A weft yarn

Easter sewing

Just made it. As I wanted to have a slight element of surprise, I didn't want to sew these at night while the children were up. We watched a fair amount of television in the lead up to Easter Sunday, which normally would be ideal for doing such projects but as I had company with all that viewing, I had to wait until quite late most nights until the kids were tucked up before I could start this Easter project. As usual, I ran right up till the deadline and had a couple of late nights finishing off. So, in my deranged tiredness I wanted a little snap of the wee chicks sitting with the Easter baskets before being pounced upon and somehow I managed to take a video of them with my small camera. Not a good look. When I realised later in the day that I didn't have a nicely composed image, I fetched the chicks off the floor (or wherever they were) and snapped a quick photo. Note nicely chewed pencil. Sunday mid-morning table - generalised clutter, more realistic of our life anyway.

The Easter baskets were made a few years ago with lots of hot glue gun work, crepe paper, fluffly chicks, egg shaped cardboard and don't you just love it - plastic grass.

I was a bit disappointed with my stitching on the little orange chicky, not as even and accomplished looking as I'd like. But he's kind of cute. Next time, I'd put more attention into matching the floss with the colour of the felt. The wing is meant to have contrasting stitches but I think the chick's body stitches should just kind of disappear into the felt.  There was one intended for each child but the 11 yold boy was happy to leave the 7 yold girl to play with them and I caught them watching TV on Monday morning when I got up.

Most of the television viewing we've been doing since the start of the school hols has been in preparation for our trip to Sydney. We're going up for 4 days and then a flying visit to Nana & Papa at Berry on the way home. Last time we were in Sydney in January we went to the Star Wars exhibition at the Powerhouse and it was unbelievably good. It was a wonderful mix of creativity and science, lots of hands on for the kids, including a hovercraft that the kids can briefly pilot. My impression at the time was that while they enjoyed it, they hadn't seen many of the movies. So I thought we should watch episodes 4-6 with the young ones and then next time we're in Sydney we can visit the exhibition again, and I'm sure they'll get more out of it - particularly the 11 yold boy. 

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Easter crafting project

For the Easter crafting project with children, I came across an old copy of Better Homes and Gardens with some cute paper Easter craft projects. After showing them to the littlest one, she chose to make gift bags of easter eggs. We drew up the list - school teacher, guides leaders, piano teacher, craft teacher, best friend. We have a really fabulous local paper craft store at Cockington Green - well we love it - Wrapped in Paper. So we headed off for paper and ribbons and cellophane bags.

If I had my new lightbox that I covet this would have been a bit easier, but it wasn't so hard to trace the bunnies onto the paper, and as it was "made by child" it should have a funky cutting look, not a magazine pristine quality. I still want the lightbox though.

It was a team effort and we settled fairly early into role statements and production line mode. I loved how she concentrated on her cutting. We did a little prototype to check out the process as part of the task demarcation. I'm glad we did. I hadn't really absorbed the size of these things. I'm not even sure if I looked at the measurements and even if I did I didn't convert them into a size. I just let 8 x 27cm slip right past. I had bought enormous bags and I somehow thought we'd use up heaps of our fundraiser chocolates but when we saw the prototype I realised that I needed smaller cellophane bags. In the end, I think its a really lovely size. Not to big and overwhelming, just a kind of "thoughtful gesture" size. Good for my psyche which doesn't want to be all teachers pet but does kind of want to acknowledge what a lovely job these people do in helping raise my children.

So here they are. We actually made 9 of them and we were q-u-i-t-e good about not eating too many eggs as we worked.

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Easter sewing project

Last year I used a couple of kits from Hobbysew to make the children small felted bunnies to add to the ridiculously, stupid amount of chocolate left in the house by easter bunny and his associates. This year I went back to Hobbysew but they didn't have anything particularly cute, small, easy, quick to do that was Easterish enough for me. They had some small bears (nah). So - brain wave - I decided to check my bookshelf. Oh, that's what the collection of craft books is for....I think I need some kind of hillbilly, backwoods accent when I say that. I have two versions of the Softies book - this one and this one and my chosen ones are actually on the cover of the second book!.

It is a neat little book - comes in a box, has a set of cards and patterns and instructions. At Brown owls I used the lightbox I fell in love with, to trace the patterns onto some baking paper so that I can keep the originals for posterity - cause that's important. I went back to Hobbysew and got the rest of the stuff I needed - felt and threads. So far, chick with pink hat has been cut out during watching Cinema Paradiso on DVD on the weekend. That was a bit tricky - watching a subtitled movie and cutting out small bits of felt. Great film though. I had seen it years and years ago but Tim had never seen it. It has an interesting theory about creativity and denial or suffering or loss. It seemed to say - you can't have love & happiness and small town life and become a great artist. It is so beautifully made and seemingly so Italian/Sicilian.

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Brown Owls #2 - Canberra 2nd meeting

I stumbled across Brown Owls through someone who had an I am a brownie button on their blog.  At the time, my daughter had just joined Guides, and I was having one of those soft moments remembering my own little green dress and green beret and badges. So, despite being interstate, I joined up. It was originally set up as a sewing crafting group in Melbourne, meeting twice a month. I joined as a Faraway and thought, you never know, I might actually make it to a meeting sometime. Here's a copy of the handbook they sent when I joined. Please excuse wrinkled table cloth backdrop.

 
In October 2008, we were down in Melbourne for a week of the school holidays and Brown Owls were meeting at their club house. When I spoke to one of the Owl organisers on the phone she said they'd be doing a sausage dog project and my mind went off on tangents around making a small stuffed toy. Instead, we were doing an embroidery piece and given I spent a good deal of the time at the sew along chatting to the ladies next to me, I didn't actually manage to finish. Typical of my pace. 2 hours should be enough but it never is. 

Well, the unfinished piece sat in my bag until Brown Owls started in Canberra this year (yay) and at our second meeting we were again doing embroidery. Whoo hoo. I might actually finish that sausage dog. And I didn't. I spent quite a bit of time standing in the kitchen chatting to other owls. But I had a great time. The venue was fantastic. Wonderful light and airy. Places for kids to roam freely and groovy other activities in the next room (think drumming workshop). The spread of afternoon tea delights was scrumptious. I am keen to gather at the clubhouse again. Here's a report on the meeting on the Brown Owls' blog. And here's the embroidery bit finished. Note - at least the embroidery is nicely ironed.

Thankfully, the instructions on how to finish the sausage dog were posted so I am able to show you (and myself) what needs to be done next.

I have plans to make a tote bag with some of the other bits of introductory sewing materials that I received with my membership last year. It should be ready by the time my daughter finishes Guides.

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Tilli Tomas Flurries Beaded Baby Hat finally sent

I knitted this, along with a matching blue one, last winter 2008 but have only just managed to send it off on Thursday to the young thing who lives in Melbourne. The blue one, which I had no trouble getting to the recipient as bub was born in Canberra,  has already been outgrown. The young fellow it was knitted for has already passed the "medium" size and is due for his first birthday in about three months.

The little peanut that this pink one was knitted for was only born a couple of months ago, and given that it was super, bushfire hot in Melbourne in February I didn't feel so bad about not sending it. Besides I had knitted it for a "medium" size - perhaps a 3-6 month old. I got the wool from the Wool Shack a couple of year's before anyone fell pregnant. I just loved it so much and completely fell for the sleeping baby on the cover of the pattern. It's a quick little knit and although others have complained about having to push the beads through once it's knitted up, I didn't mind so much. It was fun playing with the soft wool and pretty beads.

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