Yarn yarns pt2

MORE forgotten knitting..

A Kaia Babydoll for Lexi - 

A pair of Doodlepants longies that I was meant to make while pregnant with Eli..

Yttrium for the knitted periodic table project - 

(Y? Because I could, lol!! *groan*)

A Pinny for a playgroup Dolly -

(plus new denim pants & shirt)

Mini hotshots -

Chunky beanies for sale -

A Dolce Beret for Lexi -

A Spring Butterfly & Poppy hat set for a friends baby -

A Little Winifred tunic -

still to be continued!!

The first (and second) day of our Advent Calendar

Our Advent Calendar is a series of activities & outings, rather than gifts or chocolate..

The first day - Make our Advent Calendar!

(yeah, ok, that was just because I was too disorganised to have it done in time..)

Each peg has a tiny card with the activity for the day written inside it, and gets opened up & re-pegged each day.

Day 2 - Decorate our Xmas tree!!

(Yes, we have a fake tree... it was $8.47 at Kmart eight years ago.)

We have quite a few homemade decorations on our tree, but making more features quite heavily over the rest of the month (shhh!! secret.)

I'd love to see other people's activity based advent calenders too!!

not known for my punctuality...

Christmas!!!

yeah, i know, it's march... minor detail.

anyway, in a yarn sampler box i got ages ago there was 12 grams of 2ply alpaca. what are you supposed to do with 12g of anything?! what are you supposed to do with 2ply?!

turns out the answer is bookmarks.

crocheted butterfly bookmarks even.

cos we all know that reading is the ultimate in cool, especially reading books long enough to require bookmarking, and crochet has always been known for it's total chic, so the two together is pretty much a flawless combo.

so i ended up making 5 of these wee knick-knacks as gifts for various people! (i think they're pretty cute actually- but hey, i like long books & crochet)

still had some yarn left over too.. who would have thought that 12g of 2ply could go so far?!

(gold star to anyone who can name the book in that photo without googling!)

on a less successful front, the (compulsory) advent fair biscuit debacle.

stained glass window biscuits = fail.

they overflowed & stuck to the baking paper... and tasted pretty blah too.

i bet martha's snow cap cookies never turned out like this either-

note for future- bake sales are NOT my forte. At. All.

and on an equally successful front- how to make an actually quite cool bag look meh in one simple photographic step-

i made it for my 12 year old step-daughter for xmas - it's a Pleated Purse from this tutorial - and she loved it!! managing to please a 12 year old girl is quite a challenge sometimes, so yay ;-)

and cos i'm a total sucker, when i saw gingerbread house kits in the supermarket i HAD to have one for lexi-

needless to say she had a fantastic time decorating it with her daddy on xmas eve :-)

and with me she made simple paper decorations for our tree!

fun times :-)

i wonder if i can get the jump on easter....

february isn't too late...

for xmas stuff, surely?

just a couple of things that had slipped through the blogging net... first, an Elefante-
pics taken on xmas eve, hence the shocking lighting!

seriously fiddly, but pretty cute, and all from stash!

and a funny little activity i did with the kids, making xmas felt wreaths!
i simply cut some holly, or xmas trees depending on who you ask, out of green felt and marked two holes on each leaf... then the kids threaded some thin elastic through the holes in each leaf once, in from the front then from the back, then through again, forming a loop, this time going from the back first, then in through the front, threading red buttons or felt circles occasionally as they went. if that makes any sense.

some peoples looked slightly more haphazard when worn...
but it was a fun & easy way to keep them happy for a while, and have been a welcome xmassy addition to the dress-up stash!

sucker

yes i am.
after the previous complete disaster, for some mysterious reason i decided to have another go at the cake balls.

yup.

but because i do have a modicum of sense i used my favourite quick chocolate cake recipe, and (a lot less) chocolate icing, and dipped it in melted chocolate drops for good measure.

a VAST improvement!!

and this time there were only around 40 of them, which is a much more manageable amount!

and another...

just because he's cute.

the neighs have it.

3 hobby horses for the kids for xmas!

two horses for the big kids

and a wee pony for the littlun!

They're made from mens socks (the thicker sport type one for the pony worked better than the business socks for the big ones), stuffed with wool fleece, and finished with felt, yarn & ribbon details :-)

The idea is from a book called "Creative Play for Your Toddler; Steiner Expertise and Toy Projects for 2-4 years", and is a lovely, simple craft project, albeit with quite a lot of hand stitching!

