so long 2011.

for our little family quite a bit happened last year. amongst other things i birthed a beautiful baby boy, our bigger boy started pre-school, both grandmas went to be with Jesus, we decorated, i lost over a stone of baby weight, i had my most successful craft sales season to date, we had to control our finances more than ever, i found out what it’s like to sew on a new machine, the baby grew 8 teeth, learned to sit, stand, crawl and cruise round the furniture, i added new recipes to the regular repertoire, we’ve had some lovely breaks with family, we bought a ‘new’ car, our house was insulated, we saw switchfoot – world class rock and roll just down the road, we celebrated a wedding and mourned a divorce amongst close friends, one of us turned 3, i’ve knitted and sewn, taught and written, we settled into being a family of four, and it feels great.

looking back always makes me look a bit more closely at the now, and i realised i have seen far too many of my best friends move away and i miss them very very dearly.  they’re the people who you can just pick up where you left off whether it’s been a week or a year since you spoke last, but that doesn’t mean the gaps aren’t a little empty.  but looking at the now always makes me grateful for what i have.  i don’t want to go on and on about it, but i do know that i have been richly blessed in both material things and (more importantly) in people who love and support me.  i was catching up with a friend today and the number of times i talked about the kindness of our families; the support they give us, the wise advice, the listening ears, the unconditional love and great company… well, it made me think about how fortunate we are to be part of it all.

over christmas we saw my grandad.  he’s quite muddled and confused sometimes due to dementia, but the two things that seem to remain firm are his faith in God and his love for his family.  x

[some recent photos follow in no particular order...]

the first christmas present...

assembled...

... and escaping!

no need to get the builders round any more!

always smiling

a rare moment of sharing!

our elf

This year seems to have flown by faster than any other. Eli is, unbelievably, nearly 11 months old now and utterly delightful. He is crawling, feeding himself, has eight teeth and zero words, though he loves to babble (and occasionally shriek at excessively high pitch and volume). Samuel is three and a half: imaginative, affectionate and lots of fun, though like all three year olds he has a strong dislike for lack of attention and having to do things he doesn’t want to…

Anna does a wonderful job of looking after them both, even if she doesn’t always realise it. She still does the odd bit of supply teaching, some personal tuition and on top of it all makes beautiful handcrafted things (though again, I’m not sure she really recognises how good she is). Many of the things she makes can be found in her online shop at www.littletreehouse.co.uk.

Phil continues to work for Allia where he is chief operating officer and attempting to save the world through social investment. This year he helped issue £1.8 million of bonds, has had coffee twice in the House of Lords (their cups are far too small) and is now working on creating some new social investment products and raising lots more money. Though work and family leave little energy or mental space for much else, he’s also done the odd bit of preaching, writing and photography.

With much love and blessings for Christmas and the year ahead.

Phil, Anna, Samuel and Eli

the scrap he pulled out and held onto (without eating) the longest would be the winner…and it is

pomona!!!  congratultions!  i’ll be in touch about claiming your prize.

however, it had all been such fun and over so quickly i let eli have another fish around in the basket for some runners up…

knititall, second chance tan and bombella! i’d love to send you one of my little felt decorations so i’ll be in touch to arrange that.

thanks again everyone who entered or said how lovely my shop was, i do appreciate it very much.

so if you’re in cambridge or fancy a visit – it’s a beautiful city! – on the 26th november, then drop into the guildhall, off the market square and say hi.  there are going to be loads of other, really talented, vendors – go here to have a preview.

don’t forget – only a day left to enter the giveaway in the previous post! comments close at 10pm wednesday 16th.

and as a celebration of my most abundant shop stock ever (and because it’s a shameless way of advertising)  i’ve decided to hold a giveaway!

i’ve been the lucky winner of a couple of great giveaways myself and it’s time to give back, so here are the details….

one lucky winner may choose ANYTHING from my shop, to be giftwrapped and sent especially to them with love from us all in the little treehouse.

i will also draw a couple of runner up names to receive a felt decoration of their choice!

to enter, simply leave me a comment on this post. easy! (only one per person will be counted)

to bag another entry (or indeed, up to 7 more entries, one for each day the giveaway is running. can you see where the advertising comes in?!), tweet or blog about my shop and/or giveaway, including a link (www.littletreehouse.co.uk) and then let me know about it.  tweets will need to have the hashtag #littletreehouseshop. for blog posts please come back here and leave me another comment with a web link to your post.

