Grizzly pullover, costume, my shop, study and work

 Over the spring and summer I gave up knitting and sewing for more outdoorsy pursuits.  Now I'm full speed ahead with the crafting.  Above is Franklin's newest knit pullover, which I call the Kissing Grizzlies.  I kind of copied the bear motif from a pullover we bought him, but the rest of the pattern is made up entirely by me.  This took me far too long to knit--more than a month!  But I'm so happy with it;  it's 100% wool, made with leftovers from the crocheted blanket. 

This is Franklin's Halloween costume, made very quickly in a few hours the day before his nursery school party.  They told us about the party two days before, so I didn't have much time--I cut down an old white shirt of mine to fit him, and made the cape from an old black shirt of Partner's and a piece of red tablecloth.  As far as I could see, Franklin was the only vampire at the party, and had the only hand made costume.  He was really excited to wear it;  he asked me before we left in the morning, "Mummy, you got my costume?"

Also making things for my etsy shop;  my goal is to make one item every week.  I make mostly cashmere baby clothing, though I make some things from wool, too.  I love cashmere;  I wear it almost exclusively in winter, and Franklin has a couple things, too:  he's got two sets of cashmere pajamas I've made, and wears a cashmere vest under his shirt every day to keep him toasty.  Lately I've made several newborn sleeping gowns out of cashmere, which have all sold quite quickly.  It's funny:  I've had my shop open for a year now, and only had three sales--until a month ago, when I suddenly had five sales within that month.  I even ran out of cashmere and had to go on a shopping spree to the local charity shops (I get my cashmere from second-hand sweaters);  I went a little overboard and spent all my profits on new materials!

I'm taking a few weeks off work now that my university classes have started up again, and I'll be going back to just two days a week instead of five.  It was really tough getting up early in the mornings to take Franklin to school, after working till 10.30pm the night before.  And my work is physical--I'm on my feet, in a kitchen;  I think those six weeks of it nearly killed me!  Now Partner's temporarily taking extra hours at his work instead of me, but at least his is a desk job.  We're trying to put aside the extra money in our savings.