narrating kayoz

The holidays are over; Let the work begin

Kate at Foxes Lane asked the other day are you addicted to crochet? Something else? What are you making? (Okay, I'm paraphrasing from memory, and maybe conflating a couple of posts, but she did ask something like that.) And I thought, hmm I seem to have dropped my crochet addiction very quickly once school holidays kicked in.

I was making a lovely rainbow blanket for my nephew for Christmas, but then my sister-in-law came to stay for a week before Christmas and I suddenly stopped work on it (too busy talking?), until the point when I realised there was no way I was getting it done in time, so I caved in and bought something. The blanket will be fine for his birthday (in October!).

Over the holidays I relaxed and wrote (here and here and of course right here), and started researching an article on transition towns. I built a chook dome with Liam. I went swimming with the kids, and sometimes the husband, I stayed up late talking to my sister, who came to stay at Christmas, and again for my grandfather's funeral last week. I even watched a movie (something I very rarely do) and cried my eyes out. We went blackberrying, we went out to visit my cousin on his property out Gundaroo way and met his llamas, we visited my grandfather in Forster (before he died), we went to the beach. Also we slept in a lot, even if it was only until 7:30. What I didn't do was one single stitch of crochet or knitting. I did help Liam cut out some fabric to sew himself some wizards robes, but he is sewing them (by hand, I don't have a working sewing machine), himself.

But school went back today, craft group (at the school) starts up again on Friday, and I'm feeling crafty again. I'm thinking I will come to school pickup a little early and bring my crochet with me. I'm also thinking it's about time I knitted some new dishcloths.

But in the mean time, I'm going to tackle my pigsty of a house. The holidays are over.  It's time to get organised!

Christmas is coming... (or, Making Felt Christmas Angels)

Now that we're home I am looking around and realising how close Christmas is getting! By this time last year I was already nearly finished making my Advent Calendar/String which opened up into this felt nativity set I made.

I was thinking of adding to that set this year, but while we were away we had a flood in our converted garage/spare room which had all my felting supplies in it. Although they didn't get wet, the flood happened a while before we came back and so everything - I mean, everything - was mouldy.

It was a gross thing to come back to and made me sooo grateful for our contents insurance. Quite apart from replacing what we lost, having someone else to come in and assess what was salvagable and pack it up, and take away what wasn't, was worth every cent of the premiums!

I did make these little angels while I was in the States, to make a mobile for my brother's baby (I forgot to photograph the finished product), and I've got enough of the wool roving I bought over there to make another angel, but that's not going to fill another advent calendar.

I will get money to replace the felting supplies I lost, of course, but not in time to make more for this Christmas. I guess we'll just have to set up the nativity scene this year without the Advent String, but if I make another angel I'll make a bigger one for the tree and maybe photograph the process for another step by step tutorial.

I made this larger one in the school craft group earlier in the year for their Spring Fair sales, but that was slightly more complicated than these two and used a pipe cleaner for the arms.

 

Making felt nativity sets (with step by step instructions for the Shepherds)

Even though I have the advent string up now, and we've been unwrapping an item each night and adding it to the nativity scene, I still have a few parcels left to add to the string. I decided to keep the Mary and Joseph figures out from the beginning, and build the rest of the set around them, so I need two more people to open in the last week, so I figured I'd forget about the angel (or just make it an extra one) and make the three kings.

Of course, I didn't have the materials for them, so I've just ordered a bunch of prefelt and whatnot from Fibre Fusion. But now, because I wanted a different colour for each of the kings, I think I've got enough for about a dozen nativity sets!!

Here are the instructions for how to make a Shepherd (much the same for Mary & Joseph, though with an extra prefelt cloak layer, and I'm assuming for the kings, though I've ordered some gold "silk tops" (I'm not exactly sure what that means, should I say a gold silk top?) which I'm expecting to be able to use either as the clock or around the head as a sort of crown, to distinguish them from the shepherds).*

Materials (per shepherd): 1 piece of wool batting, around 12cmx8cm, a smaller rectangle of coloured prefelt (ideally a different colour for each shepherd), some fleece for the hair and cloak, and a piece of string, about 10cm long.

1. Roll over the long edges of the wool batt, about 1cm towards the middle. If you have three pieces of batting the same size and you want three different sized shepherds, just vary how far in you roll the sides.

