Scavenger Hunt no 3

Day 3 of our homemade scavenger hunt lists...... I wonder when the kids will get bored of these? Not yet it seems!

Feel free to join in :-D

Jolene x

Scavenger Hunt no 2

Keeping my kids busy while we are all staying home to flatten the curve....

Jolene x

Scavenger Hunt no 1

What with the kids being off school and everyone being at home because of Coronavirus, we've decided to have a daily scavenger hunt for a bit of fun. Here is our very first one. Please feel free to have a go.



Jolene x

Knitting inchies for a patchwork dolly blanket

The idea for this project was suggested to me by my good friend Sue. I am going to be teaching my daughter and a small group of her friends the basics of knitting over the summer holidays.

Below are some ideas and patterns to make little inch long patchwork pieces that can be stitched together to make a sweet dolly blanket.

Cast on 10 stitches
Knit 14 rows
Cast off

Cast on 10 stitches
1. Knit 10 stitches
2. Pearl 10 stitches
Repeat 1 and 2 5 more times (12 rows total)
Cast off

Cast on 10 stitches
1. Knit 2. Pearl 2, Knit 2, Pearl 2, Knit 2
Repeat Row 1 13 more times (14 rows total)

 Cast on 10 stitches
1. Knit 2. Pearl 2, Knit 2, Pearl 2, Knit 2
2. Pearl 2, Knit 2, Pearl 2, Knit 2, Pearl 2
Repeat Row 1 and 2 5 more times (14 rows total)

 Cast on 10 stitches
1. Knit 10 stitches
2. Knit 2, pearl 6, Knit 2
Repeat 1 and 2 6 more times
13. Knit 10 stitches (15 rows)
Cast off

Cast on 10 stitches
Knit 3 rows
4. Knit next row but wrap yarn around the needle twice.
5. Knit first stitch of every pair but slide both wraps off the needle
Knit 3 rows
9. Knit next row but wrap yarn around the needle twice.
10. Knit first stitch of every pair but slide both wraps off the needle
Knit 3 rows (13 rows total)
Cast off

Cast on 10 stitches
1. Knit 10 stitches
2. (Knit 1, Yarn to front, Knit 2 together) repeat 3 times, Knit 1
3. Knit 10 stitches
4. Knit 10 stitches
Repeat rows 2, 3 and 4 3 more times
14. Knit 10 stitches (14 rows)
Cast off.

Tiny Jemima, knitted charity bear tutorial for a complete beginner

I have been learning to knit since the start of this year. My Local WI group launched a community project called Trauma Teddies. The aim is to provide to provide the Metropolitan Police in Hillingdon the means to pacify a child in a traumatic situation through donations of handmade toys and teddies. The project struck a chord with me and I decided to learn to knit so that I could get involved and donate some teddies myself.

I started out my kitting journey by following this simple charity bear pattern by Patricia Smith. I found that the weight of the first leg on my needle really off putting when knitting the second and also found the first full row of garter stitch that joins the legs together was really tricky.

My children requested bears with clothes on so I looked about on the web and found these adorable bear and clothes tutorials by Baldy Sheep on Etsy. It is now many hours of knitting fun later and I have learnt a whole lot of useful info about pretty combinations of pearl and knit stitch from the Baldy Sheep tutorials. I also found that kitting a teddy in two parts and stuffing from the head was much easier for a total beginner like me. While knitting teddy bear T shirts it dawned on me that if I could use the same technique to knit a bear from the head down to the toes it would eliminate all of the bits I found tricky with the first charity bear tutorial.

I decided to give knitting a bear from the head downwards a go. I based my pattern proportions loosely on a scaled down version of the Patrica Smith bear. The aim was to find a super simple way to be able to knit, sew and stuff a small bear from start to finish in just a couple of hours. Jemima is very sweet, she comes out at just 4 inches high when knitted on 4mm needles with DK wool.

