Zhinka dinka doo

WIP: needle felting and Gertie update

Crafts are good for distracting oneself...

These little needle-felted wool felt motifs are destined to be decoration patches on felt needle books, end-of-year presents for Max's kindergarten teachers. After Max finishes the needle felting (he's been doing all of it), I'll trim them down a bit and attach them to the books.

Except for the danger of 5 super-sharp barbed needles going through a little finger—and that's a pretty big "except"—this is an fun activity for kids. I got the Clover needle felting tool and mat for Christmas, and after a 3-day frantic search through the house for it, it took us all of 30 seconds to get going. The Clover tool has a little safety cover that theoretically prevents one from puncturing one's body. In reality, we found many ways around this safety feature. Not because we were looking, but just because they came up. Ocassionally the cover would stay retracted and not come back down to cover the needles; disassembling and cleaning the unit seems to have helped. There's a "lock" position, but it very easily wiggles out of lock and into the open position. So we've stressed keeping fingers away and never testing whether it's locked or open on your hand.

The only problem we're having is that the felting tool leaves pretty big holes in the felt. Can you see them in the photo below? They're most obvious in the door and in the light felt to the lower right of the house.



I'm wondering if perhaps we poked more lightly (don't push the needles all the way in), maybe it would make smaller holes.  The felter says it has fine weight needles, so I wouldn't image that needle size is the problem. On the yellow flower I was able to sort of brush the top of the flower and make the holes less obvious.

Does anyone have experience with needle felting and can give me any tips on this?

Gertie update: I just talked with the vet, he said her blood tests show that she has hepatic lipidosis.  The infectious diseases panel showed no FLV, FIV, FIP, so that's good although it means they don't know what led to this problem.  She's on IV fluids and antibiotics, and he suggested either a feeding tube or home care with appetite stimulants, anti-nausea meds, and special foods.  I'd much rather try the less invasive technique, but not if she's so far along that any failure with this method would be Really Bad.  Unfortunately, the vet was unable to say if this was the case, I guess the blood test results are not that specific.  He could only say that her values were elevated, but not the worst he's seen.

So we're going to try home care first, to see if we can get her to eat with the extra pharmaceutical support.  I hope it's the right decision.

Baby kokeshi

I was so excited to learn that Myra has opened a shop. This is her first product, a tutorial for baby kokeshi dolls! Of course I got one immediately, and Max and I got to try making them this weekend.

Mine is on the left, with the black hair, Max's is on the right, with the blue hair. For the record, he requested the blue hair.

This was a fun "together" project. The directions were so clear and easy to follow. Max didn't do most of the steps in the construction, but he certainly had fun watching me and doing the parts he could do. He entertained himself by cutting the leftover paper into tiny pieces while I rolled the body. He'd stop every now and again to smear glue on the paper I was rolling. The parts that he did himself: he made the head, put on the eyes and mouth, and put on rosy cheeks--which you can't see here. (I know that fabric was a horrible choice for backdrops, but it's what I had close at hand. I'll try to take a better picture tomorrow.)

We're going to make these into beads, you may be able to see the hole on the top of blue's head.

The only change I made was to use sidewalk chalk instead of blush for the cheeks because I don't have blush. We just grabbed a pink stick of chalk and some Qtips, rubbed the Qtip on the chalk, then applied cheeks.

This was such a fun weekend project! Thanks Myra!

Let's go for a walk

Here's another felt creation by Max. It's a walking doll, another pattern from this book. He did most of the stitching, and he drew on the face. Then he played with the doll non-stop until we had to leave. Notice that he's playing on the treehouse, the toy I've been hoping he'd play with for several years now. I guess he just needed a doll he made before he'd use it, and so we'll have to make another one for him!

You can see here a bit better how this doll walks. The pants are open at the top, you stick your fingers in to be the legs and start walking. The pattern called for the dress to be sewed closed and the legs to be attached to the back. I usually follow the pattern the first time I make something, as we did this time. But next time I would do the dress/pants differently, because I think having the legs stuck on the back looks a bit weird. I might make the dress more like this baby kimono, but with the cross-over opening in the back. Then the pants could be inside, but you could still put your fingers in to make legs. And when you weren't walking it around, it would look more like a doll.

Pink bird aloft

This is a felt bird made by Max for a friend's birthday. I suggested he might make something himself for a present, and he was very enthusiastic about it! Yay! He chose the pattern (from Felt Craft) and did almost all of the stitching.

They've been sewing quite a bit in his kindergarten class. At first it was just running stitch into pre-made holes, then without the holes, now recently they've moved to blanket stitch.