2. Roll up from the end like a sushi roll:

3. Tie the string approximately 2 cms from the top to make the head. Choose the best area for the face and gentle pull the wool up a little and over towards the back of the head:

4. Fold the rectangle of prefelt over to fit the body. Wrap around the body with the fold facing out:

5. Attach garment together using needle and thread of a felting needle** (shown). Be sure to join the top and bottom of the garment well. Trim the bottom if necessary or tuck it under.

6. Select the hair/beard and cloak (ideally you will have a different colour for each shepherd), and attach with your felting needle:

7. To finish, round out the bottom to ensure your shepherd can stand by spreading out the inner roll or adding a little fleece. Use your handy felting needle to adjust until you are happy.

8. Find a "crook" in your garden (mine are old curly bits from a grapevine) and tuck through the cloak.

(Sheep are made as per instructions in The Nature Corner: Celebrating the Year's Cycle with Seasonal Tableaux.)

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*These instructions are adapted from the ones we were given in playgroup, but I can't credit them because they were hand written by someone at the school and I'm not sure who that someone was.

**This link tells you what size felting needle is ideal for different purposes but for this I just used a 36 or 38 gauge needle - whichever I happened to pull out - for all of it, and that seemed to work.

This post has also been linked in Just Something I Whipped Up Christmas edition at Project Inspire.

An Australian Advent wreath - celebrating Summer Solstice and Christmas together

 

Made with grape vines, which are traditionally used in summer solstice wreaths, and of course beautiful Australian bottle brush.

In Christian terms the advent period is about preparing for the coming of Christ, which can also be said as the coming of the light. In Northern Hemisphere Pagan terms, advent is also about preparing for the coming of the light, since this period is the lead up Winter Solstice, after which the days start getting longer again, as the sun begins its journey back.

However here in the Southern Hemisphere, we are perparing for Summer Solstice, which is about fertility and vitality and warmth and healing. But it's also the beginning of the darkness to come, as the days get shorter after midsummer, so our advent candles represent not only hope, joy, peace and love (as they are often said to in the church), but also the lengthening of the light leading up to the longest day, the Solstice (except, we'll have all the candles alight on the 25th not the 21st, but that's close enough, for our purposes).

Making an Advent calandar, which will become a nativity scene (or, Advent in Australia, it's a funny thing)

My latest hand work project (and I'm not going to pretend there are a lot of them) is to make a home made advent calendar, which gradually builds into a nativity scene. This is something we have been working on in the playgroup I take Mikaela to at Liam's Steiner school - we the grown-ups that is, it's sort of a surprise for the children (though some will have been paying more attention than others).

The calendar consists of a long piece of string (a twistie actually) with 27 little packages tied to it. Each package will contain one thing to add to the nativity scene. Advent starts on Sunday 28 November this year, so that's the day for opening the first package.

The night before that, I will be setting up a little barn, made just with some pieces of bark for the roof and walls, and a few little blocks of wood to lean them on. I have a lovely piece of blue silk to set it out on. Now I just have to find a space which "can remain honoured and respected", where the kids can see and carefully touch, but where any visiting toddlers (and I'm expecting a couple in coming weeks) won't be tempted to touch too much!

Now, what will be in the packages? Well, the idea is to move through four kingdoms of minerals, plants, animals and humans (this is a Steiner concept I think*). So the first week is minerals. Stones and shells and crystals, to decorate the stable area. I have yet to scout around for these, but I don't think I'll have any trouble.

The second week is plants. So I have a few sticks of plasticine for the bases, and I plan to use some twigs and leaves and maybe some lavender and banksia flowers to be little trees and bushes.

The third week will be the animal kingdom. So far I have made a donkey and two sheep out of wool and pipe-cleaners, I have another sheep to make, and I have an echidna, a bee and a wombat, basically made out of seedpods (the bee has some yellow wool fleece twisted around it, and I will add a little white wool for the wings).

Then the last week is humans. I have Mary and Joseph already (pictured above), and half a shepherd (pictured left), and two more Shepherds to make. That leaves one day for which I will either make a star or an angel (no wise kings I'm afraid). And then the baby born on Christmas day will not be part of the calendar, but will be there when the kids wake up in the morning, in a bark manger, if I can find a curly piece of bark.

Alternatively you can have Mary and Jospeh there at the beginning and take them through a journey - now, I quite like that idea, but it would mean coming up with two more people for that final week before Christmas. Maybe I could do some wise men after all, but I don't have the materials for them at this point (and it's all gotta be finished by Saturday night, so really I should be working on the shepherds and sheep right now, not blogging!).

