More on the Felted Eggs...

Officially, Denise is a pathologist. But I'm beginning to suspect that she's studying to be a Waldorf Kindergarten teacher on the side.
I told her that I thought her felted eggs were great and she came back with even more good tips from her experience. I've added the links.

Part of the trick I think is getting it wet and
medium hot and just compressing the wool for a few minutes (pre-felting maybe?) before you try to really felt. We did it at Luke's school and all the 4 year olds needed help and all the 5 year olds were slow, but self sufficient. I think it was the size of their hands. But somewhere between the 5 and the 10 minute mark it just - zap- felts all at once and is tight with no extra wool.

Extensions - with a bigger egg (Michaels arts and crafts store used to sell wooden ostrich and goose size eggs) you can make a fanciful, lots of color egg and put a sewn felt or needle felted dragon inside. Oh my yes.

Another cool thing is you can use the same technique to make flowers. For instance, crocuses have that shape or tulips. Varying colors appropriately and separately felting the stem then just sewing them together. There's a lady in BC called Suzanne Down who does the crocus version and uses it as a fairy house.Luke is offering to share candy! and so I must go.
~D

By the way -- Suzanne Down is going to be one of the featured presenters at the upcoming Healthy Families Conference at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, April 18 & 19
~R.

Happy Easter!

We tried to make little egg/chick combos like these down at RAW and we couldn't get them to work! So Denise provided us with the goods here, and a link to some instructions to boot --
Denise says:

Hi all! These are terribly fun to make and perfectly safe for little hands. In fact, they make little hands really clean. You need to find a water proof egg shape - you can use a wooden egg, a stone or even a plastic egg. It's simple wet felting, it works EVERY time, and you can get directions and pictures from Fiona Duthie . I made them with my son, it takes about 10 minutes an egg. But it would be awesome fun to make them secretly by yourself, have them hang around and then have the chicks appear as an easter surprise. Happy Felting! Denise.

Birthday Present Felted Fruit

Georgia's birthday was on the 21st of March (!) but I wanted to share with you her favourite gift -- the felted food and kitchen accessories sent to her by her Aunt Denise & family in Ottawa (Denise provides me with many fabulous posts, see previous)
I'm inspired to make a bunch of these goodies for other kids I know for birthdays. And I think it's a kid-friendly project, too --
I haven't tried, yet, but I'm sure 4 yr old Georgia would be capable of cutting out the pieces of old felted sweater for me, if not helping with the stitching.
Denise is a genius of gifts for kids; she sends treasure boxes of little, bite-size, fascinating open-ended accessories & activities that engage Georgia for hours. I'm taking notes.
This felted fruit & pizza came with a tablecloth, bandana-apron with pretty ribbon, and a little 'menu' titled 'Georgia's Garden Grill', with prices listed for a bunch of cute stuff and some photos of G and her cousins from last summer in Nova Scotia. There was also a jar of loose-leaf 'tea' (dried roses) and some game ideas.

Georgia's Version: Daisy Basket

Here's how Georgia's Version of the Daisy Basket worked out.
We cut the base out of an old Kandinsky art calendar
(Russian abstract expressionist painter); then used the deep navy chunky yarn I had lying around; and we finished it off by sewing a strip of black paper around the outside of the top edge.
Georgia likes to do everything 'together', a very intensive format where she and I break up all the steps into small bits, and she does all the small bits that she can do, and I assist. And sometimes, if the project isn't going fast enough for her, then she'll ask me (or I'll offer) to do a bunch quickly. In this case, she insisted on doing all the weaving while I held & turned the basket base & adjusted the tension. She did a few stitches on the top edge but generally found the needle too hard to push through the needle holes I had pre-made, so was happy to let me finish it off quickly so she could enjoy the results.