Waldorf Craft Fair

 A few days ago I got an email with a reminder about the Waldorf craft fair that was happening today and a little teaser that there would be activities and singing for the children while we were there :)

 When we arrived we found that they had all of the classrooms set up as different little stations. There was one room full of all the wonderful bits and bobs to buy with playsilks, crowns, wands, felt playmats, candles, wooden toys and so much more. Then there was the craft room where the children took turns at the tables sanding and polishing wooden tree rounds for candle stick holders and then rolling sheets of beeswax to make candles for their holders. In other rooms there was singing, puppet shows, snacks and an enchanted cookie house where we went into a dimly lit space with twinkle lights while we were sprinkled with faerie dust and sang to while we picked out our favorite gingerbread cookie to eat :) So much fun!!

 There just happened to be oodles of activities going on in the city today while we were there so we had a chance to go to the farmer's market, another craft fair where I got a funky burl candle holder and if we had stayed long enough we would have even been able to see a parade but I wanted to get home before it got to late and even so I ended up driving in the dark *grin*.

So after a late dinner and quick moment to put my feet up I realized that we had to get our advent countdown calendar out. I had nearly forgot that today was the 1st!

 

Luckily I had saved the maple branch that we had cut and used last year so I retrieved it from its hiding place in the laundry room and brought out some ribbon to tie it up so it is now dangling beneath the mantle. Each day one of the children will be able to find a little felt ornament with the day's number needle felted onto it to be hung up on the branch as we count down the days until the 24th :)

Thank goodness no one seemed to mind that Mama was a little behind on the decorations this year *grin*. 

Hugs,

Rosina

Yarn Along ~ Playing around

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

I was hoping that I was going to have at least one completed Lepidoptera sock to share with you but when we went camping just after last weeks yarn along I forgot to bring my pattern! Oh I was so disappointed :(

Not for long though. I still had a ball of yarn and a bunch of needles so I just sort of played around trying out how to knit cables. I'm not sure if I was doing it correct but I definitely got the cabled effect that I had been hoping for and all was not lost as I sucked up the amazing scenery and lounged at our oceanside campground while the kids played in the water :)

For my book this week I had finished Eating Dirt which was sooo good and I spent the week perusing magazines and especially enjoying my new copy of the Living Crafts magazine. Hopefully next week I'll have something much more interesting to share with you *grin*.

Happy knitting!

Rosina

Yarn Along ~ Lepidoptera

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

I finally feel like it's that time of year to pick up knitting needles again and found this great lacey sock pattern called Lepidoptera :)

I had bought this soft alpaca yarn earlier this spring thinking it was going to make a great baby sweater for my sister but alas she had a little boy and the pink was definitely not going to do! So into the yarn stash it went until last weekend when I finally found the perfect use for it. A soft pair of socks for my daughter. 

And she is just itching to get her feet into them! We are constantly having little 'try on' sessions and I haven't even got one sock half finished yet LOL. It's a super easy pattern though. Nothing tougher than making a few extra stitches and it has my all time favorite heel to... short rows. Yay!! If I can avoid doing the regular heel flap type sock heel I will and in this pattern she simplifies the short row process even further by taking out all of those yarn overs that you normally find making it faster than ever and there is a video tutorial to go along with it so you can follow along if you happen to get stuck.

For my book I'm reading Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe by Charlotte Gill and it is a must read!!  It's the true story of her life as a tree planter here in BC for 20 years and was absolutely fascinating to read about areas right here in my backyard and get a peak at what their lives are really like as we see them so often around this neck of the woods and I must admit I've always wanted to know more about them. Her writing transports you instantly into the thick of the BC rainforest and leaves you wanting more :)

I'm looking forward to seeing what you all have been knitting and reading this week to!

Happy knitting,

Rosina

Easter Bunny Masks

My daughter totally loves to dress up. Full length princess gowns, ballerina tutus and hand me down halloween costumes from her cousins. She especially loves all sorts of masks but somehow I don't think her hairy beard and moustache disguise or her bandit masks are going to cut it on the Easter scene. I was going to have to come up with something new and preferably of the 'bunny' variety *grin*.

So what I did was take one of her old masks and traced through the eye holes on to the center of a plain piece of paper so I got them spaced pretty much where they needed to be and then just winged it and drew some bunny ears and a simple face shape to go with the eyes. A little trick to getting both sides of your drawing symmetrical when you're finished drawing your pattern is to fold your paper in half so both halves of your drawing are back to back and then pick your favorite side that looks the best and cut out your pattern while folded with the good side up so you end up with both sides exactly the same :)

After pinning my pattern onto some felt and cutting out two pieces for our bunny mask I had some worries that the ears might flop over my daughter's eyes when she was wearing it because they were so narrow where they met the rest of the mask.