The book we've been using for instructions on how to make the animals is The Nature Corner: Celebrating the Year's Cycle with Seasonal Tableaux. But for the people we just had instructions from someone at the school, and I think they're a bit simpler than hers, basically just using fine wool batting, and a felting needle to "stitch" the pieces together. For the angel though, if I get to that, I think I'm going to use MamaMoontime's fleece fairy doll as a base, but I'll probably do the head the way we have for the other people, just sort of pulling a bit of the wool back over to make a smooth face.

Advent is traditionally a time of anticipation but also of preparation, of making ready for the new year. Apparently it used to be a time of fasting in the Christian calendar (I wonder if this was as well as lent, or did it move over to lent? Not that many people actually fast during lent either). I'd like to give my children some sense of reverence amid the excitement and joy of Christmas. So we'll be finding a time each day - probably right after dinner - for opening the parcel on the advent string calendar and maybe having a little bit of the story of advent. Or maybe the story will be reserved for weekend nights, I'm not sure yet.

Since we're not a strictly Christian family I'm thinking of including some other stories, from other faiths or cultures relating to this same time of year, but that's a bit further from my expertise.

The funny thing is that the idea of this being the end of the year is really predicated on coming up to mid-winter, but here in Australia we're coming up to mid-summer, which has quite a different feel to it. So although we are approaching the end of the calendar year, and, more significantly for children, the school year, seasonally speaking we're right in the middle of life. So I might need to dig out some summertime stories too.

I'll post an update with pictures when I have the initial scene set up with the advent string ready, and then I'll try take another pic at the end, when the whole scene is complete.

This post has also been linked in the Simple Seasonal Goodness linky list over at Sustainable Suburbia.

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*According to this page about Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education:

In terms of the "kingdoms of nature," we share our physical body with the mineral kingdom, our etheric body with the plant world, and our astral body with the animals.  The ego is shared with no other kingdom: only the human being carries this "divine spark" into earthly life.

Kaely's blanket

This is Mikaela at about three weeks old, snuggled under the blanket I knitted for her. The one for the next baby will probably be about the same size or a little bigger, similar in colour but with a strand of light blue angora replacing the darker purple mohair in this one (they are both knitted with three colours of wool together. Liam's - which is more than twice is big (lucky first I guess) - was with four.

Liam and Mikaela now both love to snuggle under their blankets when they are building cubbies/watching TV/reading or being read to. Which is rather gratifying. So far Mikaela doesn't mind that hers is so much smaller than Liam's, but I'm preparing for the possibility of having to knit another half to it and sew them together - because as she grows it might not be quite as satisfactory. Which is why I'm thinking of making the current one a little bigger, but we'll see how I go!

Re-skilling for simply living

Rhonda, from Down to Earth is asking "what you have at your home that helps you live simply. Do you have water tanks, knitting needles, a sewing machine, solar panels or a solar oven? How have you reksilled yourself? What do you know now that you didn't know last year?"

She's talking about the aspects of 'simple living' that are not about food, and the money quote (from my perspective) is:

Simple living isn't all about cooking from scratch and stockpiling, it's a holistic approach to life that relies as much on your silent partners working away in the background, and your ability to reskill, to look after what you have and to produce as much as you can at home. Sometimes there is a price to pay to have the hardware installed, but often our lives are made easier and greener by just learning how to do something we couldn't do before.

This is part of why I am knitting a dishcloth - not for the sake of the dishcloth as such (we don't need any new dishcloths at the moment), but to improved my less than impressive knitting skills. There's a part of me that doesn't really think I have it in me to be a good knitter - too impatient, not detail oriented enough, completely unwilling to unpick (or whatever you call it in knitting) if I see that I've made a mistake. (Knitting dishcloths is about perfect for me, because in a dishcloth it really doesn't matter how badly or how often I stuff up the pattern - it's only a dishcloth.) And in fact, sewing would probably be a better skill to learn, because as Rhonda says, being able to mend clothes can make them last a lot longer. But I prefer knitting, so knitting is what I am doing right now. And you know what? We can always use new dishcloths.

