Colour

 Some of the women from our playgroup put together a stash of beautiful hand dyed yarns to sell at the advent fair. I had the *ahem* privilege of dividing a ginormous 1kg skein of undyed yarn into 100g lots.

 If you've never seen a 1kg skein, here it is -

 and of course the boy had to have a turn holding the yarnzilla too -

Of course me being the only long-term knitter who owns neither swift nor wool winder, I wound all 2170 metres of it by hand into balls, so they could be weighed properly, before winding them into individual skeins ready to be dyed.

I always think a drying rack never looks so pretty as when it is covering with freshly dyed yarn..

I dyed this one for myself too, it's 200g of blue & green gradient - 

and more recently, a little 50g skein -

and 50g of 12ply in graduated reds -

and Lexi did one for herself using koolaid -

I'm hoping I'll get a chance to do a heap more soon!!

My baby's baby

I finished my first proper waldorf doll!

Not the best photo I'm afraid, but here she is-

Since she was for my youngest's first birthday, she has a lovely soft bamboo velour body, with just the head & upper torso fully formed under her 'clothes'. In the traditional waldorf style she is made from 100% natural fibres - cotton stretch skin fabric, the bamboo velour, carded wool fleece for stuffing, and a strange but very cool feeling wool/soy blend yarn for her (immense amount of) hair! 

I knit her a little dress to wear, and crocheted a blanket too, which I haven't got a photo of yet.

I'm rather pleased with how she came out, except that the velour has a tendency to 'wick' the stuffing out :(

I'm working on a second one now, for our kindergarten's gigantic Advent Fair!

Oink.

I made a pig.

My kitchen smells wonderful..

but you wouldn't want to eat what I've been cooking!

I've been wanting to try making these beeswax lanterns for well over a year- 

I had the wax ready & everything! So when another tutorial popped up on Pinterest, I finally gave it a go!!

The beeswax takes quite a while to melt, but apart from that it was quite simple! Once the wax was melted they only took a couple of minutes to make.

Now I have a couple of drops of sunshine on my kitchen bench, pooling & radiating the light, but I bet they'll look fantastic with a couple of tiny candles in them!

crafty women

i'm lucky with our playgroup to be surrounded by a group of very crafty women :-)

last year we embarked on a fundraising mission, using the power of crochet!

so far we've made a cot blanket-

a bassinet blanket-

a super cute doll's blanket (which i think has actually been claimed by the playgroup babies ;-) ) -

and we've almost finished a single bed blanket using hand-dyed rainbow colours! -

there are also these lovely squares, which i don't know what they are destined to be!

they all need blocking before we can sell them, but they're already filled with a whole lot of care & attention!

it's an integral part of our playgroup philosophy that parents/carers be productively occupied, be it cleaning, crafting, mending, gardening etc, so crochet is a perfect way to spend our morning!

secret.

i have to keep a secret.

i made something last week that took an outrageous amount of time, with copious amounts of hand sewing, for a present....

the present has been handed over to it's birthday girl, BUT one of my friends is planning to make a bunch of similar style things for sale at xmas, so i'm not going to publicize the idea just in case someone else beats her to it!
but this is the little wooden finger puppet doll that went with it lol..

paul painted her face & hair, and i dressed her in a cute scrapbook paper dress, coated lovingly in layers of Mod Podge, just recently available round here!!

but it's gonna be a while before i can share pics of the background ;-)

the spirit of winter

to me winter is all about hibernating - it doesn't get that cold here, but it does get wet, so i like to stay inside - and staying inside, with kids = simple crafts!

inspired by MamaMoontime's Winter Wattle Fairy, i decided to make us a winter fairy too!
i used colours very prevalent at the moment - pale blue skies littered by clouds, and dark, early evenings, and she has lovely shiny silk hair, and barely visible opalescent blue wings :-)
(they're made from bondable Angelina fibre, just to give away the secret - when they catch the light they are amazing!)

and of course a little doll was commisioned by alexis-
and a wee fairy girl for eli too-
(cos he has to be just like his big sis!)

fun, cheap & and very very quick!!

A place to call one's own

one from the archives of forgotten blog content.... at the beginning of the year lexi finally moved into her own room!
(we pretty much follow classic attachment parenting theory, and hey, if you've got a bad sleeper it's much easier to resettle them if they are in a bed next to yours!)

so i decided to make her a sign for the door, using some craft jigsaw pieces (cos she loves jigsaws!) and various scrapbooking bits & pieces!
they're rather *eclectic* for my taste (i'm not a natural scrapbooker - i struggle to put anything much on the page lol) but suffice to say it was very well received by its recipient!

and unrelatedly, apart from the paper bit, check out the basket of window stars that we made at playgroup so each of the children could take one home for the winter holidays! there are at least 40-50 in there i reckon!

the same, but different.

one long dark evening i let the kids loose with some wet-on-wet watercolour painting-
(soak proper watercolour paper in a bit of water for 5-10min until it's a bit soft, then paint with big brushes & watercolour paints - biscuit trays are perfect for containing everything, if not very pretty!)

the finished paintings-
i then cut circles out of the paintings - a stockpot lid for the big one, cake tin for the smaller - and painted them with cheap canola oil. yes you read that right.
the aim is to make the paper somewhat translucent... Dr Nick's Window To Weight Gain for the uber-geeks out there ;-)
once dry i folded the paintings into star lanterns!
and cos i was in that sort of mood, i made the little scraps left over from turning the circles into octagons into a mobile for lexi's window.
(the sun was too bright this morning to get a decent pic of all the delicate shades, but i'm not complaining!!)

Stars, in their multitudes...

