Christmas crafting

 This year Father Christmas is going with a tried and tested winner.  Felt food.

Some chocolate chip cookies.  For time and effort, these are definitely a winner.  Quick to make and large enough to seem like some proper presents.

And some blueberries (unfortunately garishly blue since I didn't have any really dark blue felt in my stash).  I'm still pretty happy with them.

Admittedly I would be much happier about my Christmas efforts if this wasn't the only thing I had made and its already November, but its a start.

What Christmas gifts are you making this year? And have you started?

Birthday wrap up

 It occurs to me that I have been a bit slack about updating how things are going with my projects.  But I am pleased to say that P's 5th birthday went really well, and we all had a great time.

The felt playmat was played with, and the Ponies were very well appreciated.
 

Kindy friends were played with.

Hugs were shared between friends

And an 'Alicia' cake was made and enjoyed.

Its finished

 I finished the playmat for P's birthday.  And I am so excited to have it done.  I used this tutorial from Rhythm of the Home.

The tutorial is really easy to follow, but there are a few things that were a bit more difficult than I expected.  I started with just three jerseys, but this definitely looks better with more colours in it, so I added a few more into it.  The more different tones of the colours for this the better I suspect.

When I stuck the interfacing to the back of the pieces of felt, there were some gaps, where the pieces of felt didn't abut quite right.  When I zigzagged it all together, I just smooched the pieces of felt together a little bit, and it all fitted together really nicely.  As you can see I didn't have any invisible thread so I just used some co-ordinating thread instead, and it was fine.

 I wanted to needle felt the front, but I couldn't find any needles anywhere, so I did a bit of embroidery with some scraps of wool instead.  I really like the way it came out, although it looks a bit more 'made' than the original tutorial.

It all went fine until I tried to put the paper backed fusible webbing onto it.  When I went to buy the wonder under (the stuff recommended in the tutorial), the shop only had a different kind 'steam a seam'.  It was a disaster trying to get it to attach to the felt, and it kept tearing (I'm pretty sure I put it on the wrong way).  And then the backing wasn't exactly the right size - why is it always at the end that these things happen?

But it hasn't really affected the finished front, so I do think that P will really enjoy using it.  I'm definitely keen to make another one so it was definitely a worthwhile project.

Joining up with Stash busting, and Creative Friday today.

Birthday presents and other dilemmas

This is how far I have got with P's felt playmat.  It might look like a reasonable amount, but since it is as far as I was before last week, I am pretty concerned that I'm not going to get it done in time.

I'm really disappointed with myself for not doing more, but the last few weeks have been a little difficult.  C has started waking at night, and then staying awake for an hour or more in the middle of the night, and it is really wearying.  Its not the exhaustion so much.  Being awake from 4am til 5.30am this morning, I can cope with being really tired by having an extra cup of tea, or letting P and J watch some TV, and by only doing the minimum I need to get by housework wise.  Its the weariness that accompanies the night wakings that is the problem.  The inability to concentrate on something.  The sitting down for 5 minutes that turns into 30 minutes of listlessly browsing the internet.  The dead tiredness and lack of motivation at the end of the day that makes it so hard to even get off the couch let alone get my craft stuff out of the cupboard.  And underlying it all is the feeling that I'm never going to feel rested again, or manage to do any of the things I really want to.

So what I'm saying is that I'm tired.  Time to rethink the presents, and really some bought stuff will be just as appreciated by P, and if I don't get the playmat done, there is always Christmas.

Advent Calendar

That's my project this week.  I know, I know, its February, why am I doing my Advent Calendar this week? Because every year I think, I must do an Advent Calendar, and every year it gets abandoned in favour of other Christmasy related things.  So I'm doing it now to make sure it gets done.

I think I'll do a variation on this tutorial from Nest Full of Eggs

Decisions

I've decided to make P the playmat for her birthday, even though she doesn't really need more toys.  Five is a bit of a milestone birthday, and I think she'll have plenty of opportunity to add to it.

So far I've felted the jerseys.  As with my previous experiences of felting, I struggled to felt them in the machine.  I think it would definitely be easier if I had a dryer.  As it was I had to wash them twice, and they are still not quite as well felted as I would like.  I also remembered a green jersey that I got for DH from the Hospice Shop some time ago so I hand felted that, it'll be interesting to see if that works better than using my washing machine (I added heaps of soap and some very hot water to my laundry tub, and then bashed the jersey with my rolling pin).  DH has never worn the jersey, and I'm hoping he doesn't notice that its missing at all.

I also drew up a plan to give myself a rough idea of how I want the playmat to look.

So far, the list of presents is
Felt playmat
Peg Dolls
Wooden animals
Hair accessories

Birthday present ideas

From Rhythm of the Home

My project this week is P's birthday presents.  I really love the idea of a felt playmat for her, and maybe the toys that go with it.  But I'm not sure about getting her another set of toys/playthings.  Would I be better to give her things for the dolls and toys she already has?

What do you think? I could do some more felt food, some clothes for her dolls and that sort of thing, or I could go all out with the playmat.

Felt food swap

 Here are the lovely felt food that I received in the swap I took part in in December.  We got some very cool pizza slices with cheese and felt bits to make our own pizzas with.

 Very cool sushi.  This also came with a pair of chopsticks, and a little fish soy sauce bottle.  I couldn't find all the other cool bits that came with this because P and J were too busy playing with them.  I did catch J frying the fish on her toy oven the other day.

