Summer Tripping

Nuriel and I took a trip to Indianapolis to visit my wonderful friend Mindi. I also taught a Waldorf summer camp there. Nuriel and I had a great time!

 A cookie at the farmer's market.

 An amazing "monster"party...
 

 ... with her hair sister (the birthday child) and...

 ... a monster cake...

 ... and monster muffins.

 Looking just like Brent, only his belly was slightly bigger than that & he had a hairy chest. ;-) The swimtrunks are my statement against sexy swimwear for toddlers. (She does not need a thong!)

 Waldorf camp beauty and...

 ... felting soaps. 

Then another birthday party! This one had a "The Keeping Quilt" theme. The guests were asked to bring a scrap of quilting fabric instead of a gift. I'm considering doing something similar for Nuriel's 2nd birthday. We'll see.

 Nuriel is wearing a skirt I made! My friend Mindi, who has sewn many fabulous things for Nunu, showed me how to sew a skirt. I named it Kibiflopple skirt because I used four different fabrics: Kiwifruit - Birds - Flowers - Apples. I'm very proud of it. It was cut out & sewn after some major wine consumption!

 A yummy peach fresh off the tree.

Semi-naked chef!
 ~
Nuriel does not like air travel! Also, something happened on the way home... During our visit Nuriel's heard her friend call her Dad "Daddy." On our flight this afternoon, Nuriel decided that the tall, muscular African-American man with the long braids in the seat next to us was her Daddy. She said, "Hi Daddy!" over and over again. I apologized, but it's hard to get a 22-months old child to stop talking! When the guy fell asleep (or pretended to do so... Ha!), Nuriel said to all the surrounding passengers: "Shhh. Daddy is sleeping." I was so embarrassed, especially since the guy didn't seem to have a sense of humor about it and the more I tried to divert her attention , the more persistent she became...
~
That's all. It was a really nice trip.

September

That would be September, not in chronological order...

 A package arrived in the mail. Some of the boys' "old" wooden toys a friend in Germany had been storing for me. Sweet, sweet memories!

 I made the bear in second grade! That makes it almost thirty years old! The doll on the right was Noah's first doll when he was wee. The other doll I bought a couple of years ago for no particular reason. It will now be Nuriel's when she is old enough for it.

Nuriel had a birthday. She's one now. The owl bunting was made by a dear friend. So sweet. Some of you have heard of my picture dilemma on the birthday. It was a crazy day. I learned that having to prepare a birthday celebration that's taking place two hours after work while still needing to chauffeur kids back & forth after school makes it impossible to fit in a trip to buy camera batteries. It was a very sweet lil' celebration, though. Good memories, which is the most important part!

The nature table is looking more like spring, but we like it that way. The Koru maiden was made by Marie over at Softearthart. It will become more autumny soon!

Nathan had a birthday, too. He's thirteen now. I'm officially Mom to two teenagers. 

Nathan used some leftover bass wood to cut out some owls. He's planning on woodburning details.

 Enjoying the last days of summer...

Mother Earth

How do you imagine Mother Earth? Is she old & wise? Young & adorned with flowers? I have different images of her in my head. They change with the season, with stories I hear & tell. 

To me she is such an archetypal figure on the Nature Table. I've been experimenting with creating the different Mother Earths of my imagination.

This one is about 10" tall. Her body is needle-felted. She wears a hooded cape knitted on teeny-tiny needles using some Koigu yarn. Her apron has a simple grass - sky - sunflower scene needle-felted onto a piece of wet-felted wool-mohair felt. She is wise & old. Her hair is thus gray, with a lil' bun in the back. 

I love how she turned out. How about you? Well, guess what. I'm not keeping her. This is a bit of a teaser. :-) On Monday I'll tell you more about all of that. Do check back in!

In the meantime, if you have a link to the Mother Earth of your imagination, the Mother Earth who lives on your Nature Table maybe, please do share a link in the comment section. I'd love to see her!

Felted Necklaces

 Felted with and by four to six-years-old children. (The one in the middle is a "giant, precious diamond" in case you're wondering... )

 Some with few beads...

... others with more. All felted with enthusiasm & joy!

We started with "just round" beads & then the creativity of these wonderful children took over & they started felting all kinds of shapes. We then strung them onto a simple wool string. Voila. Simple, yet treasured!

