Tribbles

These little pompoms keep multiplying, like Tribbles :)

Dropsy

Someone is wearing the skirt that I knit for her as a poncho!

This Friday I am teaching a small group of K-5th grade kids to spin, using drop spindles. Since I can't afford to buy them each a spindle I decided to make some.

I considered making spindles with CDs, but then found instructions for using wooden wheels intended for toy making. The wheels are 2 1/2 inches across, and I used 3/8 inch dowels and sawed them down to 10 inch lengths. The dowels were a little too big in diameter, so I had to sand one end until it fit through the wheel, and then glued them in place. I drilled the holes for the cup hooks but managed to break a drill bit in a dowel, and also split open a dowel trying to screw in a cup hook. Of eight attempted drop spindles I ended up with six, which is exactly how many I needed.

The final cost was $15, including a discount that the woodworking store gave to me (yay!) which works out to $2.50 a spindle, so totally affordable!

Anyone have tips for spinning with kids? Wish me luck!

Weekend Plans

This weekend I am...

making tiny fabric yo-yos for a project at school...


trying to remember what I thought would be a good project to make with the kids out of walnut shells. Anyone have a good idea? Little mice perhaps...


and knitting a tiny scarf on toothpicks for a doll. I could have found some sock DPNs if I'd felt like looking.


I am not doing anything with the skein of lovely sock yarn that is on a timeout for turning into a mass of yarn barf that has already taken 3+ hours of untangling. I am also not working on any of my current knitting projects as I'm feeling bored of them and am resisting casting on for another shawl or sweater.

Quilting with Kids

It's school auction season once again, and that means a sewing project with about thirty-three 5-8 year olds for the school raffle. I worked along with another mom to make this quilt in about 3 weeks. I sewed the last bit of binding on this morning and the auction is tomorrow, whew!

The kids each drew a 6 x 6 picture (the theme was faces, and a few chose to do a picture of something other than a face, which was totally fine too) and transferred it to a scratch foam block, and printed the image on a 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 piece of tea dyed cotton fabric. The resulting blocks were machine sewn together by the kids.





I put my 7 year old daughter to work to sew the quilt back, and that just left the quilting around each print and the binding for the adults to sew. I love that one square of Japanese fabric on the back for a little surprise.



Originally we had ambitious plans for pieced blocks and sashing, but due to unexpected time constraints we scaled back to something a bit more manageable, and I am really satisfied with the result. I wish I had a better picture of the prints. They are so many cute designs, like the alien faces, the cat and dog faces, and a pickle face!

My daughter requested that I purchase as many raffle tickets as possible so that we have a chance of winning. I pointed out that it was possible for us to sew another quilt for ourselves, but maybe she knows me well enough to know that the is little chance that would happen any time soon.


final size: about 42 x 58 (a nice little lap quilt)
cotton batting from the thrift store
tea dyed cotton from Stitches

Crafty Woodland

My eldest daughter had her seventh birthday party today. Seven. It doesn't stop being amazing to me each year as she continues to get older.

She wanted a Woodland-themed party. With all 34 kids from school, their siblings, and a few cousins thrown in for good measure. And I said..."Sure, sounds great!"

Hahaha!

Actually, it was a crafty fun time. (She, much like her mother, does love a good crafty project. In fact, most of the ideas were hers, with a little tweaking on my part.) I was a bit stressed last night as I put the finishing touches on some mushroom huts and tried not to hyperventilate. Anyway, by today I was mostly relaxed and had a great time.



We had the mushroom huts (cardboard + duct tape + hot glue + newspaper + felt + 2 girls let loose with paint and glitter)...



Fake Christmas trees with birds and nests (thank you Freecycle!)...

Woodland crown decorating (42 crowns made with Joel Dewberry Aviary wood grained fabric + rayon/wool felt + grommets + glue your own embellishments + add ribbon ties)...



I made some felt flowers for decorating crowns but burned out after the first dozen.



I forgot to get any good crown pictures. Here's mine before it dried.





This project mixed together with another involving pompoms + glue + googly eyes...

And finally a dose of sugar. Chocolate butterfly cupcakes (chocolate + 2 kids with copious sprinkles + colored sugar)...



My daughter said they weren't like butterflies because they had no bodies, I told her they were butterfly-ish. I did a lot of Ish-ly crafts rather than getting too hung up on making everything just so. It was still a big project, but I am glad we did it this once. And next year we'll just go to a theme park or something.

I have more birthday related crafts to post soon...Stuffed Animal! Girly Clothes!

La Mariposa

Today we made felted butterfly wings from Living Crafts magazine. I managed to bend and snap several of my felting needles on the first try. Um...oh, yeah, I was supposed to put the foam under the wings, not felt with the towel underneath.

In the end this limited the exactitude of my felting, producing crude shapes rather than the fine detail my (almost) 6 year old was seeking. My 4 year old was pleased with the heavy and uneven coverage method of decorating. I only lost my patience twice, mostly because I stabbed myself and was pretty freaked out by the felting needle with kids in the room. The kids loved squishing around soapy wool with bubble wrap.

I finished off the felting in the washing machine, which dislodged a few decorations. A little drying and some ribbon ties and I'll call it complete. Somewhat successful, though if I attempted it again I would do more of the needle felting alone and then just invite the kids to do the decorating.