Reusing soft plastic (eg bags)

Via Riana I just came across this etsylabs tutorial on how to reuse plastic bags (or other soft plastic). It's all about how to fuse several of them together, using an iron, and then make them into all sorts of things - reusable shopping bags being the most common thing mentioned, but I was thinking maybe I could make some big and heavy enough to cover part of the chicken run. Someone else suggested covering a greenhouse, but didn't actually report back on whether it worked.

The only problem of course is that we mostly use fabric bags now for our shopping, so we don't end up with many plastic bags, and the ones we do get are used up on dog poo or general garbage pretty quickly. But then someone mentioned the bags dry cleaning comes back in, and bread bags. Other people commented that they found the slightly heavier bags (Target got several mentions) more reliable than the thinner, cheaper bags (I assume supermarket bags) which sometimes wrinkle. So it might take some experimenting.

And I would also only do it outside on the deck, where we conveniently have an outdoor powerpoint, to avoid fumes - someone posted this warning in the comments:

What a cool idea! I hate to spoil anyone's fun, BUT I think it should be mentioned that this should be done in a

WELL VENTILATED

area or that you use an organic vapor mask or a respirator. Melting and potentially burning plastics creates sometimes harmful fumes, some of which are linked with embryonic mutagens.

Better safe than sorry.

But all in all, I have to say I'm feeling inspired. Better finish my dishcloth first though... not to mention my masters project!

Essay/silkie/knitting/colds a post in dot points

So much to say, so little time. So tonight, a post in (largely unrelated) dot points.

• My masters project is due in in one week and one day. Luckily my supervisor said (without me asking) that I could have an extension of two or more weeks, because they're all going to be too busy with marking other papers to get a panel together before then anyway. This is lucky because I've just realised that to get it bound and posted is going to take the better part of a week. Also because I am not as close to being happy with either the essay or the fiction as I had hoped to be by this point. On the other hand, I *really* don't want this to eat into my month of two day weekends before I go back to work. So I may ended up working quite hard on it this week.
• My sister gives really good feedback. Think I might impose on her to read my essay as well...
• Our little silkie chicken (who has moved to the front of our house, which is really around the side of the block, to avoid the bigger chickens, who can't fit through the fence) has taken to coming right up onto our front doorstep sometimes. Today she was sitting up there as I came out of the house, with our cat following me. The cat - who has rarely gotten that close to any chicken, that I've seen, almost touched noses with Fluffy (as we affectionately call her), then walked on, disinterested.
• All of us in the family seem to have yet another cold. So far it is mild, but by g-d I am sick of it.
• I am two thirds of the way through knitting a pretty little dishcloth with multiple stuff-ups in the pattern. Diana sent me another pattern (or three) which sounds easier, so I will try that next. My cousin (who has two small children, four months older and twelve months younger than Kaely, and whom I see every week) laughed at me when I told her I was knitting a dishcloth (in the nicest possible way). So I said I would have to write a whole blog post to explain my interest, starting with my urban by composting childhood, in which my parents read grassroots magazine and fantasised about moving to the country, much as I have often done. That post yet to come.

Dishcloths and what not

Did you notice I added a calendar view in the side bar? Or am I the only old fashioned sort of person who still looks at actual blogs instead of feed readers?

It's only a temporary add-in anyway, just this month while I am trying to write something every day. And today it almost remained blank. I spent the whole day at a friend's (a regular playdate for Liam, though it doesn't usually go all day), then had my weekly pilates and grocery shopping night tonight. Exciting I know.

What is exciting (to me) is that I have started knitting my first dishcloth. I'm using this pattern, except all one colour (blue of course) and with lots of stuff ups in the first 13 rows (which is all I've done so far) and especially in the first 7. Still, it's only a dishcloth I tell myself, and just get on with it. I'll post photos when I'm done, so that the knitting types among you can have a good laugh!

Crafty autumn days

Liam's school had their annual autumn picnic on Sunday. Normally I would say 'we' had it, especially since as class co-ordinator of Liam's class I was involved in some of the organisation, but actually I didn't go - I was at home trying to re-write my essay for my master's project (which is driving me up the wall at the moment, but that's a whole other post!).

The autumn picnic is usually a lovely family day, with everything from sack races to sausage sizzles to home made soup to the craft table (the organisation and running of which is job of us kindy parents). This year it turned out to be the coldest day of the season so far, but a good time was still reportedly had by all.

Liam made this gnome and gods-eye at the craft table. Someone showed him how to do blanket stitch and got him started on the gnome and he did the rest himself, and the gods-eye he did completely by himself, having made his first one at the school's Spring Fair last year.

