These are a few of my favourite things.

I have to share some of the things that are making me very happy at the moment.

Firstly this little gem came home from school (apologies for the slightly blurry photo). I had to sit Ella down and tell her how to spell Rainbow. There is a big difference between being called Ella Rambo and Ella Rainbow. Bless.

Second is this beautiful natural dyed yarn I bought from another lovely blogger in the UK . I love the rainbow effect
and I'm palnning on doing a scarf with them. I also got them for inspiration as I am getting all sorted to embark on a great dyeing adventure.


And here's a little group of things that need explaining. The big ball of yarn is the coloured stuff above spun, but not yet plied. I'm waiting for some white alpaca yarn to go with it to make it soft and warm. The little felt balls were made from the little bits left over from spinning and may become buttons or pom poms.

Today Lucy is modelling a little vest I made last night. I bought the book "200 ripple stitch patterns" very cheaply and wanted to try one of the patterns out on cotton to get the hang of how it works before applying it to anything else. I've never really crocheted anything other than granny squares before. It evolved into something for Lucy...she's great to make things for...nice and quick! The ripple stitch crocheted pattern will be what I use to make the rainbow scarf.

The other drawing from Ella makes me happy and sad actually. It's a picture of her class in Australia (Aushaleu)with her friends, Lauren, Daisy and Patrick? (Pach). Her old teacher Mrs Higgins is upside down facing the class. It says "I mis my clrrom I usbeshule mis my techu ole my fns in the clarrosm" whish translates as " I miss my classroom. I especially miss my teacher and all my friends in the classroom." Her drawing is obviously her therapy. Interestingly here they seem to allow creative spelling, at least for their writers workshop they do.

And I have left the best 'till last. When we signed up for our satellite TV service they were offering a free ipod shuffle. You had to mail in all this stuff and I think it was $14 postage. But it came last week. I would never have bought myself one of these because I don't think of myself as being an ear phones kind of person, but I LOVE IT! I have loaded it up with lots of David Gray, Cold Play, James Blunt and Pete Murray (bit of a boy theme going on there). It is fantastic to listen to it while walking up to the Y...all that traffic noise just dissappears. I put it on when I cook at night, I even managed to get through 2 hours of ironing because I had it on. I can sit and knit/crochet etc while the kids watch rubbish on TV and I don't care. I can just be in my own little world. I even put it in at night when I'm reading in bed and all the noises of the house (Matt playing guitar/watching sport, the kids audio tapes etc) dissolve away. [On that note I should probably explain that I am reading the count of Monte Cristo and it requires hopping into bed at 8.30 to get a good read in before sleep.] The only thing is that I can't listen to my ipod when I'm swimming, but I've heard the songs so many time they kind of go around in my head anyway. Oh, and I'm sometimes tempted to sing along while walking down the street...not such a good idea.