Bird surprises

These are the presents that Max gave his teachers. The brilliant blue bird's nests were finger-knit by Max out of luscious Navajo churro wool (a bit coarse for clothing, but wonderful for these nests). I bought this yarn this summer at the farmer's market, I believe it was locally spun and dyed. After Max knit the long rectangle, we spiralled it into a nest shape and then tacked it so it would stay.

The surprises found in these nests are (left) a wonderful NOM from Aimee's lovely shop and (right) wooden acorns and eggs from this shop (after I read about it at Amanda's). We packaged them up in little origami boxes, they looked very nice.

Max also did a gift exchange at school, but for some reason I forgot to take a picture of his finished gift before sending it off. Darn. But he's making a second for himself, so I've got a second chance to get a picture.

Koi nobori stencil: test t-shirt results

Today we tried painting the koi stencils onto one of the t-shirts, and were generally successful. We used Amy's suggestion of putting another piece of freezer paper behind the stencil to keep it stable and to prevent the paint from going through. That seemed to work nicely. I wasn't sure when to remove the top freezer paper, should I take it off right away, or let the paint completely dry first? I decided to let it dry a little and then remove the freezer paper. This seemed to work ok. One note though, do not remove the back freezer paper until the paint is completely dry or it can do weird things to the front design, like the little line to the right of the koi's eye in the second photo below.

Above is Max carefully painting on the stencil. Below is the mostly finished t-shirt, this one's for Grandpa. I wanted to have Max sign it, and I was going to print "Children's Day 2007" around the koi, but the only fabric marker I have is red and that disappears into the navy blue. I could get a lighter color pen, but I suspect that all will just disappear too, so perhaps this t-shirt is done...

I'm glad we got a chance to test this out before just doing it as an activity. The painting used a lot more paint than I thought it would, so I wouldn't have had enough for everyone to paint their shirts.

The stencil is here (467.5K), if you'd like to use it (personal, non-commercial use only). I printed it so the longest dimension was about 9.5 or 10 inches, this fills the front of a child-sized t-shirt. About 7 inches across is good for babies' onesies. I printed these directly onto freezer paper, but you can also print onto plain paper and tape that over the freezer paper while cutting the two together.

Happy boy's day!

Boy's day was Friday (the fifth day of the fifth month), but we had our party on Saturday. I always want to do a kid's craft at Max's parties, and so far have made plans but never actually executed them. Because kids are always running left and right at speeds approaching that of light, and getting them to slow down enough to do a craft seemed futile. This time I was determined, so I prepared a simplified koinobori (carp streamer) activity. (I love koinobori.) I enlisted Max to help me test the activity and he really liked it, I think that helped it go over better. Here are some of the finished fish flags, drying outside during the party:

We made these using the gyotaku technique--fish printing. Traditionally done by painting a real fish (in order to record its size), we instead used rubber fish from Dick Blick. Unfortunately they didn't have carp/koi, so we used a perch (it looked the most koi-like of the options) and a trout (for a local flair). Here Max is determinately painting his perch:

You can see the finished trout flag on the table above the perch. After painting the fish, we took a pre-hemmed flag and put it face down on the painted fish, then pushed all over to get the imprint. Then just hang up to dry. This activity went well with all the guests except for the almost 2-year-old, who was uninterested in rubber fish. He started twice and left each for his mom to finish. The 3- and 4-year-olds really got into this activity. Just enough mess, lots of room for creativity (combining various colors on the fish). Rather than trying to get everyone to gather around a craft all at once, my approach was to pick out one child at a time, whoever seemed most receptive.

I made the flags out of white cotton fabric that I then dyed using the natural food dyes used for Easter eggs. After making the blue cabbage dye, I've been eagerly soaking various things in it. String, fabric, yarn is next. I also made up a batch of pink beet dye, and the two together make lavender (although mine is more like a different shade of pink, I think it needed more time in the blue). I love the soft shading that I get with this method. After each piece of fabric was dyed and dried, I cut and serged the edges, then sewed a pocket at the top. After the fish was printed on the flag, we inserted cut-to-size straws into the pocket, and threaded ribbon through each for hanging. The straw lets the top of the flag lay straight and not bunch up.

Here are my dyed fabrics drying outside. From top to bottom, they're lavender, blue, and pink; all very light shades that were perfect for this activity:

And finally, here's a pic of some of the party guests, out in the backyard, doing something in the garden:

Coming soon: pictures of the goodness I received in the mail yesterday!