Stories & Felting II

Below are some impressions of things created during the summer camp. I mentioned it here a few days ago. I changed things around from the original plan. I had lots of sweet children on the younger side (ages 4-8), so I simplified here and there.

We did felt caterpillars & butterflies. We ended up doing a guided beeswax crayon drawing instead of a watercolor painting for the movable picture. Instead of felting ladybugs, we made a kind of wool pompom ladybug. Instead of dyeing silks, I experimented with a wood-burner & each child took home their felted treasures in a lil' personalized storytelling box.

It's been a tiring week and I remain behind as far as my schedule is concerned. I'm hoping for a mellow afternoon. We're house-sitting through tomorrow, so we have a TV and the children have found the World Cup. We actually don't own a TV, so this is super-special. Our German genes make it so that we like soccer. Beer and good pastries, too! :-)

Before showing the pictures, I want to remind you of two things:

(1) The blog giveaway for a pilot-style baby hat is still going on through June 14th. Check it out & let your friends know, too.

(2) Also still happening through June 20th is the RichmondMom Dream Baby Shower contest my cousin nominated me for. Please consider voting for me if you haven't done so already. The jist of the past few months is in the "Namaste!" blurb there on the right. I really could use a massage. I know, couldn't we all, huh? Anyhoo, you can find details here.

A "phunky wool" caterpillar on one of the boxes. The children felted around a bit of floral wire. I really like how the ones turned out where rovings were mixed.

Butterfly created from a flat piece of felt & cut out. Unfortunately there was no time to refelt the cutouts. I'd do that in the future to have a neater edge.

The lil' loop makes it easy to fly them.

Ladybugs created by making red & black pompoms. Once you figure out how to wrap the little cardboard donuts, it's success each & every time.

Awww.

I don't want to show a picture of the boxes, because it would reveal the names of the children, but I think you get an idea of how they looked. Just lil' square boxes & names engraved with a wood-burner.

Finally, a movable picture. I made a cut along the wave, then we inserted the boat on a long piece of cardboard & attached a piece of heavy paper to the back with staples. Stapling was fast. Glue would be my recommendation, though. Voila! Boats are sailing across the sea.

Stories & Felting

Last year I did a Felt A Story summer camp offering at our school. It was quite successful, so I was asked to do it again this year. I said, "Yes." But, what was I thinking? My narrative reports are due on Friday. My children are still in town. I signed up for this back in December, before pregnancy, before Brent's death, before house-hunting... So while I had envisioned some fancy thing, I'm keeping things simple again this year. I think a morning filled with free-play, a story, a craft project & a healthy snack is a fancy enough summer adventure. Here's the plan:

Monday & Tuesday
~ Felting caterpillars & butterflies.

Wednesday
~ Painting wet-on-wet watercolor.
The painting will be transformed into a moving picture.

Thursday & Friday
~ Felting a ladybug & dyeing silks/sewing treasure pouches.

I promise you an update with pictures. I have my camera, but the cable that is needed to connect it to the laptop is missing in the midst of all this relocation chaos. We're house-sitting for a colleague. Finest Richmond Fan location. I've vowed to force my children (and myself) to walk down Monument Avenue this afternoon. 95F/35C is what's in the forecast. I don't think we'll be taking jackets.

Felt A Story

I taught "Stories-N-Felting" camp for three days this week. I know many (teacher) friends started school already. We're not going back 'til September 8th. The children attending camp were five to seven years old. The pictures you see are their creations. It's helpful to keep that in mind when reading about the projects.

In the first story I introduced a beautiful beach with a clear ocean. In the back rose rolling green hills that eventually gave way to snow-capped mountains. The story was about a fish happily living together with his fish friends. One day a shark disturbs the peace. The fish swim away fast, loosing each other in the process. The fish finds a lil' seashell and eventually makes two good friends, a crab & a seahorse. The inspiration for this came from an old issue of Living Crafts magazine.

Inspired by my friend Angie's post "Treasure Bag" (Thanks, Angie!) we felted little pouches. These pouches would later hold the felted little fish, the seashell & a small dyed silk. - Sort of a "mini puppet play in a pouch."

Felting the fish in one piece didn't quite work out as I thought it would, so we created a flat piece of felt, cut out fish & blanket-stitched two pieces together. We added a little loop so the fish can easily swim through the water as puppets. So cute.