Kleas

Make merry...

We've been stuck in the house for the past several days.  Just not willing to drag the two wee ones out in frigid temps.  I kept Peanut busy on a project.  We had fun making this ridiculously long garland.

 

We grabbed a template, rescued cereal and pasta boxes from the recycle bin, traced, cut and painted the stars, then added a layer of glitter glue and strung them together.  It turned out to be quite festive.  Peanut does love to paint, so this kept him busy for a while.

Last week I took the boys to see Santa.  Not one of Julen's happier moments.

Santa asked Peanut what he wanted for Christmas, with Halloween still fresh in his memory, he replied "I want to be a Christmas tree".  Later I told him Santa was asking if there was any special gift he would like to receive for Christmas, and now I was curious to know too.  He thought about it a moment and said...I think it would be nice if you knit me a scarf.  A red one.

 

So that's exactly what I'm doing.

I'll be back after the holidays. 

Peace, love and joy to you all!!!

live and learn

(or more aptly titled...What was I thinking?)

When I introduce a new handwork project to the children at the preschool, I ALWAYS try it out at home first...and usually use Peanut as my guinea pig to see how a four-year-old can handle it.  But not this time.  The other projects I had in mind were much more preschool age friendly, but required a lot of prep work on my end.  I wasn't prepared on this particular Monday morning.  But as I have a group of very project oriented preschoolers, they were anxious to start on someting.  Well it just so happened that the night before school two week ago, I read a post about a beautiful felted star.  Hmmm...we have pipe cleaners...we have a closet full of wool.  Circle round, kids...we're going to wet felt some snowflakes.  What ever make me think I could get 3, 4 and 5 year olds to make something that a fiber artist created?

     

Well, bless their little hearts, they really gave it a go.  Not the way I imagined introducing wet-felting to them, but they worked that wool, rolling each stem with sudsy water.  Some had more patience than others, and I was quite impressed. But in the end I had to take these home and all week I needle felted all the difficult to wet felt tips.  They added glitter and we tied a silver string to each one and those sweet kids very proudly presented their parents with their gift. 

Lesson learned.

some things I love...

...these perfect mini photo albums that Jen makes.  Just the right size for photobooth photos, which we seem to have a lot of.

 

She sells them right here.  At three bucks each they make the best stocking stuffers.  I couldn't resist all the beautiful colors and got one of each.

I fell in love with this beautiful yarn last month and knew I had to give the scarfette a try with it.  It's a gift for a very special someone, but I think I should have enough yarn left over to make one for myself. 

 

I'm still loving making my ornaments.  Good thing as I have quite a handful to make yet.  These are needlefelted hearts, once again using my favorite angelina fiber to give them some sparkle.

 

And our new favorite thing in the house...the lamp I made at Jen's pARTy over the weekend.  Such fun!  I love how the lamp looks one way when the light is on and another when it's off.

 

With so much to love I can almost ignore the below zero temps we're getting slammed with.  Hope you're staying warm!

(Edited to add that the yarn I used for the scarfette is yearling mohair locks plyed with a silver thread.  It is by Garden Party Fibers and can be found here.)

kids ornament swap

Cami and Cassi had a great ornament swap idea...one for the kids.  Perfect.  Peanut is always on board to start a new project.  And he loves to get mail (who doesn't?).

Peanut has an incredible amount of patience for a four-year-old, and it's a good thing as it took us about ten days to make our ornaments.  We did one little step at a time.  He was always ready to get going on it as soon as we got home from preschool. 

The swap has a theme...Winter Wonderland.  I wasn't sure where we were going to go with this, I originally thought trees.  Peanut wanted to do snowballs. 

First step was wet felting balls of wool. 

 

We then needle-felted colorful wool around our balls.  And yes, with my heart in my throat I did let Peanut give it a try.  If you've never needle-felted before, I can attest to the fact that one slip of the needle can be quite painful, so I do not recommend letting small children give it a try.  Peanut has watched me for many hours, and was determined to try it.  I thought if he did at least a little on each ball he contributed in the creating of his ornaments.

 

(Yipes!  This picture gives me the shivers...)  Just as a note, you would never felt in the air as it appears he is doing in this photo, you would always felt on a sponge block that would prevent the needle from passing through the wool and into your fingers.  He was doing little jabs here so I could get him in action.

At this point we decided we were creating stars.

 

All the sparkle mixed in the wool gives these balls such a nice shimmer.  The fibers came from my new favorite Etsy shop, Loop.  Just a little angelina goes a long way. 

 

Next we added beads to give more sparkle.

 

My sorry attempt to capture a decent photo in the fading light.

 

And finally, these are on their way to our swap partners.  Thanks to Cami and Cassi for putting this swap together.

swaps in, swaps out

It's ornament making season again.  My favorite time of the year.  These little trees are on their way to Amy for her third annual ornament swap.  I've managed to participate in all three now. 

I decided to create a new set on my Flickr of ornaments so they are all in one place.  You can see them here.

 

I revisited a craft from last year but added a crystal on top of the tree and a bell inside before stringing it.  I must have had amnesia about how time consuming it was stitching all the little beads on it.  It about did me in.  The pattern for the trees can be found here.

 

This beautiful embroidery was part of what I received from the Red & Aqua Swap hosted by Selena.

 

How great is it that the wonderful Linn went to my Flickr favorites and found this papercut that I favored and used it as her inspiration.  Love that.  Love this piece.

 

And my fabric squares from the spare change swap that Juliette hosted arrived.  What a rewarding swap...send in twenty-five squares of fabric and get twenty-five in return.  This is just a small sampling of all the beautiful squares that arrived.  What fun I can have with these.

 

And finally, a sneak peek at what I sent out to my Back Tack 4 swap partner, Katie. 

That's enough links for one post...it's tired me out.  Have a great Monday.