Knitting and swaps

It seems like I haven't had much to show since Easter weekend. Does your sewing go like this? A big blitz then just little bits for a few days or weeks? Mine seems to.
Homelife has been busy too, I have been working on my two older children being more independent with some of the school work. They are enjoying having more control and I am enjoying less pressure. I have been having a bit of an 'autumn' clean too (spring clean in autumn), it's so nice to see things in their place.

I am pretty sure I didn't mention it before but my (very naughty but lovable) three year old found the easter egg stash a few days before Easter. He ate some of it, of course who could resist, and the two year old had a feast too. Luckily there was still enough left. As we weren't in the position to go out and buy more eggs I told the children that sometimes Easter Bunny leaves them early because he has so many children to get around. They were happy with that.
It is fun as a child to have chocolate and presents magically appear at Easter and Christmas, but I do wonder sometimes at all the lies/tales involved. Here I am teaching them to tell the truth and what do I turn around and do?????

Yesterday my parents brought out my 15 yr old cousin who is visiting from Sydney. He experienced things he doesn't normally. Chased the cow out, off the calf, to milk. Feed the rabbits and checked on the baby chickens. Feed the cows (they don't need feeding but I feed them for his benefit, also helps to keep them quiet) and toured about the farm. He also got to mix with our animal life around the house - working dogs, Jack Russell dogs, cats, chooks and geese (NCL -they have settled in well).
oh, and he was quite interested in recent purchase of ours, an old HT Holden ute that we bought in Tamworth on Saturday. It goes, but needs some work doing on it. The previous owner was going to do it up but it was sitting in his yard too long so he decided to sell it. My cousin wants to become a mechanic so he was keen to know all the details on our plans for the ute.

I want to share my 7 yr old's knitting, she loves it but we don't get it out often enough - must remedy that this week.
The only help I give her is to pick up the very rare dropped stitch and occasionally I have to knit a row because she has done her stitches too tight for her to knit the next row! Hopefully we have that problem sorted out now.
The needles are custom made. My dh made them for her out of some dowl, they just need something on the ends.
My knitting is rather slow, still not finished my first dishcloth yet! I feel the need to make a few dishcloths before tackling socks again. and I SOOO want to knit socks! I have two pair of hand knitted socks (op shop pickups for 20c and 50c) and they are just SOOO good to wear - far superior to the shop socks. Hey, it also keeps our farmers in business too!

Most of my sewing time this past week has been spent working on secret stuff for swaps, so I can't show much. I am in the Christmas In July swap that Linda and Stephanie are running.

A few more sneak peeks!

I am also in a direct swap from Rhonda's blog, downtoearth. This one is for two potholders and two dishtowels. My swap partner for this is in the US and we have had some lovely emails back and forth.
It's really nice getting to know other like minded people! I will post pictures of the things I made for her once I know she has recieved them - posting them this week.

I can't begin to say how much Rhonda's blog has helped me. I was only thinking the other day back to when I was first in a unit/apartment/flat by myself, and how things would have been done differently had I known DowntoEarth then..... but hey, I didn't have a computer then! More on this in another post.