November Crafts

Here are a couple of products of Phoebe's craft times lately...whilst needle felting a blanket for one of her little 'guys', she found a method that begged repetition, so she made four small, brightly coloured blankets, extremely quickly! After the initial 'buzz' wore off, she noticed they were a bit loose - so with a little tutoring in how to tighten them up, she made them stronger. The next leap was even more interesting to me as she was next to a gloriously-coloured peggy-square knitted blanket, like the ones my Nana Joy makes for charity. Phoebe then joined all four blankets together into one beautiful, larger one. It led to a discussion about what Nana Joy does, what other people in the world have or don't have...interesting!
And, some modelling with a polymer modelling clay called DUKIT - she only has primary red, yellow and blue plus white and is having a lot of very creative time mixing different amounts of colours together to create the ones she wants - and gets some lovely surprises, too! These are mostly for her very small gnomes and fairies in her play area inside...

Felted play food

wow - this is a record from this blog - it really has been a drippy, wet, inside type of day...and this is another of our activities today...felted play food for Phoebe. I admit, most of these 'foods' were made over the last couple of weeks, here and there. Today we made the beetroot and the giant strawberry...still working on proportion - although, apparently, Phoebe's rabbits don't mind a bit, which is where it all started.Actually, to be honest, it all started in an adult attempt at halting the hundreds of thousands of TINY pieces of paper of all kinds and colours of paper that were cut up to make all manner of foods for her 'guys'. "GUYS" in itself is the definition of play: cats, dogs, rabbits, kids (dolly-type, not goat), pigs, sheep, horses, etc, etc. The week Phoebe spent up on Waiheke Island with her best friend, Lulu, was my opportunity to release some of this paper food. Well, I had NO IDEA just how many stashes of food there was in and around her room and play area. I found old tea and tissue boxes FILLED to the brim with cut up paper, crumpled tissues (new ones, I hoped!), pieces of fleece and fabric, nut shells, glass marbles and gems, tiny pieces of driftwood - a you name it, it was dinner for someone - kind of discovery ( and quite a genuine fire risk, too!). And I was definitely the intrepid explorer-cum-ruthless-destroyer! You may be thinking how come I didn't know there was all this stuff? Well, I don't know what parents of other highly creative children do - I barely keep up with the phenomenal rate of creation that absolutely steams out of this amazing child of ours - she is continually making something - so it is one of our dreaded parts of the day - tidying up or putting order back into her area of creativity and play. "I know a little gnome, who likes a very tidy home....." Hmmmm.

Snowdrop Child

A few weeks ago I finally made my first "Flower Child" - just as the snowdrops were appearing in abundance all around the gardens. She is residing on the Season Table in our entrance.