Jemima Pattern
Head
Cast on 12 sts
Knit 12 rows
Knit 2 together, knit 8 st, knit 2 together (10 sts)
Knit 2 together, knit  6 st, knit 2 together (8 sts)

Arms 
Cast on 10 sts at the start of the next two rows (28 sts)
Knit 6 rows
Cast of 8 sts at the start of the next 2 rows (12 sts)

Body
Knit 12 rows

Legs
Knit 6 sts, turn your work
Knit 11 more rows of 6sts
Cast off
Rejoin your wool and knit 12 rows of the remaining 6 sts
Cast off

Repeat pattern again in a bright contrasting colour for the back of the Teddy

Eyes, nose and mouth
You can either do this first before stitching the front and back together or after your bear has been stitched and stuffed. Use Bullion stitch to make a bulky oval nose. Embroider on two small eyes and a mouth and secure all of the ends securely and neatly (I find it easier to embroider the face before sewing together so I can hide knots and weave wool ends in on the wrong side of the knitting).

Sewing and stuffing 
Weave all loose ends in the wrong side of the knitting. Place right sides of the bear together and starting at one side of the head, oversew around the edges of the whole bear leaving a couple of cm gap at the top head. Carefully turn your bear right side out and stuff with soft toy stuffing (available in all good craft shops). Carefully sew the small opening in the head closed.

Ears
Separate a small diagonal area on the top corner on each side of the head using running stitch. Sew over the running stitch line two or three times, secure running stitch with a couple of small stitches hidden in the seam. Hide the tail end of the wool inside your stuffed bear. Gently pull the ears to a more rounded shape.

Useful links.....

How to cast on : Long Tail Method by Knittinghelp.com
How to knit the Garter Stritch by PurlPlanet
How to knit: Casting off for beginners by tinselmint 
Knitting Help: Weaving in ends in Garter stitch by VeryPink Knits
Bullion knots by Mary Corbet
Finishing : Oversewing by Stylecraft Yarns
Face Embroidery on Knitted Toys by SusanBAnderson

Please do not sell bears made from this tutorial unless the are for charitable purposes.

Happy Knitting, Jolene x

Blogtoberfest day 9 - Home made play dough

The kidlets and I have been making play dough. There are quite few recipes available on the net and we plumped for this no cooking required one from instructables.com.

To make your own you will need -
2 cups flour
2 cups warm water
1 cup salt
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 Tablespoon cream of tartar

We fudged the recipe quite a lot because of lack of tablespoon or a measuring cup so we mixed the flour/water/salt in a ratio of 2:2:1, added 2 glugs of veg oil and 2 heaped desert spoons of cream of tartar and it seemed to work out pretty well considering. After splitting the mixture into 6 we added a teaspoon of food colouring to each block and kneaded it into the dough to make loads of fun colours.

Play dough is such good fun to play with and is the most prefect distraction on a rainy afternoon. My son likes to make turtles and much about with play dough suitable scissors.

And my Daughter makes cookies and other treats for her imaginary cafe.

The cream of tartar makes homemade play dough last for ages, months even, as long as you store in airtight containers so don;t go throwing away your old empty play doh pots!

Have a lovely evening, Jo x

Rawr!

A bit of fun for the kids with yesterday's lunch :-D

Have a lovely day, Jolene x

Milk bottle bird feeders.......

The January Challenge set by Laney Mead for Craft Pimp peeps is to create bird feeders using "stuff"  from around the house. A quick google search later and I found lots of examples of sweet simple milk bottle feeders which looked an excellent starter project to do with my little ones. I asked the kids to doodle some shapes for the openings on each side of the bottles and helped them cut them out.

They had loads of fun filling them up with wild bird seed mix which went everywhere. I pushed through old chopsticks for the birds to stand on and popped some wool through the handles to hang them up by.

Time will tell how much of the wild bird seed will stay in when the wind blows! I hope these turn out to be popular with the local wildlife (which includes a flock of green parakeets) so that my little ones can enjoy watching the birds come by for a snack.