 A family of gingerbread people,

And the cheese, tomato and lettuce to go with the bread.  Check out A softer footprint for other photos of the swap (plus fabulous sentiment that I entirely agree with).

The girls loved all the felt food that they got from Father Christmas, it was the (happy) surprise hit of their Christmas presents.  I got such a kick out of how much fun they had with all their food.  It really does show that kids don't need fancy, or expensive toys, or ones that 'do' heaps of things.  The joy of making their own food from these simply crafted toys was wonderful to watch.

AWOL

So I've been a bit missing in December, but in my defence, it is December, and things are crazy busy.  However, I will blog about all the things we've been making and doing in January.

Some things to look forward to:

 More undies

 Felt food round up

Summer quenchers

Baby bonnet


Pipitea Shrug pattern
Bleach Tee top tutorial

Merry Christmas to all, and I'll see you again in the new year.

Present progress

Some peas to go with the felt food.  I just winged this pattern, and stuffed them with balls of roving.  I started out by whip stitching the pods, but I didn't like the way the edges got all crinkly, (those are the two at the back).  So I switched to a running stitch, which I really like.

More snakes.  This time I cast on 6 stitches rather than 8 as called for in the pattern, knit two rounds, increased to 8 stitches and knit another 4 rounds.  I then decreased and continued as per the pattern.

When I sewed the end in, I also ran it back and forth behind the head to create a more pronounced diamond shape as well.  I really like them this way, and they are such a quick, easy knit that C may end up with a whole family of them in her pillow case.

 You can find the pattern here

Joining in with Creative Friday tonight.

Mmmm

My bread is baked (well almost, I still have to handstitch some of them closed).
Although the original instructions suggested stuffing the bread, I put 4 layers of cotton batting in mine instead. I like that its not too poofy with the batting in it, and hopefully it won't get too lumpy.

I can't wait to see what felt food I'll be getting back.

Bread in progress

 I've cut out my felt, now to sew it all together.  I have 14 slices of bread to make.

I hope every one likes brown bread.

Felt food

Image credit

A little while ago, a swap came up on the Nappy Network for felt food that I jumped headfirst into.  I want to make the girls some more food for their kitchen play bucket, so this was perfect timing.  So my project this week is to make some felt bread for my part of the swap.  But the possibilities are endless.  Check out some of the ideas here, and here, and here.

3) Document a failure

3) Document a failure
          - Something that seemed like a good idea but just didn't work

Lets talk about failures shall we? I've had a few in my crafting adventures, and I'd like you all to know that everything doesn't stay as great as it looks on my blog.

 These finger puppets came undone pretty quickly after I made them.

These ones too - one of the eyes got all long and googly as well.  To be fair P and J don't really care that much about that.

P just doesn't wear this singlet, even though she quite likes it.  It's too tight.  And so it sits in the drawer all forlorn.

And speaking of things not worn

J took one look at these smocks from Father Christmas, and flat out refused to even try them on.  Despite much coaxing I think she has worn one once, and they have been put away with the summer clothes in the hopes that maybe next summer she will have gotten over her dislike of them.

And lets not forget the skirt I made myself that I had to relegate back to the sewing box because it was such a bad fit.  Looking at it again I think it'd make an awesome pencil skirt though.

But the biggest failure of all:

Long time readers of my blog will note that there are no Montessori activities on my projects this year, and the reason for this is simple.  They have been a really big failure.  Now to be fair, I knew at the start of the Montessori journey that we were unlikely to stick fully to the ideals, but I did hope that we would make it work anyway.  It did not.

As much as the girls enjoyed doing the activities, they lasted for about 2 days.  And try as I might, we just couldn't keep them tidy and in order (well I couldn't keep them tidy and in order).  So when we rearranged the girls room recently, I gave up and relegated the shelves to the spare room.  As much as I really really want to do these, it just hasn't worked for us.

Rather more than one failure to share with you.  For me its important to show the reality of my crafting.  Although there are plenty of things I make that work out really well, and are very well received, there are some that just don't cut it.  So next time you read about something amazing I've created, just remember that there are no guarantees it will work, or that the recipients will appreciate it.  For all that, I still enjoy making things, even if they don't work out.

Easter Chicks

Last year, I knitted some lovely eggs for P and J for Easter, but this year I completely forgot that Easter was coming up at all (I know, I saw all the other posts on people's blogs, but it just didn't register).  So when I saw this post by Rosy-Posy, I thought it would be a great little project for P and J and I to do this Easter.

I've had some roving that DH's Nan gave me.  She used to spin, but has given it up (more because of time constraints than infirmity - this is the 80 year old who still skis!), so I thought this would be a great opportunity to try our hands at wet felting.  The first part of the process was to dye the roving (more on this next post).  

Because this was also the first time I'd tried to dye roving, I decided to make the chicks so that I only had to dye one colour.

We followed the process as outlined by Rosy Posy, although our chicks aren't quite as smooth as hers ended up.

I did most of the wrapping myself because it was tricky for P and J to wrap the roving around in a ball, but P did all the wet felting herself.  As this was the first time I'd wet felted anything, I was a little worried about the length of time it was taking for the balls to felt down.  But we stuck with it and ended up with some very cute little yellow balls.  I was really proud of how well P did (J was much less interested in the whole wet felting process).

Once they were completely dry (thanks to the hot water cupboard), I embroidered on a little orange beak, and used a permanent marker to make the little eyes (I don't have any black thread).

Cheep cheep