Smaug Jnr.

he's a Baby Snow Dragon, except with adapted Golden Snitch wings...
and a hoard, of course.
one more xmas pressie done!

the 4 weeks of advent

This year we've started a new tradition - the four candles of advent!

Admittedly we've probably divorced it from it's original meaning, but so have many xmas customs, so i figure our focus is more about acquiring & adapting customs to create our own xmas traditions!

and i like this one more than the chocolate filled advent calendars available in chain stores ;-)

Each sunday (or in our accidental case - tuesday, monday, then finally a sunday, luckily the kids don't keep track of the days very well yet!) of the four weeks prior to xmas, you light another candle, and that candle is representative of an aspect of our world...

The first week of advent
"The first light of advent (as we light the first candle)
Is the light of the stones
Stones that live in crystals
Seashells and bones."

and the children decorate around the candle with crystals etc that they have chosen...
(i take issue with shells being stones & not beasts, but hey)

The second week of advent
"The first light of advent.. (etc etc while lighting the first candle)

The second light of advent, (lighting the 2nd candle)
Is the light of plants.
Plants reach up to the sun
And in the breezes dance."

and add some leaves & flowers picked from our garden

the third week of advent
"The first light... (as before)
The 2nd light... (as before)

The third light of advent (lighting the 3rd candle)
Is the light of beasts
The light of hope that we may see
In greatest and in least"

and the kids choose a sandstone animal (or whatever you have to hand of course) to place under the candle..

then the forth verse for the fourth week is
"The fourth light of Advent,
It is the light of man.
The light of love, the light of thought,
To give and understand."

and i've still got to find something suitable for that ;-)

and then on xmas eve we have a rainbow candle, that lexi dipped, to light as well to finish it off!


we also do a little xmas countdown with little activities planned for some of the days ie-
going to carols or a santa parade
this year we're visiting a nativity drive-through play, the telecom tree, a xmas storytime at the library, and our city's famous street of decorated houses...
crafty stuff like making paper chains, xmas biscuits, felt holly crowns, printed wrapping paper & cards etc etc..

what do you do in the lead up to xmas?

great balls of...cake.

paul has had a few morning tea type events recently, one for staff & a kids class party, so i thought the previously spied red velvet cake balls (the precursor to the oh-so-cool cake pops) would be an interesting & festive option....

i was kind of right....

i started with this recipe for red velvet cake... oh my goodness it uses a WHOLE BOTTLE of red food colouring!!!
and almost no flavouring. ??! it tastes to me not unlike generic pancake with no topping...??
there is a hint of vanilla & 2T of cocoa, which i can only hazard is just to add the depth of colour rather than having a pink velvet cake...??

then i mixed it with the required amount of cream cheese icing, which honestly seemed like too much, cos they were pretty gooey (starting to see a trend here?!), and as much as i love cream cheese icing, it tasted like a slightly odd combo..

but hey.. i mixed it up & started making little balls, which paul tells me are about the size of an unshelled macadamia (ie with shell on), because i had read that smaller ones hold together better... instead of the 50-60 it supposedly yields using the box mix + 16oz of icing (and remembering that i used 16oz of icing & it seemed too much) i got around 140. umm...

so we started the task of dipping them in white chocolate... note for future: do cake pop version, the built in stick would really help, especially not having to take it out.. we used all kinds of combos of spoons & skewers...

and gave up after 111 balls. a little after midnight.

once chilled they were pretty enough.. the white chocolate with bright red filling was particularly impressive...
but.. ummm.... perhaps it is some kind of ginormous culinary cultural difference between us and the US.. but geez the flavour was spectacularly unspectacular, to the point of being Rather Dull, with touches of Kinda Weird, and the texture seems to vary between Meh and Ugh depending on who you ask.

Doh.

so yeah, spectacular failure.

so if you are thinking of doing these this xmas, don't. Or at least choose your favourite cake, and favourite icing, so at least they taste good, add *just* enough icing to hold it together, no more, and definitely do the cake pop version both for ease of dipping & cos they're cuter.

however, mysteriously, lexi & eli really like these cake balls, so they aren't ALL going to waste...

Xmas swaps!

a wee group of friends of mine sometimes organise little craft swaps, and, being xmas time, we decided to do two - a secret santa swap, and an ornament swap!

i've already been outed for both, even though it's not even xmas yet, but that means i can finally share what i've been up to!!

first up for the secret santa, my recipient was the 9 year old son, of an incredibly (scarily) creative woman, who is really into reading, harry potter, science experiments & constructing things...

sooo.... i decided to make him a harry potter scarf-
but there are fifty gazillion plain old gryffindor scarf patterns out there, but i wanted something a bit more *magic*... and then i came across the Gryffindor Illusion Scarf!