at 10pm UK time on wednesday 16th the giveaway will close and all entries will be collated for a random number selection. exciting times!

we counted some he already had and we drew round them and coloured them in. then i drew some more to show the ones he still needed and we kept it all in an envelope marked ‘samuel’s gruffalo pennies’.

now you can guess what came in the post!

in other news eli has a fifth tooth!

as you might be able to tell from samuel’s new visual calendar he’s at preschool monday, tueday and wednesday mornings, music group thursday and swimming on friday.  he’s tired but loving it and that’s quite enough for a poor exhausted mummy who today had to add ‘going into the pool for the baby-swim session’ to her duties!

last weekend samuel had his first birthday party to go to.  it was fancy dress!  i love a good fancy dress party, so i was well up for making a costume but was also glad it wasn’t hard and came easily from bits and pieces around the house:

the weekend before we got up early and went for an adventure at woburn safari park.

samuel had a fantastic day, in fact we all did. i highly recommend it, although probably not so much to do in poorer weather.

this is eli at 8 months, although he’s now fast heading for 9!  where the time’s gone i’m not sure.  eli continues to enjoy everything except cutting teeth and being out of sight of a parent. aww.

i’ve done some supply teaching this week and have managed to cut out countless felt shapes for Christmas decorations, as well as getting some new bunting underway alongside the Christmas bunting!  i’m knitting away on too many bits and pieces but still couldn’t resist casting on this colour combination just for me:

all in all, we’re BUSY, tired (par for the course) but very well, happy and keeping the old treehouse ship on an even keel (just about).  i feel very fortunate at the moment and wouldn’t swap any of this for anything.

we do laugh a lot!

now, off to the controversial tesco express in the village as we’re totally out of milk and bread!

so here’s some of the knitting i’ve been doing.

first a pair of socks for dawn, who recently was awarded a well deserved phd.  this is the botanical socks pattern by debbie orr knit in her own hand dyed exquisite yarn in ‘peacock’.  i confess i found the pattern difficult to process at first as it was a 28 row repeat! but after a while i spotted the patterns in it and it was much more enjoyable after that and i’m really very pleased with how it came out.

next, a shawl for me.

it’s a complete luxury.  knit in opulent cashmere, it is the lenora pattern by paulina popoilek. you knit the long border first and then decrease to fill the rest of the semi circle.

i used a colour for the main part of the shawl that i’ve been saving for something special and i’m in two minds about it… i love how it’s knit up, and it matches the purple border really well, but the combination is a bit too purple for me really, and also it only used one of the two skeins that i had, and i really hoped to maximise the use of them.  so i think i’ll see how much i wear it over the winter and if it’s not used enough, the beauty of knitted fabric is that you can usually un-knit it and use the yarn again!

now, if you’re my brother, or his wife or daughter… look away now!  this one’s for grace and it’s a surprise!  but i’m fairly sure they don’t read the blog, so i’m ok to share it here.

a poppy hat, with the leftover yarn from her cardigan a few months back.  i’ve got another olearia cardigan on the needles for her as well in the most gorgeous yarn and it’s knitting up beautifully!

then i made a few things to sell, which are now in my shop.  a couple of tank tops, and some baby shoes.

also in the shop are some new button necklaces and soon i hope there’ll be sock monkeys, heatable wheatbags and then some christmas bunting. do pop over and have a look.

lastly, a non-knitted craft… samuel has a playmat.

he never uses it.

it came about because he was always rolling around on the mat i made for eli. i was hoping that i could say to samuel that the mat was eli’s space, and he could have the rest of the room, and that would keep eli from being bundled or jumped on or otherwise squished. but that wasn’t working. so  i thought if i made samuel a mat, he might feel that he had his own special space to play and leave eli alone more. not so. but it doesn’t make me any less proud of whipping up a patchwork quilted playmat in under a week!  it’s bigger than eli’s and features some lovely makower fabric that i mostly bought last year.  i felt extra virtuous as all the fabric came from my stash and yet it all matched perfectly.  i did some maths and some measuring and used every scrap of the clouds, the last of the stripes and the beach hut interior (left over from the bathroom curtains).  it’s quilted very simply just to hold it together really, but it’s backed with cheap ikea fleece so it doesn’t matter how much it gets dragged around the floor.

i love it, and i hope that as he gets older and wants to make dens and hidey holes, he’ll use it more, but for now i’ll just be secretly proud of making it!