I made some tails to go in P's dress up box.  Both fabrics are from my stash, one is a cat print, and the other some zebra print velour (I am aware that zebras don't actually have tails like this, consider it a zebra patterned cat tail instead).  They were really easy to make, just a rectangle of fabric that I stuffed with polyester fill.  I sewed a seam before I sewed on the velcro so that the fill didn't go all the way to the top.

The velcro is so that the tails can be attached to a belt or tie or even a belt loop on some pants.  I'm going to make a 'belt' of elastic so that P can interchange tails, or even wear more than one tail at once.

I also made some ears to match the cat tail.  I made the headband from some ribbing that I had.  The seam is not great because I had some issues figuring out that I couldn't sew both the long seam and the short one and still turn the ribbing in the right way.  Did I mention I've lost my unpick?

All in all, I'm very excited to see the dress up box in action.  Hopefully everything will fit P and she'll have hours of fun with it.  I realised that since we are going to my parents for Christmas this year we'll have to cart the suitcase in the car with us to the other side of the island, but it'll be worth it when she opens it.

P's dress up box

I googled 'dress up box ideas' and found plenty of sites that had great ideas of what to include.  So I've put in some of my old clothes; a butterfly top, a skirt, and a couple of dresses (believe it or not I wore the orange one once while I was pregnant with P).  I also found a hat and a lei in my hunt through my wardrobe.  I think P will love pretending to be a grown up in them.

I also made a couple of big rectangles out of some pink material that I had lying around.  These are multi purpose, they're large enough that P can use them as items of clothing, or as blankets for her toys or anything else that comes to mind.

I found this tutorial in my googling and thought I could make a wizard's cloak out of some blue velvet trousers I had in my fabric stash (that's why there are so many seams in the finished cloak).  The tutorial is fairly self explanatory, but I think I stared at my material for a good half an hour trying to figure out how it would work. I think it was the sleep deprivation at work.  Instead of making it reversible I used my roll hemming foot on my sewing machine to hem the cloak.  This was a mistake, it appears that roll hemming feet don't like velvet and as a result the cloak has possibly the worst hem in the world.  I almost unpicked it and did it by hand, but since it is a dress up costume and I have lost my unpick I just did the best I could.  It appears that laziness trumps perfectionism.

I read an article in the Sunday paper a while ago that suggested children need a connection with nature. More specifically, that they need to have a special piece of the natural world that they consider theirs, that grounds them to nature. Its a similar concept to that of turangawaewae, or standing place, that ancestral land that is your spiritual and physical home. Seeing P at my parents farm made me appreciate how important this concept is. She loves it there, and the range of hands on natural experiences that she has is amazing. She feeds out the cattle in the morning, feeds the chickens and dogs and puts them to bed, and at the moment is helping my Mum feed a lamb. Hopefully her memories of the farm are that connection with nature that she can carry around with her later in life.

Dress up box

P is currently away with her Grandparents. I miss her like I miss a part of my own body (a very noisy part). However, having her away seemed like a really good opportunity to get cracking on her Christmas presents. She has reached the age now where if she sees something that is hers she will remember it, and also want it immediately.

For her big present from Father Christmas, she is getting a dress up box. I got a hard shell suitcase from - you guessed it - the Hospice shop, and the plan is to fill it with dress up items. So this week my project is to make the dress up costume stuff that goes in the box. I have some ideas, but I may need to scour the internet for some others.

Kids crafts

I recently subscribed to this website. It looks great, and really how could I resist a weekly themed activity? If you click on newsletters, you can see all the fun ideas grouped by a common theme. I can't wait to do them with P (and possibly J, although I think her contribution is more likely to be in the eating/smooshing department).

My week of knitting was a qualified success. I did knit, but the top is nowhere near finished. I think that's why I'm not very keen on knitting as my weekly project. It takes too long, and I feel like I'm taking up time I could be doing other things - because its a 'sitting down, relaxing' kind of activity. I guess I prefer the instant gratification. I will take a photo of the half finished front of the top to prove that I have actually completed something.

More knitting

I took part in a yarn swap several months ago and I received this gorgeous yarn from my swappee. The theme of the swap was "I love you", and all participants had three words that had something to do with love to use as inspiration for the swap. The word my swappee used was "Aotearoa". The wool is entitled "misty morning" and I also received a lovely tuatara puzzle for P with it. At first glance the wool seemed to be semi solid, but actually there were several different colours that all complemented each other really well - greens and browns.
I decided to knit this cardigan (you need to log into Ravelry), and it was as fast and easy as the pattern promised. The bottom is knitted in one piece, with the moss stitch border done at the same time. I love the way the wool knitted up - not always a given with variegated wool. The only problem I found was the decreases on the raglan sleeves. Because I'm left handed, the decreases at the beginning of the row didn't match the ones at the end, so when I joined it they weren't the same. This bothers me because I like everything to be 'right'.Notice the incredible brown carpet in our living room - its awesome!