It looks like a normal stripy scarf from the front, but if you look at it from a different angle-
the two gryffindor lions heads appear! cool huh?
(shame about the grubby camera lens! doh..)

then i added the all important enrollment letter from Hogwarts, including equipment list-
and a cool new NZ book called "How to eat a Huhu Grub; Plus a truckload of other mad, cool & dangerous ideas for kiwis who like doing stuff" and hopefully you've got a pretty happy boy!

and for our ornament swap i made 10 little crocheted snowflakes!
they're nowhere near as fine as many out there on the internet, but it was my first time trying something like this, and it was fun!
(i flatly refuse to take the next step in this ladder however - crocheted doilies!!)

this was the original pattern design-
but i wanted them to be a little less snowflakey (yay for antipodean xmases), so adapted it to more of a star shape-
they're stiffened with a 2 parts sugar to 1 part water syrup, which is rather sticky but does work quite well! i would take a lot more care in blocking them in future though...

i tried to take a pic to show how translucent & crystalline they are... but don't think i really captured it..
but they were very fun to make, and if i have some spare time next year (ha!) i might even do some for us!!

last minute gifts

i received an email yesterday informing us that our gifts for the kindy teachers are expected in by friday, so they can be packaged up nicely together... eeek!!

luckily some friends had been checking out the Cowgirl Cookies at Bakerella, and extra fortunately i had been gifted a few large Agee jars a week ago...

so i made a xmas version!
it has red, green & yellow M&M's (which you can barely see - early morning, running out the door photos aren't the best!) to make it festive lol..in case you're thinking of doing some, it took a 200g bag to get barely enough of the three colours for each jar, i think i would have been wise to get at least one more! and to make it look prettier than i did make sure you put the M&M's just around the walls of the jar & fill the middle in with choc chips, rather than a flat layer like everything else ;-)

with it's M&M's, choc chips, pecans, oats & lashings of brown sugar, it sounds like a very nice cookie mix indeed!

finish off with some labels - mine were printed with the red circle, then cut out & matted onto some green paper, and a little silver star added - a 6" square of fabric, some ribbon & a handmade card (in this case a white card inside a green one with a star punched out of it, bound with shimmery yarn), and you've got a pretty cute, useful, and most of all quick xmas gift!!

On the 1st of december Nova made for me...

.. some bunting for with our xmas tree!
My long ago alluded to pointy secret has finally reached fruition! At last I have a collection of lovely xmas buntings ready for sale!!

These Christmas buntings are handcrafted here in NZ, by me, out of quilting cotton and satin ribbon. They have four prints & three colours.
(small disclaimer- due to the nature of the process some of the prints occasionally appear upside down, but extreme care has been taken to negate any visual impact of this)

They are double sided so are perfect for hanging across a room or archway, or even outside in fine weather!

Each point has hidden overlocking on all three sides, before being stitched into the ribbon, making them much more durable than fabric finished with pinking shears or paper buntings. Looked after properly these should last for years and years!
(Our birthday bunting, made in an identical fashion, has been pulled out & hung numerous times & is still looking perfect)

Why have bunting you ask?!

They're essentially an almost instantaneous way to festively decorate a room!
Whether strung up against an otherwise drab piece of wall, or hung across a room, it immediately injects some energy and christmas spirit!
They're perfect for hanging up outside if you're having a barbeque, because they can be removed super fast if the weather goes bad..
And because they are hanging up they don't clutter up surface areas, and are out of reach of all but the most crazily ingenious children! ;-)

and they look cute.
I have three sizes available-

12 of the "18 Pointers" - approx 3.16m long, including ties
$30

3 of the "16 Pointers" - approx 2.90m long, including ties
$28

and one lonely "17 Pointer" - approx 3m long, including ties.
$29 lol..

Postage will be $5 around NZ (it's a bit late to post overseas sorry!), and they come with care instructions & a little ziplock bag to keep them safe!

SO, if you would like to buy one, please email me at newlymade@hotmail.com

Merry Christmas!!

Project Monday #11

the alleged turtle / green peanut.. finished!!it's Sheldon from Knitty, but knit in 8ply... it's actually fairly easy, if rather time consuming & finicky...

and now i'm working on a xmas ornament swap, and a small knitted elephant.. still also got three hobby horses & a dragon & a bunch of baking to do before xmas, but hey.. i'm sure the remaining 3.5 weeks will absolutely not fly by.....

*gulp*