22nd March

With all these Me Made posts I haven't done much about making with kids recently.

We have been reading this book a lot recently and current project is the water clock from it (T's choice). We were given this book as part of a job lot from some friends with grown up children. It was published in 1976 but is full of good projects and ideas. Lots of games, craft and a science section. Reading the introduction the only bit that felt dated was the advice to ask your local hospital for old syringes, gloves etc. This seems so shocking now in our HIV-aware and health and safety culture.

Anyway it is a great book and when I checked there are some copies on amazon here. (Iam not benefiting in advertising this, just wanted to share) After the water clock is done I want to make a shoe box loom!

Puppets are a big thing here at the moment. We made some sock puppets last week. Of course Little I wanted pink ones.

I am feeling screamingly fed up on the sewing front. I have managed to half sew in the sleeves for the U.P. dress. While altering a skirt on sunday I broke my machine needle. Ever since then the machine has been doing strange things, needles jamming, needles unthreading. I changed size of needle and fiddled with the tension. It just jammed horribly while sewing the U.P sleeves. I just realised that I never found the tip of the broken needle and think it could be in there jamming the machine. I wll have a look later, otherwise I think a trip back to the sewing machine shop is due. I feel as if this U.P dress will never be done. I have made so many stupid errors on it. I feel like screwing it up into a ball and putting at the back of the scary understairs cupboard.

Instead I am going to go for a walk near T's school and take some deep breaths, probably stopping to buy some chocolate. And I shall be mainly wearing the outfit featured below:

Me made dress Simplicity 3964, refashioned yellow cardigan, Gap jeans via charity shop.

Hope your sewing projects are going more smoothly than mine. Grrrr...

Christmas Cards

I set those children to work...inspired by the Kids Craft Newletter http://http://kidscraftweekly.com/simple_cards_issue.html. We bought a pack of craft felt on Ebay and it is really gorgeous stuff. I cut and stuck the tree shapes, then T decorated them with shapes we already had in the craft box. This was the first batch, I was mean enought to make him do it all again! I really like the simplicity of these and the brightness!

Then little sister had a go, her cards were made with some craft punches. One has a label shape and then we have a small Christmas tree shape and lots of pearlescent white glitter. She enjoyed using the craft punch, we used it on sugar paper and then on some of her gold and red finger paintings.