So to remedy that I sewed in pieces of stiff clear plastic onto the ears on the inside back layer of the felt, putting in a few stitches at the very bottom of the plastic. I also made sure that I placed the plastic far enough down close to the eye holes so that it wouldn't still flop because it wasn't far enough past the brow line of the mask. The plastic we used came from some of those 'windows' they put in some boxes. That's why there are still some strips of cardboard leftovers still stuck to them :)

With the ears reinforced, I sewed on some contrasting white for the centers of the ears, added a little triangle nose and some elastic to keep it on her head and then pinned the front and back pieces together to finish sewing it together which I fully intended to do until L asked to do it herself. Of course I said yes! I love that she wants to join in and do more and more sewing. Her growing confidence in herself and her budding skills are so heartwarming to this crafty mama :)

So slowly and surely she made her way around the mask keeping a close eye on her seam allowance and getting a good lesson on how to maneuver curves *grin*. She did an awesome job and kept it darn straight. Atta girl!

With the threads snipped my little girl transformed into a fuzzy little bunny and promptly hopped away LOL.

I wish I knew how to take my paper pattern and turn it into a PDF for you! Maybe someone reading this will be able to share the secret with me *grin*. And in the meantime I hope you'll grab your pencils and whip up your own bunny version :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Wet Felted Easter Eggs ~ Tutorial

Easter is just a hop, skip and a jump around the corner so today we got down to some serious crafty business and made some felted Easter eggs. I know that many of you probably know how to wet felt already but just in case you don't I thought that I would share how we did it :)

I love wet felting with the kids. It's such an easy activity and what kid doesn't totally love playing in the sudsy soap and water! So out came my stash of wool rovings and a couple of plastic easter eggs that I've been hanging onto for these kinds of projects and a couple of hand towels to soak up any puddles of water that might appear *grin*.

We started by stretching out some plain, undyed wool batting that would become the inner layer of our eggs. I really like to use the plain wool batting as filler for my felting projects because it is SO much cheaper to purchase than the smaller dyed rovings and you can use a lot of it without worrying about using up your stash of the good stuff.

Winding the wool batting around our plastic egg as tightly as we could we continued to add layer after layer, alternating the directions of the pieces with each new one added until it was about three times larger than it's original size and then we added a final layer over the white using some pretty pinks and blues to give our egg color. Make sure you create a good sized ball of wool because it is amazing how much it shrinks during felting :)

Next it was time to get down to the business of felting all that wool together. With the cold water running we dribbled a little of the water at a time over our ball of wool until it was nice and wet. It's important to treat your wool very gently at this point because the wool shifts really easily. So with a generous amount of dish soap on our hands we gently started to pat and rub our egg.

Working our hands around in circles all over the egg we gently agitated the wool until we could feel it starting to become a little more firmer beneath our fingers and then we started to alternate with cold and hot water to shock the wool fibers even more to help them knit together nicely. If you haven't tried this before you will definitely start to feel a difference. The fibers on the surface won't slip around as much, it will start to shrink up smaller and you will be able to rub at it with more pressure the firmer it becomes.

Do not worry if it seems like your wool looks really giant and sloppy over the plastic egg inside! My kids rolled their own eggs this time and I thought they would never shrink down but if you look at the above photos you will see how giant my daughter's egg was when she started and how small it was in the last photos. I did help her out at the end to really rub and squeeze at it firmly and I can't say enough about shocking it with some really hot water and then plunging it back into really cold water again all while rubbing it firmly. It really does help it to tighten up more quickly :)

When we were finished felting our eggs we wet felted a couple of little yellow chicks using the same method as above minus the plastic egg inside and then I tossed both the eggs and chicks into the dryer to shrink them up one last little bit and dry them.

The kids could hardly wait to pull them out of the dryer to see just how I was going to get the plastic eggs out from inside of them *grin*. With a sharp pair of sewing scissors I cut a jagged opening across half of the wool eggs so that they looked like they were hatching open and popped out the plastic eggs from inside of them leaving a perfect hollow center where we could now tuck our little chickies inside...

but not before we needle felted on their eyes and beaks :)

All finished and ready for playing with!

There was peeping and cheeping and chickies popping out all over the house all afternoon *grin*.

