Spitting Yarn

Jump to Comments

[Please insert your preferred apology for not posting, here.]

I see that since I last posted, I have had another baby. That will explain a few things. Here he is, dear, jolly Oscar or, to his friends, Ozzie.

Ozzie is a great baby. He doesn’t sleep very well. He will only nap if I carry him in his carrier. He is causing me all kinds of headaches in the transition to solid foods. BUT. He is insanely jolly. So quick to smile and laugh at Mummy doing something silly. Sweet, sweet, Oscar.

And can you believe, since I last posted, Spike has learned to talk?! He has gone from strength to strength with his ABA programme. He is progressing so well. Interacting with his peers is still a big problem for him but, even there, there is positive movement. Spike can recite nursery rhymes and play around with the words. He can count up and down from 100, he knows most of his phonics and his alphabet very well. There is so much to cheer.

Of course, the last 10 months (ack, has it been that long?) have also been ridiculously hard. Managing an autistic preschooler and a very demanding baby has been tough, especially over the holidays when the structure of our day goes to pot. I don’t really get out, play dates are tricky. Our lives are dictated by Spike’s therapy. I can’t help but look forward to September when Spike will be in nursery every morning, Ozzie will be able to nap without being woken up, and I can potter about a bit more freely.

So, you’ll understand that, from a crafty point of view, I have not had a great deal to post about. Having said that, if my brain was a cup it would be in a constant state of overflow. There are so many things I want to make and new techniques I want to try but, alas, minimal time to make and do. Which is not to say I haven’t done anything. On the rare evenings when I am not slumped, comatose, on the sofa, or when Spike is occupied and Oscar is napping, I will feverishly crochet or cut or knit or sew. I have about seven shoe boxes, each containing a different work-in-progress, so that I can always work on something. Need something I can do while standing in the kitchen with a baby strapped to me? Crack open the cross stitch box. Husband up to the challenge of wrangling two children simultaneously? Grab the sewing box and run to the machine. Free hands while a small child slumbers in the half-light? The crochet box is the correct choice. It is the only area of my life that I have fully organised.

One project I keep coming back to is this crochet bee.

I made this incarnation twice, once for Ozzie and once for a friend’s new baby boy. It’s such a fun, quick pattern, that it has made the ideal gift for all the new babies who keep appearing. I couldn’t resist playing with the colour scheme, producing this little lady bee with lovely coral stripes:

and this little boy bee:

Since making the first Buzzy Buzzy Bee (as Spike calls them), I have realised they are much nicer to handle in cotton yarn, particularly for babies. For the coral and blue bees, I used gorgeous Patricia Roberts Cotton No.2, which is just about my favourite yarn to work with. I stuffed the faces with a couple of windows from envelopes to make them scrunch, and put a caged bell (AKA a cat toy) in the middle.

The original pattern, which I have modified a little, called for stud eyes, but I embroidered my faces with linen thread to make them more baby-friendly.

Such fun. I’ll try and show you what is in my other boxes, just as soon as I stop being a busy, buzzy bee.