I found this on Gina’s blog and it looks like fun, so here goes.

The Concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?   Rachel
2. What is your favorite food?   Pizza
3. What high school did you go to?   Hulme Grammar
4. What is your favorite color?  Fuscia
5. Who is your celebrity crush?  Gordon Ramsey
6. Favorite drink?  Vanilla Latte
7. Dream vacation?  Iceland
8. Favorite dessert?  New York Cheesecake
9. What you want to be when you grow up?  I used to want to be a Wedding Dress Designer
10. What do you love most in life?  My daughter
11. One word to describe you.  Ordinary
12. Your flickr name.  Littlerachcat

Well, now I’ve no excuse for not updating much more regularly. We’ve got a shiny new computer. Mr Newt chose it, because he wanted a big fancy gaming machine, whereas as long as I can use Word, Excel and t’internet, then I’m happy. It’s got a MASSIVE screen, about 22″ I think, and it’s a flat panel one, so it takes up much less space and is generally much nicer than the old one. It’s really fast too, hardly takes any time to load up at all. And it’s got Windows Vista. I know lots of people hate Vista, but to be honest, I can’t tell much difference between Vista and XP, so it seems fine to me so far.

Since we got it, I’ve been spending some time uploading the latest photos of Evie and the garden, trying out Paint Shop Pro (because Photoshop is just way too complicated for me, when all I really want to do is resize photos and get rid of red-eye!), and I’ve also uploaded Sims 2 to see how fast that is - and it’s pretty impressive. I really don’t have time to play tons of computer games, but I have added Children of the Nile to my Amazon wishlist because that wouldn’t play on our old PC and I remember wanting it when it came out.

And so because Mr Newt got his big shiny PC, I bought myself a Wii! I really wanted Wii Fit, but that’s like gold dust at the moment, and I’m not prepared to pay double the recommended price on Ebay for for, so I’ll just have to wait until they catch up and it comes back in stock. So at the moment I’m playing Big Brain Academy, Tennis and a LOT of Endless Ocean - I love that game it’s fantastic. And today I bought Sonic and the Super Rings (or something like that). I have a rule that I will not pay more than £20 for a regular game (obviously Wii Fit will be more because of the board), and Sonic was just £18 in Morrisons, so I grabbed one. I’ve discovered that You Tube is actually really good for watching reviews of the games, so you can have a sneaky peak at them before you hand over your hard earned cash.

And speaking of hard earned cash, I’ve started back at work. It’s absolutely crazy at the moment, and likely to get even more crazy over the next few months, but on the whole it’s not actually as bad as I thought it would be. It’s actually quite nice to get a break from the endless routine of nappy changing and feeding, even though I miss Evie like mad. She’s having a great time being spoiled rotten by daddy and grandma though, so I know I don’t have to worry about her, which is a big relief. I am kind of thinking that 3 days might be a bit much, and that 2 days might be better, because some weeks it feels like I hardly see her at all. But I’m going to give it a little longer before I make my final decision.

We’ve had problems with our main computer and the camera, so there haven’t been any photos for a while.  But now it seems to be sorted, so here we go.

Firstly, here’s a picture of the No-hood hoodie being modelled by a very wriggly Evie.  That’s her dad behind her trying to keep her still.

It’s by no means perfect, and to be honest it doesn’t really fit all that well - it’s too long in the arms and too short in the body.  But, I’ve learned my lessons from it, and it keeps her warm at home.

Debbie Bliss Ribbed jacket

I’m much happier with this.  It’s a ribbed jacket in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran.  It was a quick and easy knit, it’s gorgeously soft, and it actually looks like it’s supposed to!  It’s a 2 year old size though, so Evie can’t model it just yet.

I’ve also decided to teach myself to crochet

Nothing too exciting, but it all stayed together, and Newt is now using it as a coaster (when Evie isn’t playing with it).  I decided that I had to learn because I kept finding knitting patterns with a crochet edge that I wanted to do.  I think I’ve got the hang of the basic stitches now, and I’ve made a granny square, but the patterns are still complete gobbledegook to me.  I don’t particularly want to make clothes (at least not at the moment) but I have seen a couple of nice blankets and bags that I might have a go at.

I’ve also been thinking about my oddments of yarn.  I did have a fanciful idea of knitting swatches from them all to make a blanket for Evie.  Then I thought I could do granny squares instead.  But the more I think about it, the more I think that I’m just making life too difficult for myself.  I’m knitting as a hobby, because I enjoy it, and using up all the oddments was becoming a chore.  Also, I’m very pernickity, and I just don’t think I’d like a blanket that didn’t match properly, where the colours were not all in the same colour family or didn’t match tonally, or even didn’t clash properly.  So, I’m not going to do it.  I’m just going to concentrate on knitting things I want to knit, and then get rid of my oddments to the wonderful people who knit for charity or on freecycle for crafty groups or whatever.  That way, I feel no guilt about them, they don’t take up cupboard space, and hopefully someone gets some use out of them.

And finally, just because she’s absolutely gorgeous!

I eventually found the missing piece of the jumper - phew! And managed to assemble it, but then it wouldn’t fit over Evie’s head (cue strange flashback to childhood and trying on Grandma’s jumpers - wonderful, but such tight casting off that you were in danger of losing your ears whenever you tried them on!).

So I unpicked the hood and the neckline fits, but the hood definitely does not.  Grrrr.  I doubt it’s the pattern, probably more my random substitution of an unsuitable yarn.  OK.  Not to panic.  So, I think I’m going to have to frog the hood and rework a plain neckline.  Not sure what really - I don’t think I have enough ease to do a standard rib one.  Hmmmm, maybe just a very simple pick up and knit, then cast off to bind it all together.  If I could crochet, I’d do that, but I can’t.