I hope you have fun making some of your own Easter eggs and chickies :)

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Counting Down

The magic of the Christmas season is building at our home :)

Yesterday I bundled up the children, grabbed a hand saw and we all headed out for a little trek in the frosty fresh air. I love to keep everything a secret so they had no idea what their mama was up to except that I needed them to spot a nice thick tree limb that we could cut down for something special *grin*. When they finally decided that a nearby maple tree had the nicest limbs, my oldest cut off one for us to bring indoors.

You can just imagine the puzzled looks on their faces when I proceeded to hang it up with a couple of ribbons below the mantle over our fireplace....

but it all started to make sense when I pulled out the very first little felt decoration with a number one on it for them to hang :)

The maple limb is going to hold each of our little stuffed creations that make up our advent calendar this year :)

In previous years we have occasionally had those store bought calendars where the doors pop open to reveal a little chocolate and some really sweet paper ones with Christmas scenes beneath each little flap but this time I wanted to use one that we made ourselves.

The children helped sew and stuff some of the decorations and others I made after they went to bed so they would be a surprise and to number each of the decorations I needle felted the numbers onto the fronts of each one free hand using some pretty colored corriedale rovings that I have. I can't wait until a few more days have passed to see them start to line up all down the maple limb :)

I don't think I have been this excited about the holidays in quite a few years and I have quite a list of little crafts to make and special outings to take each day with the children as we grow nearer to the 24th :)

Our favorite Christmas books have been pulled from the shelves and placed within easy reach with more coming that I've ordered from the library and I pulled out the pretty linen with its red Scandinavian border in the above photo from my special stash for sewing a table runner to be placed on the coffee table beneath our advent candle holder and manger scene. The mantle is ready for fresh greenery and paper snowflakes and soon I think our tree will make an appearance to *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Yarn Along ~ Bambino

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

I am so in love with this little baby sock pattern :)

I had to temporarily put down the baby sweater I was knitting as I'm missing the necessary circular needle for the next step so in the meantime I decided to use up the leftover yarn from the shawl I finished last week and make a pair of these adorable socks.

There's just something about sock knitting that is so darn addictive! For me it's when I get to the heel, working the rows and watching as the cup of the heel emerges. From that point on I just can't put down my needles as I can't wait to see how it all comes together *grin*. This particular sock had something new to me. The heel and toe were both constructed from the same identical 'short row' stitch pattern and then as the toe flipped up it was finished off with the coolest zig zag stitch of slipped knits and purls to create the finished seam across the toes in the above photo. There is absolutely no bulk inside the sock to bother delicate little baby tootsies *grin*.

The only tricky part I found was getting used to the little size 0 DPN's. Those suckers are tiny!! They flexed quite a bit as I knit and I was a little worried that I would snap them but it all worked out great and I've just about finished up the second sock so that I can go back to my little baby sweater for next week :) I'm still reading Deeply Rooted to. I just haven't had enough time to read this week and I'm dying to find out how it ends!

Can't wait to see what you all are knitting up this week :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Shawlette Success ~ Yarn Along

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

I just loved knitting this little shawlette.
It was amazingly easy and a great little foray into the world of lace knitting and it knit up so quickly :)

I haven't blocked it yet and I'm having second thoughts as to whether or not I actually want to. I sort of like the rippling wave along the bottom where the lace pattern is. What do you think?

I was also going to give it to my daughter right away but now I think I may keep it as a gift for christmas *grin*. So much indecision LOL. We were in the little yarn shop in the city together the other day and she was fawning over pretty little shawl pins and I thought it might be special to buy a nice pin for her and give it all as a gift. Oh and that is my little guy in the photos :) I paid him a quarter to model it for me and to keep it a super secret *grin*.

Now that I'm falling back into my knitting groove I wanted to get another project on my needles right away and I've chose a little baby sweater called the Tummy Warmer and it has the most adorable little honeycomb stitch in it that my grandmother used to knit all the time. I'm going to put it away for when my sister has her baby in the spring. I don't know if it will be a girl but I'm going with pink anyways because I couldn't pass up this soft baby alpaca yarn :)

The owner of the yarn shop in the city that I go to must find me quite amusing to watch as I shop for yarn. I never have a specific yarn in mind when I go in so she can never really help me find anything and I don't shop by color either. I actually go around and around petting all the wool LOL. Yes, I really did say petting and when I finally find one that feels the best I pick a color. Strange I know but it works for me *grin*.

