Te Papa

Nigel came back from New Zealand in November with the perfect name for our cabin: "Te Papa" is the name of the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington and means 'our place'. I decided that the cabin needed an actual name plate so bought a cheap pyrography kit from Amazon and had a go at making one myself.

As well as the cabin name it also has symbols for us all. From left to right: whiskers for Charlotte, a fish hook for Fin, knitting needles for me, a downhill snowboard for Adam, and bike wheels for Nigel.

It was fun to do, and not too difficult, although I found straight lines easier than curved ones. I managed to make this sign without setting anything on fire or burning myself so I think that counts as a 'win'.  I varnished the plaque with a matte varnish and it's now mounted by the front door.  I can't think of anything else I need a pyrography kit for now - anyone need a wooden plaque??

Needle felting (not mine)

Fin received a Woolpets needle felting kit for Christmas and last weekend while I was sewing, he got it out. I showed him the basics of needle felting (you jab at bits of wool fibre with a long sharp needle, making sure that you don't prick your finger, and preferably on some sort of padded surface. We used some foam left over from some packaging or other.)



This little fellow took him about an hour - and after the initial basic instruction was completed entirely without help. Fin was justifiably very pleased with his handiwork.

Bags of Bags

Having seen some lovely box bags for sale on Etsy.com, I decided it would be a fun project to try.

Last week when I got the sewing machine out last week to patch 4 pairs of jeans, was as good a time as any. I thought this would be a quick hour or so, but actually making 2 bags took me several hours!

I used this tutorial and materials I had on hand. I got out my old cutting mat and rotary cutter as accurate cutting is essential to the success of this pattern. The denim is left over from shortening Adam's bedroom curtains.



This Hello Kitty fabric is practically an heirloom: I bought it in France when I was a student (so we are talking more than 25 years ago now), long before HK stuff was widespread, and it was so expensive I only bought 0.5 of a Meter.



I'm very pleased with the finished item:


especially it's cute lining!


I'm using these little bags (because I also made a green one - not shown) for my collection of double-point-needles and knitting notions.

Here's one I made before

I have been dying to introduce sticky-backed-plastic* into my repetoire...and finally a chance to do so.

I had been talking with the boys about creating some stencilled tops for themselves - using a technique of cutting the stencil into freezer paper and then ironing it onto the t-shirt as a resistant area for fabric paint. Anyway, it turns out that freezer paper is pretty well unknown in Los Gatos so I ended up using sticky-backed-plastic, which worked pretty well.


The boys selected images for themselves online, mostly we searched for "Star Wars Stencils" which turned up some very fancy images and some more workable ones intended for pumpkin carving. They chose the colour shirt and fabric paint. I carved the stencil using a sharp scalpel on a cutting mat. We simplified the Darth Vader design; I traced the outline with a sharpie and made our adjustments.


Here is Adam's Darth Vader shirt:




We stuck the contact paper carefully onto the shirts and the boys then applied the fabric paint. We used special stencil brushes which have a hardish blunt end, and a "pouncing" technique which is more like dabbing the paint on, this make sure that the paint does not go under the edges of the stencil. If you do this at home, make sure you put something (piece of card) between the front and back of the t-shirt as the paint will otherwise seep through to the back.


We let the fabric paint dry and then carefully peeled off the contact paper. They boys are really pleased with the effect - they are planning to wear them tomorrow when the meet a friend who will understand all the Star Wars symbols!


This is Finlay's shirt - the symbol is the rebel insignia (the good guys)




It was a fun project and successful. Although I had to cut the stencils for them, it did not take long, and they had been involved in all the decision making. After we completed the shirts Adam commented that he now understood why I had been advising against some of the more complex designs. He had not understood my explanation of why it would be hard - but having seen the stencils work he now agreed that too many details would not look as good.

*Known as contact paper in the USA, and for all I know in the UK (altho it did use to be Fablon)... anyway the reference will be clear to those of us of a certain age who grew up with Blue Peter

To dye for dahling

A couple of weeks ago the boys and I were at a loose end and decided to start our sock dying project. Ages ago I bought some undyed sock wool from Knitpicks with the intention of the boys dying it and me knitting the result into socks.