And I’d love to show you photos but something has gone wrong with Gallery - DH is blaming the hosting people, I haven’t got a clue.  So I can’t.

Arse. Arse. Arse.

Something terrible may have happened.  I began to try to make up the hooded sweater for Evie.  Now, when I was knitting this, I used yarn that I’d found in the bargain bin - two 100g balls of Jarol Inca Natural, now discontinued.  The pattern called for three 50g balls of Sirdar Snuggly DK.  Now I know you need to go off yardage not weight and all that, but there was no yardage on the Jarol balls, and I thought that an extra 50g would be plenty.  Well it wasn’t.  I ran out just before I started the hood border.  So I had to go and get something that vaguely matched.  After much hemming and hawing in the wool shop, we all (me and the assistants and two other customers) decided on a peachy shade of Sirdar Country Sytle DK, not perfect, but it’s OK for the border.

So I finished the knitting, and I’m about to start pinning pieces together to start making up.  I find both the sleeves, the hood and a piece that might be front or back (and curse myself for not marking it), but that’s it.  No other front/back piece.  Not in my main bag, not in my other bag, not in the bag that should only have needles in it, and not in the bag I recently took to the wool shop.  It’s nowhere to be found.

This leaves us with three possibilities:
1.  I’ve lost it, but it will eventually be found lurking at the bottom of my sock drawer, or in the fridge or somewhere else random.
2. I’ve lost it and it’s never to be found again.
3. I never knitted it in the first place.

Possibilities 2 and 3 are just too horrible to contemplate, because I have no more yarn to reknit the missing piece.  While I can live with a hood border in a slightly odd colour, a whole front/back piece will just look too bizarre even for me.

So please send good thoughts for the missing piece. And hope it returns home soon.

i’ve just discovered Ravelry - and it’s so addictive!  I could spend hours on there looking at everyone’s different projects.  you can also link it to your blog, so in theory, this post should end up there.

I’ve been knitting a hooded sweater for Evie, and I’ve just finished the knitting today, now to try to make it up before she grows out of it.  I hate making up.  But I’m going to try to force myself to do this before I can start anything new.  And sadly no photos at the moment because the camera is full.  Hopefully DH will sort it out and then I can work on filling it up with photos of knitting and Evie again.

Further to my post about new year resolutions, I bit the bullet and joined Slimming World.  I’m not telling you all what I weigh, but suffice to say, it’s far too much!  My meetings and weigh-ins will be on a tuesday, and I think I’ll try to get a ticker sorted for my blog so that I can update things that way.

So far, I’m doing OK.  I’ve been trying to cook more and I made a Pearl Barley stew yesterday, which was quite nice, but a bit too runny, so we also had it for lunch as a soup.  I think I’m going to do mushroom risotto for tea tonight.  One good thing is that because I’m still breast-feeding, I get extra ‘A’ choices - so more milk and cheese, which is always good.  Newt has given up cheese for Lent though, so that makes family cooking a little more tricky.  Not that I can do proper family cooking anyway, because now we want low fat stuff, and Eve still needs the full fat things.

I don’t normally do this, because I don’t think I’d keep them, and so I don’t fancy setting myself up for failure.  But I thought I’d try a few that should be quite simple.

Firstly, I’m going to take more photos - and not just of Evie.  And more videos too.  I know if I don’t do this, I’ll regret it when Evie gets older.

Secondly, I’m going to spend less time messing about on the computer.  If I spent half the time doing stuff rather than messing on the computer thinking about doing it, then I’d get so much more done.  Plus I’ve realised that I don’t need to be online all that much to keep up with blogs and boards that I visit, so a lot of it is a waste of time really.

Thirdly, OK this one is a biggie, and one that I usually wouldn’t make because of the whole failure thing, but I need to lose some weight.  Especially if I want to have another baby.  Which I’m not thinking about yet, but eventually I would like to, and I don’t want to be diabetic again because that was a real pain.  So I may join Slimming World, or I might just do it on my own.  I have to do more cooking for Evie, and if I plan it a bit better I should be able to link that in with cooking for me and Newt as well.  And I might try going swimming.  I joined a gym before and that was no good for me, but swimming is OK, it’s boring but doesn’t take too long, and if I have a shower afterwards then I don’t need to wash my hair at night, so I’ll save some time there.  And now Evie’s older, I can leave her with my mum for an hour while I go.  That’s the idea anyway.  We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve just discovered LibraryThing (well actually that’s not true, I found it ages ago, but I’ve just started playing with it properly).  It lets you catalogue all your books, but it does a lot more than that.  You can assign ‘tags’ to your books, and thereby customise it to be used however you want.  For example, I use the tag ‘library’ to indicate that I borrowed a book from the library rather than bought it; the tag ‘owned’ would indicate that I do own a book.  ‘Read’ and ‘not yet read’ should be fairly obvious, and then I also usually add something to indicate what kind of book it is - fiction, non fiction etc and the genre.

You can then look at other users who’ve read the same books as you, or used the same tags.  You can join groups, and there are forums as well.  I’ve put a LibraryThing widget in the right had sidebar, but there are other widgets too that I’ll be playing around with.  If you try it out, and you’re looking for me, my user name is LittleRach.

Oh dear, I think this may have become my new obsession.
Google Notebook is a way of saving web addresses, clips of webpages, images and so on all in one place. You can then choose to email it to people or share it as a webpage. I’ve been messing about with it for the last few days, and so far I’ve been creating my wish list and stash lists on it; but I can think of endless uses - storing recipes, looking for new products, researching stuff.

If you want to check it out, here’s my Wish List.