This week my book is Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness by Lisa M. Hamilton and I can't put it down so far. The author writes about 3 farmers that are incredibly small scale in relation to todays super farms but they choose to stay the way they are. Her writing paints a picture in my minds eye so vividly that I swear I could nearly smell the cow manure LOL.

I can't wait to finish reading it and I'm looking forward to seeing what you all are knitting this week!

Hugs,
Rosina

Knitting Lace ~ Yarn Along

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

Let the fall knitting begin!
I'm so excited to join in with Ginny's yarn along again. With all of the chores that needed attention around here in the spring, sadly I had to put away my knitting needles but I've dusted them off and have cast on a little girl's shawl for my daughter :)

I've been dying to try knitting some lace and the Little House Shawl pattern looks like it's going to be just the right size to see if it is going to be difficult. I have to say though that so far this is EASY!! The hardest part was casting on the 395 stitches without loosing count *grin*.

Our homeschool year is in full swing and I think I've finally found a rhythm that works for me and all three of my children as my youngest has joined us for kindergarten this year and I just love his exuberance each morning as he begs to get started :) I'm using Oak Meadow with him and we have been enjoying reading the Waldorf Alphabet by Famke Zonneveld and starting our own alphabet book together. Oh how I love starting kindergarten all over again :)

Can't wait to catch up with all of you again and see what's on your needles this week!

Hugs,
Rosina

Painting with Wool ~ Wet Felting

My little girl and I had fun today playing with some of our felt rovings and creating felt scenes :)

I know that many of you felt quite regularly but I thought I would take some photos of our progress today and share them just in case some of you are unfamiliar with how to wet felt wool :)

It's a really fun craft and you only need a few different colors of wool rovings to get started. We used corriedale rovings that I purchased here and you want to start by taking small chunks of your roving and pulling it apart evenly so that it is all fluffy and lay them down on a sushi mat or sheet of bubble wrap. Lay down one complete layer going horizontally and then repeat the process laying down your wool vertically and again the opposite way so you have three layers of wool.

Now you can get really creative and start adding the details to your picture :)

It's like painting with wool *grin*.

L wanted lots of flowers so we tried something new and cut out flower shapes from a sheet of the pre-felted craft felt and then placed a few loose strands from our wool rovings over them to hold them down as I wasn't quite sure how they would felt :)

When she had all of the final touches added we placed the wool covered mat on a cookie sheet, covered her picture with a piece of mesh and started to slowly dribble water all over it until all of the wool was wet. The cookie sheet will keep all of the water nicely confined so that you don't end up with a giant water puddle on your table :)

Drizzle a little bit of liquid dish soap over the top of your mesh and start to slowly and gently rub the surface of your mesh. You will start to notice that the wool begins to work together and doesn't move around as much under the netting. Make sure you lift the netting off of the wool every couple of minutes though as the wool fibers will start to work their way through the holes in the mesh and you don't want your picture to get stuck to the netting :) Keep doing this until all of your wool looks like it has bonded together well enough that you can lift it gently and it won't all fall apart.

Now that you have one solid sheet of felt, albeit a delicate one, you can roll your mat or sheet of bubble wrap up tightly with your felt and netting inside and roll it back and forth. This will squeeze out some of the excess water and continue to agitate your wool and help it work together even tighter.

Continue rolling for a couple of minutes, then stop and unroll it, pull up the netting to keep it from sticking to your felt and then turn the entire piece of felt 90 degrees so that when you roll it up again it will agitate the wool in a different direction from the last time. We kept rolling and unrolling for about 10 minutes and then I took the whole thing over to the sink and plunged it into hot water and then cold water a few times to really shock the wool so it tightened right up.

Now that you are all finished with the water you can unroll it, remove the netting and roll it up in a tea towel to suck out the excess water :)

And here is her finished picture. I think she must have had an Easter theme in mind with the little bunny in the flowers :) I just love how it turned out for her and tomorrow when it is completely dry we're going to hang it up on the wall.

Have fun felting!

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Sewing By Hand

I love the rythmic movement of sewing by hand. The pierce of the needle and the constant motion of pulling the thread around and through. I could do it for hours on end letting my thoughts wander and ripple like waves... constantly moving, free and fluid. So soothing to my soul :)

I've been spending many evenings lately quietly stitching after the children have gone to bed. Quick little projects that bring near instant gratification. Seeing the fruit of my work come together with ease makes my heart sing. Especially when it's little surprises for the children to enjoy in the morning.

