A New Pattern for a Dolphin called Sifiso and a Giveaway

I had some time this morning to take out my knitting needles and knit a new pattern I've been thinking about. Richard took the boys to visit their sisters at a scout camp that they are attending for the weekend. It's called Kon-tiki, there are over 800 scouts attending this camp and they are building water rafts, it is amazing to see!

So, I poured a cup of tea, took out my trusty iPad and started knitting and typing.

Some dolphin facts:
Dolphins aren't fish, they are mammals, warm blooded, give birth to live young and feed their calves milk. They breathe air through a blow hole on the top of their body unlike fish who have gills on the sides of their neck area. Dolphins are very social and swim together in large groups called pods. They are very intelligent creatures.

I have named this dolphin Sifiso, translated from the Zulu language, it means 'Hope'.

His body is knitted in 1 piece and the flippers and fin are knitted separately and sewn on.
The eyes are needle felted on with a felting needle and fleece or you could sew them on with yarn and a needle. He measures 7 inches from his snout to the end of his tail, and he is 4 inches tall.

You can find his pattern in my Etsy shop.

I will be giving away 1 dolphin pattern to 1 blog reader, just leave a comment if you would like to win his pattern. I will announce the winner here on Monday:)

Have a wonderful weekend.
Linda

Creative Friday



Helping  Jen with the heals and toes of these flat knitted socks...

Welcome to Creative Friday,

Thank you so much to everyone who visits this space!

Please feel free to post your links to anything you have created and would like to share, it can be a recipe, sewing tutorial, knitting tutorial, felting, crochet, crafts, art, spinning, weaving, working with fibre, photography, poetry...etc...



I also love to hear from you, so if you have a moment, please leave a comment:) Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful talent with us! Just add the name of your blog to the widget and then add your blog link with the http:// at the beginning of your link address:) I have added a Creative Friday button on the sidebar of my blog, please feel free to add it to your blog for Creative Friday and link it to http://www.naturalsuburbia.blogspot.com/ so others can find this space and share their creativity too:)


1. I have started a Creative Friday Flickr Group where you can post your beautiful photos that you link to each Creative Friday.

2. If you would be so kind as to link back to Natural Suburbia in your blog post that would be lovely:)

Have a wonderful weekend dear friends,

Linda

Spinning and How Much Drama can Just One Day Hold?

I have finished my wool and tussah silk hand spun, I am very happy with it and it's going to be a Winter scarf. I really love wearing scarves in Autumn and Winter and the fact that they are hand knitted makes me feel so happy to wear them.

It has been rather an interesting day so far, hence the title of this blog post. It actually started last night when we had no hot water to bath with. That was still fine and then this morning the geyser started to leak. It was later confirmed that it had burst in 3 places and would have to be replaced. Thank goodness we are still under warranty with the geyser company! They are going to install another one with no cost to us tomorrow. We do have another small solar geyser, so as long as we stagger the bath times we should all have hot water. Caiden has gastric flu, but seems to be feeling a little better now.

Later in the day I was taking the girls to their art lesson and our car overheated, I made it to a service station and when we tried to start the car again, the battery was flat??? The owner of the service station was so helpful and managed to charge the battery enough for me to make it back home and now we are off to buy a new battery.

Phew, it has been a day all right, but I am so grateful for all the wonderful and helpful people that have appeared throughout the day. At one point, I remember smiling to myself and thinking, maby it's time to slow down, forget the panic and see all the goodness that surrounds me...

Thank you so much to everyone who responded to my blog post yesterday about simplifying our life, I have really enjoyed reading all your messages and I am still busy responding to each one:) You have all given me plenty to think about.

How has your day been so far?

Simplifying, the General Idea

This is our pantry in my kitchen. It looks quite disorganised, I know. This is my plan.
I really am dedicated to moving towards a simpler lifestyle for my family, I want to walk that road, it is difficult to start though. There are so many ways to simplify, but getting it all together and starting can seem overwhelming and then not much happens, it's put off for another day... We already recycle, have a compost heap, worm bins, chickens, grow our own veg and fruit, have a solar geyser but I feel we can do more so now I am turning my attention to the kitchen.

I am going to start with my grocery cupboards, by itemising everything into sections and really SEE what we have and make sure I don't go and shop and buy more of the same. I want to start cooking from scratch and reduce the amount of meat we consume each week. I would love to reduce our monthly food budget and by eating less meat, this will be more healthy for our family and be economical too. I know there are so many bloggers out there that have already started this journey and I would love to read more about what you do. I really enjoy this blogging world, I have learned so much from all of you.

But for now, to start small here with the shelves in the kitchen, I think that's a good place for me. I'm going to repack everything, tins, baking goods etc... Decide consciously between wants and needs, try and shop according to my list and less and leave many of the luxury items on the shelves in the shops. I am sure we could make plenty of those items at home, form scratch :)

I will update you on how it goes...

Us

 

It has been a busy weekend, Richard returned home after being away on a mountain bike race for 5 days at the Sani2 Sea Adventure. He had an amazing time, we missed him and were all so happy to see him again.This photo above was taken from his trip, he is riding across a huge, winding floating water bridge. If you look closely, you can see it floating on the water!! I am so proud of him! You can read further about his adventiures on his mountain biking blog here.

Erin and I went for a walk around our garden early on Sunday morning and took some photos just as the sun was rising over the trees... This is an Avo tree that we have grown from a pip. I will have to bring it inside soon to prevent the frost from killing it. Hopefully we will have delicious avos one day.

Our veg garden is full of these gorgeous Calendula flowers, I really would like to make some Calendula salve, I am on the hunt for a recipe:)

We all went for a walk around our lake down the road, a couple of Spoon Bills flew in to greet us...

Willa, the Koek-koek chicken.

Jenna's first oil painitng, she has been working on this for a few weeks, I love how it turned out! One a week both Jen and Erin go to History of Art lessons and this was one of their projects. Jen was telling me that the sand in her painting has about 9 different colours in it!

I have been working on figuring out how to design an ebook cover all weekend. I have searched for tutorials everywhere, there are quite a few out there, but none of them really explain in detail, step by step, how this is done. I had no idea so much was involved!

Thank you so much to my wonderful friend K, who has been guiding me through this new learing curve and is always there to offer support and advice whenever I need it. (You are lovely!)

I can almost say Photoshop is my friend now:) At first it was quite daunting, I had never worked on this program before until Saturday and now I am getting the hang of it. What a clever program.

So this is one of the book covers I have designed for my flower knitting pattern ebook. It is simple, I didn't want to create anything complicated to start off with.

Have an amazing week.
Linda