ago and it's not perfect but it's there. It still needs a little tweaking - such as making the picture clearer, Mark had used a copy of my picture rather than the original, mainly cause he was playing around, but he assures me it can be changed.

I'm so pleased with it, it is basically what I asked for - a plain, simple banner that adds that extra touch to my store.

On the store note, while ETSY hasn't produced much, trade me has been going great guns. With Winter having hit I am really busy with orders, in fact, perhaps a little too busy, having to have a couple of late nights to catch up. It's a buzz though and I'm getting such nice comments and feedback from everyone.

I've also had 2 real life stores ask me if I would consider making items for them to sell . It's a hard one, I'm not sure I want to have that much commitment and to be honest at this point in time I'm just too busy. Something I will be thinking about though.

On the personal note, it's a freezing cold day here in Wellington so we're inside with the heaters blazing. The boys are upstairs and Britt is writing a story (one of her favorite passtimes - not only is she going to be a Doctor and cure asthma but she's also going to be a famous writer - she's really good and that's not just 'cause I'm her Mum that I say that, her English teacher also agrees :-) I'm about to go do some baking for lunches and then I'm sitting down to knit another hat. The housework's all done and I made a huge pot of chicken soup yesterday so tea's sorted and I don't have to worry about anything else but loosing myself in the knitting zone. I may even break out a Jane Austin DVD to make my afternoon complete!

My banner - how hard could it be???

So when I set up my ETSY store a month ago I asked my son if he thought he could do me a banner. Not a problem was the reply. Of course though his computer game came first but finally, after a little Mum nagging, he started. I drew him an outline of what I'd like it to look like, very simple, and using my photo:
He went away and started work. After a little more Mum nagging the image was ready and he asked for payment - payment??? After explaining that no, he wasn't getting paid for this, I went to upload it to find it had this superimposed over the top of it: 'this image has been deleted due to non-payment'. Funny lad!! That's fine I said, but I hope you have fun learning how to use the washing machine, cooking and shopping for yourself, paying your own bus fare to and from school etc. He pondered this and decided that yes, payment wasn't necessary so went to upload my banner.

This time he thought it would be funny to have the words 'Made by Gareth XXXX, I work for free' under it. Hmmmm, I'm begining to think it was a mistake asking him to do this!!!

However, once the words had been removed, it turned out the banner was the wrong dimensions. I'm stating to get a headache at this point. So back to the drawing board. New banner appears only this time he's been working on it at school (getting enthusiastic about it now he was!) and when he brings it home it not only is the right size, it fades in and out, the words come and go and to be honest, should ETSY have sound it would probably sing to you to!!

So, I am still without my plain simple banner and now Mark is working on it. I'm of the opinion that I should just pay someone from ETSY to design me one but no, he's dead keen to get it right for me (and yes, I'm very grateful that he is willing and wanting to do so :-)

Hopefully I'll have a banner soon.

Friday = MY DAY

Last year when my daughter started a densitisation programme at Wellington Hospital (which involved spending one day a month in the day ward), my lovely employers let me change my hours around so that instead of working 4 hours 5 days a week, I now work 5 hours 4 days a week. It was great! Meant that I didn't have to take time off for the day she needed to be in the hospital, if the kids or I were sick during the week then I could just swap my off day and that generally I would have a little bit of extra time to get the housework and jobs done.

Last year and the first term of this year, that's exactly what I've been using it for. This term however, with my girl now on maintenence and having it done at Hutt Hospital with her Ped and me being slightly more organised, I am finding that Friday has turned into My day and wow, what a difference it makes in my life.

It's amazing really how much having a house and kids and basically grown up responsibilities takes out of you. I spend so much of my time doing things for everyone else. Not that I mind - I wouldn't have had children otherwise - but there are times when I feel like I don't get 5 minutes to myself and having my Friday is solving that.

The last few Friday's I've spent watching DVD's and catching up on my knitting but this Friday I'm having fun spending some time 'surfing' the web, updating ETSY with new photos and a new listing, reading about how to improve this blog and catching up with friends via e-mail. Very soon I'm getting off the computer though to go and play with my new toys that have been sitting in boxes and bags and organising my sewing studio just a little better. I might even take some photos with my new camera so I can start to add them on here!

Only I could do it

So I finally get around to starting a bog a couple of weeks ago, I haven't had much time to dedicate to it yet but did a couple of posts. Went to log in today to discover that somehow in my haze of little time I managed to use an e-mail address that wasn't valid!!

Goodness knows how or why but I did a combination of my work e-mail address with our xtra bit on the end. Although we have something like 8 alias that are tagged onto our xtra account, this wasn't one of them. Ugh!! So that meant that I was unable to verify my blog and that the other stuff we have through google accounts were on a different e-mail. Dumb, dumb, dumb me!!

I suppose it's one disadvantage to having 2 computer genius' in the house as I never do anything for myself, I'm a click and point kind of gal and should anything get too complicated (and yes, dummy that I am, that includes googling stuff!) I either yell Mark or Gareth and one comes to help. In my defense of my dumbness though, the boys being computer genius' means we have a computer each (so 4 in the house and actually I think the boys have 2 each but I don't keep up with that so much!), a network, server and a funny modum thing that even xtra don't like to fiddle with so if I touch anything or do anything wrong I'm in big trouble - One day I managed to wipe all the settings on the modum and I wasn't very popular.

So the upshot is my old bog has been deleted and I've got this new one that is attached to all our other bits. Sorry to the 2 people I know who've found me and now have to find me again LOL.

I'm almost all caught up with my knitting so as long as I get that done this weekend then next week I'm going to sort the blog out properly.

Bye for now