In past years we've had an abundance of pussy willow buds that would put on a fuzzy spring show. The children would have fun picking some for bringing indoors where they could stroke the soft little blooms again and again, usually until they popped right off their branches *grin* but these days there are less and less of them to be found.

Spring is calling every bone of my being these days so I wanted to bring some of that newness indoors even if I couldn't find it wild in nature :)

I've been cutting wool cloth and twirling little snippets of rose and cream colored wool rovings to create our own pussy willows. I found a lovely little tutorial quite some time ago and have been meaning to make some ever since but just haven't made the time. So these past evenings I've been puposely collecting my sewing box and creating little woolen versions that we can place on our nature table. They are coming together so wonderfully :)

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Spring Chicks

I am moving full steam ahead into spring and surrounding myself with cheery colors and springy items like these little chicks I've been making *grin*.

I had some old sheep's fleece in my craft cupboard that hadn't been carded so I lugged out my big drum carder and cleaned it up nicely to use as the centers of my chicks. I just couldn't bear to use all of my new pretty yellow wool rovings to make them so I wound a tight ball using the natural cream fleece (sorry I can't remember what kind it is) and then just wrapped enough of my yellow corriedale roving around to cover the white and then wet felted them.

I'm really pleased with how the yellow balls turned out :) I was afraid that the yellow would slip on the white as I started to lather and rub it around creating bald spots showing through but I made sure I was extra gentle and it blended together beautifully. For the bottom of the egg shell I used an old plastic easter egg as my form and worked the wool over top of it so that it formed a nice concave shape for the chick bodies to sit in and I trimmed up the edges once they were dry so that they looked like that had been cracked open *grin*.

I was at a bit of a loss though when it came to how to felt a sheet of wool that I could cut out shapes from for the tops of the chick's heads as I've never tried doing it before. All I could think of was that I've seen others do it using bubble wrap or window screen and other similar things to keep the wool together while they agitated it but I didn't have any of that on hand. That was until I spied one of my reusable mesh produce bags! I loaded it up with enough wool roving to make a small 6 inch square, put it in the bottom of my sink on a cutting board and lathered it up and it worked! I think next time I'll work it a little bit longer to make sure it is a little more compact but it felted together enough to cut out little pieces to put on top of the chick's heads to look like bits of broken shell :)

What do you think? Do they look like they're popping out of their shells *grin*. My oldest was giving me a bit of a hard time before I put their eyes and beaks on because he said they looked like tennis balls with stars on their heads LOL.

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Yarn Along

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

Oh my goodness, I love this guy!!

I promised I'd share more about my little mouse gobbling snake I made for my little guy and here he is :) I was searching for the perfect gift for the perfect little boy project when I found the Sleepy Snake and Mischievous Mouse pattern. I was smitten with it immediately *grin*. The photo was enough to make me want one and I new he was going to love it to :)

This pattern is super easy!

Everything except for the head is knit in the round on DPN's and is just a simple knit 2, purl 2, ribbed pattern and once you get to the head it switches to straight needles. You do have to drop a few stitches on a spare needle while you work the top of the jaw but you pick them back up again to work the bottom and then they carry right on through to the inside of the snakes head and body.

Through some very creative adding of extra stitches you make a smaller version of the head and another ribbed length of the body that slips right inside the main snakes body. This creates the stomach and a hollow space in the head that allows you to stuff it with a bit of cotton batting for a super cute fluffy head! You've got to love his toupée to *grin*. The hair piece is an additional little knit piece that you make and then I just whip stitched it onto the snakes head, adding his sleepy eyes while I was at it :)

Once he's finished you can feed your snakey mice and his body lumps up all the way down the length just like in the above photo just like it would in real life when a snake eats. There is a pattern included to knit up mice but I decided to wet felt some little colorful mice and they were perfect :)

So much fun is being had eating and spitting out mice *grin*. This is going to keep him entertained for a good long while!

Oh and I'm still reading the The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin *grin*. Not getting very far on the book reading this week :)

Hugs,
Rosina

right now, I AM

.... smitten with my new wool rovings :)

A splendid array of rainbow colors awaited me as I opened the large box full of wool. I've been dying to spoil myself and buy some rovings but it always seemed like by the time I picked out all the colors I wanted and tacked on shipping from far away places it was more than I wanted to spend. So when I met Natalie from Bear Dance Crafts through the yarn along and realized that she was right here in BC I could have done the happy dance *grin*.

I can see some wet felting and gnome making in my future :)

Hugs,
Rosina

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