Finlay and I had previously tried to dye it using beetroot (Beetroot) but the resulting pale pink was not an option for socks for Finlay.



The boys wanted socks with actual stripes, so our first step was re-skeining the yarn into long skeins.


This step was not as easy as I expected (or hoped) and the yarn got hopelessly tangled both during this and the re-winding phase!

We then dyed the yarn using Koolaid and food colouring. We soaked the wool in a strong vinegar solution as a mordant, then dyed the yarn in 2 halves.

Adam chose blue and orange koolaid, Finlay chose green food colouring, then lost interest!

Here is their dyed yarn drying. I have already started Finlay' socks. I managed to actually create a longer skeing with this yarn and so the stripes are really working out well.

Adam's yarn is likely to be a more mottled effect as the skein was much shorter. The difference between the skeins might well be attributed to me winding Finlay's skein without assistance!!

A crafty weekend

Nigel was busy this last weekend, so the boys and I had a crafty weekend.

We got a head start on the valentine cards. Each class has a valentine card exchange, for which the etiquette is to send a card to every child in the class. Home-made cards are encouraged. This of course means that the frazzled parent has to assist with the creation of 20 cards, usually the night before the party. This year I thought we would get going early.

The boys decided on a magic theme to thier cards and wanted to put a moon and a wand accompanied by the message "You're Magic". We made the cards using potato prints and a canibalized purchased stamp for 'wand sparks'. It was a lot of fun!

We discussed production lines as Finlay was commenting on how efficiently we were making the cards.

On Sunday we went to Green Planet Yarns where Tyler was demonstrating his antique sock knitting machine.

It's about 100 years old and he restored it to operation. It was fascinating and Tyler did a great job of explaining how it worked. The boys paid attention, but didn't seem that interested - until they were telling Nigel all about it later when I realized how much they had absorbed.

They think I need one so I can make socks quicker!

What a tangled web...

The boys' school hosted a vistiting artist a few weeks ago. Travis Meinolf is a young and hip weaver who brought his portable rigid heddle loom into the school. His home page actually shows a photo that was taken at the school and you can see him at the start of the project: the children brought in items to be woven into a hanging. The finished result included all sorts of materials, I saw leaves, wire, a serial cable, a slinky, phone cord and so on.

He was packing up his loom as I was collecting Finlay from school and Finlay insisted that I go and look at the weaving that the school had created. Both my boys were pretty excited by the project and we talked to Travis for a little while. He told us about the instructions on his website for making a loom out of cardboard and gave us a card loom that he has developed for use in schools.

We used both his card loom, and made our own out of card. This rather blurry photo shows the weaving process. We tied one end of the warp to the coffee table, and the other to a pencil. I held the ends firm while the boys used an elastic bodkin as a shuttle.

We used a variety of yarns for our weaving, but the best results were using Noro yarn for both warp and weft threads. Here are the bookmarks that the boys made:

They were really pleased with thier bookmarks, especially as they achieved pretty good results in a short time.

Instant crafting

Recovering from flu, and surfing the web, I came across this instant lavender bag idea on a blog - but can't remember which one.

I needed to get some dried lavender for another project and ordered these little bags from the the same place. They are wedding favour bags - but make perfect little instant lavender bags.

Hopefully they will be a suitable moth deterrent now my source of italian moth repellers is drying up!

Dem bones

Preparations for Halloween started a few weeks ago. The boys were very specific about what they wanted to be, and how we should make the costumes.

Somewhat disappointingly I was not able to get glow-in-the-dark paint (it's probably toxic). Adam helped me cut out the trousers, we bought the t-shirts from Old Navy.

We had to paint the costumes in 2 sessions to allow the paint to dry. Not forgetting the skeleton feet.

Halloween celebrations started at Adam's school with a parade and classroom party.



As it grew dark we prepared to hit the neighbourhood. Front view (with scary faces):

Back view:

Finally, we ended up at the top of the road when someone suggested that Finlay was the ideal complement to her decorations!

Happy Halloween!