This is one of the things I love about Orana. All the 'hand work' they do. This year Liam has mastered finger knitting and French knitting in kindergarten, he brought home a little basket his teacher sewed for him out of his finger knitting, and is now working on the French knitting - two strands of wool at once too (for both finger and French). They don't learn to write until class one (next year), but this handwork is part of the way they prepare the hands and mind for that sort of handwork. And in class one they also start 'proper' knitting. I think they start with knitting socks or something, and progress to a hat at some point (maybe in a later year though).

I was never very crafty as a child - oh I learned the basics of knitting and French knitting, but I never actually completed a project. I all but failed 'textiles' (sewing, weaving etc) in year seven. I did do a short course in sewing with stretch material when I was about 18, out of which I got a few clothes and my still very basic sewing skills. But that's about it. So I love the fact that Liam is learning some of these basics right at the beginning of school, and will continue to do so through the years.

Meanwhile I, as you know, am going to knit a dishcloth. And I'm going to attempt to make Kaely a sleeping bag. She is fast outgrowing the one she's in now, and I haven't been able to find any in op shops (thrift stores), so I put a request for a size 3 sleeping bag on freecycle,* and someone responded with the offer of a pattern, and said she may even be able come up with some old bits of fleece for me to use. So I'm going to give it a go. I may just become a handy person yet.

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*I find this a challenging part of the whole 'no shopping' compact - asking for things. A lot of stuff I haven't been able to find second hand, and while in some cases that can just mean we don't buy it, some things we really do need. Okay, true, we don't *really* need them. Mikaela could wear a couple of extra layers to bed (she won't keep blankets on yet) and we could move her to a mattress on the floor (she's not safe in the cot without the sleeping bag any more, she can climb out). But... we need them enough, if you know what I mean.

So, I decided to start asking for things on freecycle. That's the whole point, after all, of freecycle - to move things around to where they will be used. But I do find it challenging to ask for 'handouts', especially as there seems to be a general philosophy that it should be more for giving than receiving (for instance I think the rules say you can't put a WANTED on until you've put an OFFER on). So I decided that I would have to put an offer on for every wanted I put on.** Not that that's a bad thing - after all, I am also trying to declutter. But even then, I do find the asking a little confronting. See how I am going into this long explanation about how I put 'offers' on and not just 'wanteds'? I find this discover about myself sort of interesting.

** (Footnote to the footnote:) So far I've put on two wanteds and two offers and got requests for both the offers, but for the wanteds have gotten a loan (which is good actually - it's a mini tramp for Chris to work his ankle on, and we're happy to be able to give it back at the end) and the offer of advice on how to make the item. So if this goes on the decluttering could become a reality. I still need to find things to put up for offer so I can request boys size 4/5 PJs, long sleeve tops & long pants - which I am counting as three separate requests. I am sort of wishing I kept those bags of clothes I finally give to Vinnie's (charity) the other week though.

Knitting dishcloths

I've decided to try knitting dishcloths (actually, we just call them sponges in my house, but I guess that's not a very accurate term really).

Rhonda at Down to Earth mentioned in a recent post that she makes her own (of course!), and then Diana gave me a heads up about how to do it and where the instructions are. The only thing I've ever knitted before is blankets in sold moss stitch (which is knit one, pearl one, then alternate it on the next row and so on - or is it knit one pearl one and then the same on the next row? See, I have to figure it out each time I start a new blanket!). I have knitted three and a half of these blankets so far. One for my best friend S's baby (another S friend!) who was born six months before Liam, one for Liam, one for Mikaela and I am half way through one for my sister's baby (who is not yet born).

This is the detail of the first blanket I made, for my friend's son.

Anyway, I am trying to live more simply, more sustainably, and of course, more cheaply. It doesn't seem likely that we will save much money by knitting dishcloths, since I use them until they are completely threadbare anyway, and it doesn't cost a lot to buy a new one every few months. But. I really want to become more able to make/fix/make do with things my self, and be less reliant on mass produced, probably through exploitation, store bought stuff. So I am going to give this a try. Of course, it's going to mean buying some cotton yarn, which you can't really get second hand, but I suppose I might be able to get end of run balls or something? I really have no idea. Anyway, that might be something to look into tomorrow morning after dropping Liam at school, since Chris is going to Melbourne for work, so I won't have my usual Monday writing day. I will post photos when I have something to show.