My Mum

I love my Mum. She is so kind and loving.

My Mum unschools me at home. She never gets upset or angry. I think she is the best teacher in the would.

Mum likes reading to me and Gemma-Rose. I like it when she reads to us. She is a good reader and makes the characters in stories come alive.

Mum is always willing to help people out. She helps me knit, helps Imogen with her uni work and helps with so many other things that I would have to sit here for a year to list them all. Mum never gets upset when I ask her to help me with something. She just puts down what she is doing and helps me.

It was Mum who taught me to knit, it is Mum who taught me to sew and it is Mum who is now helping me learn to sew on the machine.

Mum is a good knitter. She enjoys knitting cardigans for me and Gemma-Rose. She will go down the shops and come home with heaps of balls of wool and then for the next few weeks she will knit away. The cardigans I own that she has made for me are my favourites.

Like me, Mum likes to blog. She writes wonderful blog posts. She can make even a boring subject interesting. I wish I could write like Mum.

Mum is always listening to my novels and giving me praise. She enjoys helping me out of sticky spots when I don't know what to write next in my stories or when I don't know how to add a character. Mum is really good at giving advice like that because she also likes to write stories.

What would I do without Mum? I have no idea. I would probably go mad. I am so glad I have her.

I want to be like Mum when I grow up. 

Fingerless Gloves

My fingerless glove

The cold weather is back, and winter will soon be here.

We are all cold and in jumpers and jackets. I see Gemma-Rose rush out of the room.

"Where are you going, Gemma-Rose?" I call after her.

"To get my fingerless gloves," she answers. As I think about it I decide she is right. It is time to bring out the fingerless gloves and warm my poor hands up.

Last year I made myself and Gemma-Rose fingerless gloves when I was tired of having cold fingers, especially when playing the piano.

This Easter I made another pair of fingerless gloves, this time for Imogen. I gave them to her on Easter Sunday as a gift. She was very surprised.

I was also surprised, but for different reasons. The main reason was that I had made three pairs of fingerless gloves out of the same three balls of wool. It was hard to believe that the balls of wool stretched so far. Another reason was that I had made Imogen's glove pattern up when I lost the piece of paper with the instructions for the gloves I made myself, not that I would have been able to make her another pair like mine. Mine took a lot of wool as they were very long!

Charlotte also has fingerless gloves, but she made hers herself out of other balls of wool. She did not knit hers, but took the quicker option of crocheting them. If I could crochet I would have done that rather than spent hours knitting!

I love fingerless gloves and they are very useful! I am going to have to put my gloves on.

Making Monsters

From the library I got a book that had these really cute toys in it. I wanted to make some monsters with wibbly wobbly arms. So that night I got out my knitting needles and wool and started to knit.

I didn't notice the time going by, and suddenly it was bed time and I had to stop knitting. So I put away my knitting needles for the night and went to bed.


The next morning I got straight back to work. I worked all day and by afternoon tea time I had finished the monster. Then I wanted to make a smaller one so I did a little bit of maths to work out how.

The little one was finished very soon. I gave it to Dad who was very pleased with it. When he found Mum he said, “Look what I got”. I was very pleased with the toys too. I named my one Mackintosh.

If you would like to make one yourself here is the pattern:

The big monster

The body:

Cast on 16 stitches and knit 72 rows.
Cast off


Arm (make 2):

Cast on 5 stitches and knit 26 rows.
Cast off

Leg(make 2):

Cast on 5 stitches and knit 40 rows.
Cast off

Sew it up and you are done

The little one

The body:

Cast on 8 stitches and knit 37 rows.
Cast off

Arm (make 2):

Cast on 2 stitches and knit 13 rows.
Cast off

Leg (make2):

Cast on 3 stitches and knit 20 rows.
Cast off

Sew it up.

For the face you can sew on buttons for eyes or you can do what I did with Dads toy and sew on wool eyes. Sew on the mouth with wool.


You can also make hats for the monsters.

A hat for the big monster:

Cast on 54 stiches knit 20 rows.

Fold in half and sew up.

Hat for the little monster:

Cast on 29 stiches knit 10 rows.

Fold in half and sew up.