This summer, the kids really got into tube knitting after trying it out at a the Maritime Festival in the summertime.

What fascinated me is that the artist used a home-made knitting tool, that she had created from coloured card-stock, popsicle sticks and patterned tape.

We discovered some patterned duct tape at Walmart and used that when we made our own at home.  It’s great to have home-made ones because you can use them with a large group and even have older kids make their own tubes.

The knitting itself is very easy.  You just tie the wool on (we discovered you have to use regular wool, not thick wool), loop the wool around each one of the popcicle sticks, then put the wool on top of the loop and lift the loop over the line of wool.  Some very clear instructions about how to do the knitting can be found here at Craftinsanity.com.

Keep doing that over and over, pulling tight until all the wool is used up.  My only question is, what to do with the knitted tube when finished?

I think my favourite idea so far is to make a knitted cactus!:)

I was fascinated to discover pictures of these candy bouquets on pinterest, my daughter wanted to have her friends make them at her birthday party, I but found it difficult to find instructions to make them.  After doing some research, I thought I’d post the instructions that I ended up following.

First, cut some styrofoam balls in half and glue them on the top of the pop can with a glue gun.  Each girl chose a “curly” straw to start out and pushed the straw into the styrofoam.  The best way to add the candy to the styrofoam ball was with toothpicks.

Some instructions suggested using a glue-gun to glue the candy on, but this is not practical, or as safe for a larger group.  I instructed the kids to use scotch tape to tape the candies to the toothpicks and then insert the toothpicks into the styrofoam ball.  As the girls worked on their bouquets, they discovered different ways to attach the candy, such as sticking a two-sided toothpick straight into the candy, or making them dangle down off the toothpick.  Suckers are of course easy to just stick in without the help of a toothpick.

The girls really enjoyed creating the bouquets.  There was lots of discussion about their designs and of course plenty of sampling.  We started with a 3kg bag of candy and most of it was gone by the end.

The kids seemed thrilled with the results of their work and we tied some ribbon around the base of the can at the end and curled it with scissors.

A great idea for any kind of party.  Enjoy!

I’m not one to encourage division of gender, but I am noticing a trend around our house lately.  The “ladies” are inside making Christmas crafts, while the “men” are outside building and digging.

  Each year the girls and I choose a craft to make and give as gifts.  I’ll post some of our crafts from this year soon, but I especially loved this angel ornament craft that we made last year.

I got the idea from one of my most favourite books ever, which I’ve mentioned before, and it’s in my sidebar. The girls painted the wooden heads and the tiny terracotta pots with silver paint.

This one was painted by Megan when she was three.  The raffia wings are twisted and tied; then they are secured by wrapping a sparkly pipe cleaner around them and the neck, ending in the shape of a halo.  And what a wonderful coincidence.  Just today, Miranda brought this terracotta bell ornament home from her school craft fair.

 Her school had a Christmas craft fair where parents and kids donated numerous crafts and also had crafting nights and afternoons.  Then today, the students had the opportunity to purchase the crafts as special gifts for their parents, friends and siblings.  Isn’t that a great idea?  Miranda was so excited about it, but she was not actually as excited about the craft fair as she was about the ladybug that she proudly carried home in a “bugbottle” lent to her by her teacher.  Apparently, she and a couple of friends in her class caught it at lunch.  Now she’s doing a report on ladybugs in class as well.  Anyways, back to terracotta ornaments.

They are cute, easy for kids, fun and lovely on the tree.  Enjoy your own Christmas crafting!