Keep Calm and Craft on.

Yesterday these little peg dolls went off to their new owners as part of We Bloom Here's Peg Doll Swap.   Now, I have to wait patiently for the postman.  We have our harvest festival at Osgars Kinder tomorrow and despite the fact that there's a forecast high of 32C today and 34C tomorrow,  the leaves outside are slowly starting to show signs of Autumn.   See what other folk have been crafting at Nicole's place.

Yarn Along

"Being treated kind, you grow kind. Being treated sensitively you grow gentle. Being treated honest, you grow honest" This book I'm reading "Raising Girls" by Steve Biddulph is just full of  great affirmations. This one really resounds with me and I'm trying to remember it in those difficult parenting moments that you have with both girls and boys. And I'm only up to page 46! My mother in law gave it to me for my birthday. I have a feeling I'll be referring to it a lot in the coming 16 or so years. . .

I have be obsessed with knitting an Agnes for a couple of weeks now.  O b s e s s e d. I spent hours on the phone and finally sourced all the wool I needed from three different Spotlight stores around Victoria no less. I was very grateful of their postage service, as I think I would have driven anywhere go get this dark grey baby alpaca (I had 7 balls and needed another 7). I cast on a couple of nights ago.  I have other more pressing things I should be working on, like the Peg Doll Swap and Dubhessa's 8th birthday present, but as I mentioned, I have been obsessed with this Agnes.  I have pictured myself wearing it with a hundred different outfits at least every fifteen minutes today.  Its nice and bulky and will be a quick knit. Do you ever find yourself this obsessed with a knitting project?

Happy Knitting!

Craft Along

Joining in with Nicole @ Craft Along this week. 

A treasure bag/craft bag, the next project in our craft course.   I finished mine last week and I'm working on a couple with my girls. This is a class 1 project and my big girls are in class 1 and class 2. Dubhessa's sewing craft last year was to make a  recorder case for her recorder, similar to this craft bag, so she's zipping through this new project. Tadhg is still learning and a little slower. This craft would take a class several weeks to complete.  I'm beginning to see that the role of a craft teacher involves a lot of preparation outside the actual classroom teaching time!  New found admiration for you craft teachers out there! You can see my knitting needles poking out the top of the bag, for our next project, knitted sheep and a shepherd. Yea!

I'm also joining in with a Peg Doll Swap hosted by We Bloom Here, for which I have been creating three little autumn inspired peg dolls.   Here's a sneak peek . . .

Yarn Along

I'm knitting a Sunnyside for Sadhbh and dreaming about knitting an Agnes for me. I got about 315 meters of beautiful dark grey baby alpaca at a closing down sale for a complete steal a while ago.  I was just going to knit a scarf and a few hats, but now I've fallen in love with Agnes and this wool would be absolutely perfect, so I've started a hunt for another 300 or so meters! Nothing like a good wool hunt.  Its not quite wool hunting weather here in Melbourne we're looking at a 10 day stretch of 35C+ - Hello Autumn - ahem. Have you knit an Agnes - Is it fabulous? Do you wear it every day?
Did you use Quince and Co Puffin?

I found this list on GeekDad the other day - I can't remember how I ended up there. If I linked to it  from your blog - thank you! Its a list of quality books to read to your kids before they turn 10.  I'm so excited and inspired and hoping to get to the library soon.  We have been flat out on the Enid Blyton Famous Five/Secret Seven/Mysteries books here for too long and I'm ready for a change.  We've already read quite a few of these, but I think we'll start with the Borrowers or the Chronicles of Narnia.

Happy Knitting - I hope its a bit cooler where you are!

Craft Along

These beautiful Gods-eyes or wrapped stars are from the first week of the Steiner Craft Curriculum course I'm doing this year.  Its so great to be learning how to bring these crafts to children in a gentle imaginative way.

This is a craft that children would normally do in late prep or class one. Circling is the impulse, which helps prepare the child for writing.  The two shapes are the star with three sticks, which is a soft gentle shape and the cross with two sticks which is a very strong shape.

When I was doing my homework, everyone wanted in on the action. First we had to go hunting for sticks, later we all sat round together, some slow, some fast wrapping wool round and round.  Even Osgar managed to make a gods-eye (the one with black in it) in one sitting.

The are so pretty. I'm going to keep them till all the leaves fall off the plum tree in front of our house and then hang them up out there.  Joining in with Nicole @ Craft Along this week.