The kids loved making these and the next plan is to make some kind of  bird cookies or fat balls :-D

Jolene xx

Spooky Dinner........ #blogtpoberfest13 day 31

A special request from the kidlets for a spooky dinner. Sausage hat witch with carrot for a nose and peas for eyes. This Halloween treat has gone down a storm :-D I also had a crack at making pumpkin soup. It was a pretty simple recipe, just pumpkin and onion with a potato and a carrot simmered in stock and whizzed up in a blender. Tastes lush!

Happy Halloween, Jolene xx

Happy (nearly) Halloween #Blogtoberfest13 day 30

We've been carving a pumpkin today, the kids went to town drawing on a face each and poor mummy had to do all the scooping and mucking out guts because my three year old and five year old decided together that "it is too mucky!".  Happy (nearly) Halloween, Jolene xx

Homemade beetroot playdough #blogtoberfest13 day 26

Afternoon, here is a lovely and quick project that the kids and I made over the summer hols, using beetroot as a natural dye for homemade play dough. My lovely pal Sue sent me the link to this super blog post that offers up a good selection of natural dye suggestions and it was an irresistible temptation to go pick a beetroot from the lottie.

I chopped up the beetroot in to big ish chunks and boiled with a little bit of water to leach the colour out of the beetroot and then sieved out the lumps then I cooked the dyed water over a low heat in an old saucepan with a cup of flour, ½ cup of salt,  1 tablespoon of cream of tartar and 1 tablespoon of cooking oil. The mixture came together in the pan very quickly and was so easy to make. It was a big hit with the kids - and none of that odd manufactured playdoh smell! It kept pretty well too, I wrapped it in tin foil between play times and it was moist and workable for weeks.

I hope you are having a lovely chilled out Sunday

Jolene xx

Tangram Toast #blogtoberfest13 day 6

I'm filing this very loosely under cooking :-D It's a simple fun thing to do with toast and quite a favourite with my kids. They really like the littlest shapes and eat them first and they even eat the crusts (thought they will still just mine for the soft bits in the biggest slice).

It's great fun to make pictures with the traditional Tangram shapes. They pick out all of the different sized matching triangles and stack them together. It gets them naming shapes, talking about sizes, patterns....highly educational and it also fills tums.

Here is another variation where I cut each each new half in half, particularly useful for my eldest who has just turned 5. We talk about halves and quarters.....but not the smaller fractions yet. I think there is a lot of learning mileage yet left for us in humble toast.

Have a super breakfast
Jolene xx

Saturday night is fright night

Here is a little photo montage of what my Ruby (who has just turned 4) and I got up to yesterday evening....it's our very first ever try at making one of these :-D Roo did all the designing and quite a lot of the scooping and I did the grown up helper jobs...



And lastly I logged on this morning to see this spooky treasury by one of my fellow CPteam members and it is so dark and cool that I couldn't resist adding it to my Hallween post.

'On the dark side' by KilnFiredArt

some items for your dark side , mainly from the Craft Pimp team

Black, Grey and Whi... WINIBI $15.00	Vintage Button Wedd... iheartbuttonsu... $200.00	Edwardian Black Cor... LaBelleFairy $399.00	Handmade lampwork f... beadupastorm $22.50
Black shawl- Luxury... sweetknitting $78.00	Deep Red and Black ... KitzbitzArtBea... $14.00	Happy Halloween Fus... dawnturnerdesi... $36.00	Midnight Treasures.... flamingbeadies $25.00
beaded velvet eveni... HTandH $35.00	Topper - ring/penda... flamingbeadies $10.00	Midnight. Loopy bla... Clasibags $10.00	A Pair of Fused Gla... venusartglass $25.00
Sorcha CreepCrew $8.00	Black Surfer Neckla... DysfunctionDes... $9.00	Black feather epaul... AmorousCatsAtt... $19.00	Black Starburst Rou... ARJewellery $25.00

Happy Halloween folks
Jolene x