I have decided to create a new blog at a different location ~ for many reasons.
My new blog is still called "Woolly Butts" and it can be found HERE

It's really sad to be leaving four years of blogging behind, but I will transfer quite a bit across to the new site.

During the recent week of torrential rain and floods, there was nothing much to do other than stay inside and read or knit. I bought this Strickwear Merging Colors kit (available from The Mannings in Pennsylvania ~ excellent customer service!) almost 2 years ago & had started the original Adagio pattern but hated it with a passion. After all the time it took to wind the yarns for a graduated gradient effect, I wanted to knit something special so decided to go with Evelyn Clarke's 'Swallowtail' pattern. I was very pleased with the resulting shawl. I tried everything..using two cameras..to get some pics that would show how truly beautiful it is but the blues & purples in the yarn were very hard to capture. I love this one so much that I intend to keep it for myself! I used beads I'd bought when I was in Charlottesville, VA with my friend Rita earlier this year. I also bought two more Strickwear kits. LOL

It's been a very, very wet winter. The older local farmers say the wettest for around 40 years! All I know is that I'm sick to death of wet, wet, wet!!! Didn't think I would ever utter those words as we live in a very dry region and the drought has rivened just about everything. We had five inches of rain in two days! There was water running through the sheds and a lake formed under the big Sheoak tree in the middle of the horse's paddock. I was terrified its roots would not be able to keep it in the ground, but it's still standing straight & tall. I was walking through calf-deep water but we were not as badly affected as many other areas. We were land-locked for two days, but I had listened to the portents of coming doom and done a big groceries shop the day before the deluge started; so we were OK for supplies. DH bogged his 1962 Dodge Phoenix trying to get it out of the shed. My poor little chookies did it hard for several days as their pens were inches deep in water. Now that it's dried out a bit, we are walking through ankle deep mud ~ and boy! does it stink!

One of my Pekin Bantams was sitting on 12 eggs during this and I had to drag her cage under cover. The wonderful little girl didn't worry a bit & continued to stay on the nest, despite the less-than-ideal conditions. She hatched out eight babies unaided, but the 9th one needed considerable help from me. Luckily, I had turned on the incubator in case there were probs & brought the egg inside. The chick had pipped the egg but made no progress after 24 hours, so I broke off tiny pieces of shell over a 4-hour period and it eventually got itself hatched. I have no doubt it wouldn't have survived without intervention. Once the chick was dry and able to stand, I put it under its mum under cover of darkness at around 11pm. Unfortunately the the other egg in the pic was not viable and the chick died in the shell :(

Mother and the rest of the babies are doing well! The spotted chick is a Silver Spangled Hamburg. All the others are Pekin bantams.
Mum is a Golden Birchen Pekin. With a breast like that what else could she be called but Dolly??!!!

DD2 can hear "tick, tick, tick" very loudly ... so I am knitting garments for what has become known as "The Dream Baby". LOL
Georgie Hallam/tiKKi Milo Vest Pattern is such an easy knit I made several, using up yarn from my humungous stash. I dyed all the yarns myself, except for the owl cabled vest. They range from 100% woollen yarn to a bamboo blend.

DD1 Natalya is organising another Type I Juvenile Diabetes related fund raiser through our Woolly Butts store. Details can be found HERE

I am making a few items which will be offered for sale in the auctions.
One is a skirt set, which consists of the skirt, an embellished t-shirt, a pair of footless tights and a Leafy Shrug.
I dyed the yarn myself. I was after a bright semi solid yellow - which I got - but I put a smidge of "Chamomile" in too & the green in it split ... which gave the yellow a definite lime overtone. DH christened it "Curious Yellow". But it is a semi solid and it's vibrant!!!!  The embellishment is done with a knitted I-cord and my favourite knitted leaves. It was really hard to get the flower petals right and the fabric kept puckering. Took me almost 3 hours to do it.

The notes I made about how I created the skirt can be found HERE but they are just that - notes - not a pattern per se.

Donna of Cinderella's Stash is co-ordinating another charity fund raiser for breast cancer awareness. All the info can be found HERE
Please familiarise yourself with the dates, etc. of the auctions :)

I have been provided with permission from the designer, Emily Ross, to offer an Haruni Shawl as my donation this year, in memory of my mother who died from breast cancer when she was only 58 years old.
I will be using HM Sea Silk in "Rose" colourway.

This delicious cake has the most amazing texture. It really is like velvet! Not readily available in Australia, so I made one myself. A lot of fluffing about ~ took almost an hour to get organised and into the oven ... but oh so worth it!!! The recipe is below ...

RED VELVET CAKE RECIPE

1/2 cup vegetable shortening (softened to room temp)
1.5 cups caster sugar
2 eggs
1 teasp vanilla extract
2.5 cups plain flour
1 tsp salt
2 tablesp cocoa
1 cup buttermilk
1 teasp baking soda, sprinkled over 1 tablesp white vinegar
1/4 cup red food colouring

Cream butter & sugar together
Add eggs (one at a time, beat well) & vanilla
Sift flour, salt & cocoa together
Add alternately with buttermilk, beating well after each addition
Stir in baking soda & vinegar...be careful! It foams
Blend in food colour.

Bake @ 350F in two greased & lightly floured sponge tins for 30 minutes.

CREAM CHEESE FILLING

2 X 250g blocks Philly cream cheese
icing sugar & vanilla ... to taste
allow cheese to reach room temp, add sugar & vanilla
beat 'til smooth with a little buttermilk to make it easy to spread
sandwich cakes together with thick layer of cream cheese mixture
spread cream cheese over tops & sides
allow to stand for a couple of hours so cake absorbs some of the cream cheese

Such a strange name for a chookie, but this very pretty boy was the only fertile egg in a batch I put into my incubator in November last year. He needed lots of help to get out of the egg & I wasn't sure he would survive...thankfully he did.
As he matured I hoped he was a she but that wasn't to be :(
I kept him because he is so pretty. His dad is a Pekin Bantam (he contributed the feathered feet) ... and his mum is a Silver Spangled Hamburg .. she contributed the rosecomb, the spots on his chest and his glorious silvery white plummage. He has a lovely temperament & he's very tame, thanks to being reared by hand.

I gave up trying to have the type of garden I prefer - cottage style - about 5 years ago. We simply don't have the water for that type of garden; and the 'new' place doesn't have the soil. About three years ago I decided to go with cacti & succulents...makes heaps more sense. The thing that doesn't make sense to me is that they are at their best in the middle of winter!! Most of them flower and look their best in July/August. Why is this so??!! The rest of the property looks almost as bad in the middle of winter as it does in the middle of summer, but the cacti & succulents thrive ~ although they do mysteriously look rather sad in the middle of summer here. Just goes to show how harsh our climate is. I grow them in all sorts of interesting containers .. some are thriving in an old wheelbarrow. I use large cans which previously contained tomatoes, olive oil, etc. One of the most impressive is growing in an old, rope-handled dairy bucket ... interesting plants in all sorts of weird containers. A silver sugar bowl, terracotta water pipes, teapots, leather work boots ...

I looooove to read. When I saw people using eReaders as they waited to board flights, I was very intrigued ~ didn't know they existed! Of course, I neeeeeeeded one. I did a heap of research & decided to go with a Kobo ... only very recently released into the market. There are not many accessories available yet and I wanted to protect my reader from damage, so played for a few hours one night and made a couple of crocheted covers for it out of Aran weight/10ply/Worsted cotton yarn. I'm really pleased with how they are working out. I have written the pattern out as clearly as possible, but you may need to modify it to suit your own needs. The m/ments are given at the top of the pattern page.
You can find the free pattern HERE