Still around...

It's been too long since I've posted on here yet again.  We've been BUSY!  Apple picking, fall festivals at our previous Waldorf school and our new school, making apple butter, trips to go visit friends, a trip to Williamsburg, trying to establish our autumn rhythm and in my case having one of the worst colds I can remember.  Of course, I've not managed to document most of this because my camera battery is dead and I haven't been able to locate my charger since our vacation out west ( I need to write more about that too, but not tonight).

Today was the fall festival at our new school.  It was a magical day for W and I.  It felt so good to be at the school, surrounded by such a beautiful, caring community, and engaged in lovely activities.  W got to make a bird feeder and a little sachet that he's keeping under his pillow.  He also dug for buried treasure, and played with a beautiful marble run.  We  watched a wonderful puppet play performed by his teacher.  He was also very excited because he was able to sit by her lovely assistant teacher during the performance.  His two favorite things though were a delightful children's musician who let W play the bongos while he sang (my boy LOVES drums) and shucking corn.  Seriously, my thumbs hurt because he wanted me to constantly be shucking the corn too.  We did this for hours at a time!  I wish I had my camera today.  He was just so happy and engaged in his work all day.  I'm thinking I need to be getting some of this corn so he can do this at home too.  His corn bin is getting sparse again and he clearly thinks this is a fantastic activity.

I'm also starting to think about Christmas.  I'd like to do all handmade again this year but I feel like I'm running terribly behind and I'm not totally sure what to do for everyone yet.  Most of my ideas seem to be for W and I'm working to balance them out between for his birthday and Christmas.  I did get one gift completed this week while I tried to rest and recover from this cold.  My mom the other day found a needle-felted nativity on Etsy and loved the idea so much she just could not stop talking about it.  Hint.  Hint.  So I set about starting one for her.  I have made the principal figures of Mary, Joseph and Jesus.  I'm fairly pleased with how these have come out.  I plan on working on additional pieces to add to it in the coming years.  I had initially planned to make the large set all this year, but I would like to have time to make gifts for other people too.

Another gift for W completed.

Okay, it seems I am off and running with this Christmas in July thing again this year.  Only 5 months left till Christmas and 4 months left till W's birthday.  I am starting to feel a little panicked over the whole thing, but that leads to progress right?  

Some of you may remember W's birthday sweater from last year.  Well, building on that idea, this year I decided to use the same technique to make a needle felted vest.  This turned out to essentially be a free project.  I used leftover yarn and roving and a wool thrift shop sweater that I purchased a long time ago for a different purpose.

I had felted this sweater a long time ago before we moved, thinking I was going to make it into a purse, and make W some wool pants out of the sleeves, but that never happened, so this week, I decided to make it into a cute little toadstool vest to give to him either for his birthday or Christmas.  (Because they are so close together, my plan is to make a few things and then sort out when I will give them to him later on).

In any case, The sweater had been a turtle neck and I was able to cut it up the middle and press the neck down to make a cute little collar.  I used wool yarn to blanket stitch around the edges.  The pockets were cut out of the sleeves that I went ahead and felted.  (I have plans for the left over bits of these too).  Somehow, hanging up in the picture they look a little wonky but i don't think they look that bad in real life.  If I decide they do, I'll have to remove them and re-stitch them on.  

In any case I very firmly needle-felted the toadstools onto the back and the pockets (before I attached them) and then sprayed them with water and used a hot steamy iron on both sides of the fabric to help set the design.

I need to get some more wool sweaters from some local thrift stores and try to make W  a few more of these jackets/vests.

Felt Toy Camera Tutorial and Pattern-my first completed Christmas gift for the year!

Today I finished my first completed Christmas gift for the year.  It is a felt toy camera for W.  W loves cameras.  DH and I both take a good many pictures, so he often wants to imitate what he sees.  For a while he played with one of  my old cameras, but I didn't like how he became obsessive with it.  I find that old cameras/phones etc do not make good toys at our house.  He also had a plastic one that his Nana gave him at Easter, but we don't really do plastic toys and it of course broke fairly quickly and was discarded.  This leaves him trying to take my camera of DH's camera when he wants to pretend to take pictures which is simply not allowed.  Yesterday, I came up with the idea to make a soft camera for him out of wool felt and wooden buttons and decided to create a pattern and tutorial.

Here is the pattern.

Supplies needed:   Three colors of wool felt
                              1-1 inch wood button
                              2- half inch wood buttons
                              a scrap of wool yarn
                              coordinating embroidery floss
                              wool batting or fleece

Step 1.  Cut out pieces of wool felt according to the pattern.


Step 2.  Blanket stitch three largest circles together to make lens piece.

Step 3.  Blanket stitch the two small rectangles to make flash.

Step 4.  Position and pin lens, flash and small circle to front of camera like this and blanket stitch into place.

Step 5.  Sew buttons onto lens and circle on the upper right corner.

Step 6.  Blanket stitch small circle of color A and other small wood button to the piece of Color B that will become the top. (sorry I didn't get any pictures for this step).

Step 7.  Blanket stitch the screen onto piece of Color A that will be the back of the camera slightly off center.

Step 8.  Pin and blanket stitch front, top, sides and back together to form a box.

Step 9.  Fill with wool batting or fleece. (I used bits from a wool fleece that I accidentally partially felted while trying to clean it a while back. Glad I held on to it. It worked great for this purpose.)

Step 10.  Finger knit a wrist strap out of wool yarn.  I think I made about a 8-10 inch piece with long tails.

Step 11.  Thread tails of finger knitting onto needle to push through side of camera.  Remove needle and repeat with other tail. Then tie the two tails together snugly on the inside of camera.

Step 12.  Pin and blanket stitch bottom piece onto camera.

Enjoy!