(of course the awesome skatey-beachbabe-katie breaks out movie quotes, and i reach for Broadway. i never claimed to be cool! ;-) )

anyhoo... around these parts it is a time of year known as Matariki (maataareekee), also known as the Maori new year, also known as the time when the Pleiades become visible in the night sky, and in part due to that we've had an abundance of stars cropping up around the place!
Par exemple- our playgroup is undergoing HUGE renovations, and in the long term plan is a beautiful stained glass windows for the tiny babes to stare up at, but in the meantime i decided to make us a biggish window star (each point is half a sheet of kite paper, so the whole thing is approx 25-30cm tall). We then decided that making these was a nice craft for the parents to be engaged in, so we've started a mass campaign of star making, in part so each child can take one home at the end of the term for the mid-winter break (cos who doesn't like a bit of colour injected into grey days?!), and also potentially to sell at our advent fair.... i must get a photo of the big basketful next week!

anyway, there is a good tutorial for these waldorf window stars over at Gardenmama, and i get my kite paper from Forest Folk, which is the little shop run by our playgroup's school :-) (they're a perfect little gift for a new baby or wee kiddo's birthday when you don't know what they've already got!!)

annndd....

after seeing a tutorial somewhere (might have been this one at Childhood Magic) i decided to have a go at making a little star lantern!(this one was too small to fit a candle inside it, but they're still cute as holders for taller candles too)

and then taught a few of the mums at playgroup to make them, using the kids watercolour paintings, which then became little baskets to hold a biscuit for each of the kids at our matariki celebration morning!this is a few of them *just* catching the morning sunlight up on the windowsill....there were all sorts of delicious star-themed treats for the kids to eat- and lexi did a story for eli & one of the little girls (who was singing "twinkle, twinkle" as accompaniment!)and the kids sung star songs and listened to a special story :-)

annnndd...

completely unrelatedly, i saw these on The Magic Onions a while ago, so had to try it out!it's nice to add a little sparkle into these wintery days!!

my little big boy

my little guy was about to get a whole year older (it happens overnight you know) and so i decided he needed to join in on our first proper family birthday tradition - the felted crowns.

so i started with some wool-
(yes it's pink & purple, it was left over from lexi's so-long-ago Tigger Cardi (look how little she is!), and the only feltable stuff left in my stash!)

some food colouring & vinegar,

and some of this stuff-
and.... ta da!


the butterfly theme was because we inherited a couple of monarch caterpillars a month or so ago from our playgroup, and we've had a constant stream of them to look after ever since! Eli absolutely loves them, and has been finding the process fascinating, so i thought it would be a fitting theme for his crown :-)
i think he likes it!

i was incredibly proud of lexi too, who was inspired by my efforts to make eli a present herself as well! she decided to make him a toy horse, which turned into a unicorn, so i cut the basic shape out of felt (i like minimum 70% wool felt), showed her how to do a whip stitch, and off she went! I did the eyes for her, and threaded her needle, but the rest was all her work, even choosing the colours (it's red on one side, purple on the other ;-) ).

(there was a minor controversy on eli's birthday when she decided she actually wanted it to have a short mane, so hid behind the lounge curtains to give it a haircut without asking first, but really since it was her project she had to be forgiven!)

and of course there was birthday cake... not one of my sleeker efforts to be sure *blush*
but it tasted good & the kids loved it, so i'm happy!

Spring basket

Our little spring nature 'table' basket
Pinecones from the local park, assorted stones in spring colours, our felt geodes, beeswax eggs in their felt nest, our spring gnome (who has misplaced her hat!) with her tiny watering can, and a selection of little flowers lexi picked from our garden (all weeds!)

Our nature basket lives on our dining table, and gets played with a lot!

you can check out our previous summer & autumn baskets too! (i'm in denial during winter ;-) )

Hidden treasures

Looking for ideas for our spring nature table display, i came across the idea of felt geodes!

so with lexi's help, we picked out some spring-ish colours - various shades of green & assorted blossomy colours-
(we stayed away from whites & yellow/red fleeces because they're more winter-autumn to us)

and taking a little hunk of each we formed our geode like this-

you need-
a little bit of carded wool fleece in various colours (i get most of mine from Forest Folk - it's 20g/1m for $1NZ, and 1m goes a long way when you're not spinning it!)
lots of hot soapy water, the hotter the better, within reason.
more soap, i find liquid soap is the easiest for this
a towel
rubber gloves are nice if you're a bit delicate like me ;-) or if your kids are helping with the felting

-starting with a small tuft of your first colour, form a little ball in your hands, then *very gently* holding it between your palms, dunk it into the hot soapy water... DON'T squeeze!!

- now pretending that it is a tiny fluffy animal of your choice, very very gently start to move it around in your hands, very very gently massaging it between your hands... remember not to crush that poor little baby bunny or whatnot that is in your hands! (the dunking it in hot water is another issue entirely)

- gradually increase the amount of agitation as the fibres begin to knit together.. if the fibres stick to your hands a bit, smear a little soap onto your hands & that should help

- once your first little ball is holding it's shape, dry your hands on the towel & wrap a layer of different coloured fleece around your ball, then repeat the previous process, remembering each time you add new fleece that you have to handle it very very very gently!

- keep repeating, adding more layers until you have a decent size geode-
- once the outer layers are fairly firm you can begin to give the whole thing a good, hard squeeze to compact the fibres throughout the geode, and felt them up thoroughly

- once you are happy that you have a nice firm ball, give it a good rinse under cold water, a gentle squeeze out & pat dry with a towel, then leave to dry for a few days in a warm place, like a hot water cylinder cupboard.
- once you think it should be dry, or just can't wait any longer, chop it in half!! i've heard electric knives do the job, but we don't have one, so i just gradually cut round & round it with my sewing scissors!

ta da!!

(as with any of my tutorials, please let me know if any of it doesn't make sense!)