There’s something wonderfully uplifting about birds, especially when so many regular singers and winged fliers have gone south to avoid Jack Frost.

To make this simple bird ornament, I took regular sheep’s wool batting/roving and needle felted a sort of donut shape (with an indented space in the middle rather than a hole), and covered it with emerald green roving.

Did you hear that emerald green is Pantone’s new color of the year for 2013?

Then I made a simple bird with 2 different balls, one for the body, and one for the head, and I needle felted the head on one edge of the larger ball.

And I personalized it with an initial in gold.

To hang it I strung some embroidery thread in 2 directions across the nest and joined them at the top in the centre where the nest hangs relatively straight across.

This would make a sweet little project for a young needle felter, a great way to use up spare little bits of roving.

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In these days of little light the darkness seems to seep out into the corners of our days, into the meaty middle of it, into the afternoons that used to be spent outdoors, in the warmth of the sun. The littlest one is giving extra patina to the 100 year old wooden floor downstairs. Stomping, almost-jumping (my oh my such practice), tiptoeing and sweet attempts at skipping. And running. And running some more.

And the oldest little one is busy, busy, busy. Invigorated, it seems, by all the opportunity of being inside. Preparing for a kids’ craft fair at the end of the week where she will sell her needle felted notebooks, organic lip balms, bath salts, and some bath bombs.  The rest of her list will have to wait for next year. My Mister Mister says it must be in her genes.

This antique unfinished table linen is being carefully embroidered. A harbinger of the spring and the butterflies and fragrant bulbs that are truly not that far away. Resting and waiting their turn under the frozen earth.

And so we find our way together, as this new stage of one and half and nearly six comes upon us. With solid steps and tiptoes when we need them. It is days like this I feel like the luckiest person in the whole wide world.

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Today’s tutorial is a guest post from my wonderful friend Colleen of  Frugal + Urban

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Everyone needs snuggly real wool mittens this winter. Everyone! But real wool mitts can be hard to find at stores. So why not make them yourself? With this super easy pattern and tutorial you’ll have cozy wool mittens in no time, ready for raking leaves and throwing snowballs–oh, and did I mention that felted wool is waterproof? And it stays warm when it is wet? Can your Thinsulate mitts do that? I don’t think so!

Sourcing your fabric

Okay, the first thing you will need is a lovely soft wool sweater, ideally one that is not wearable any more as a sweater due to stains, shrinkage or holes. I got mine at a thrift store in my home town, and have also had luck at St. Vincent de Paul where huge men’s wool sweaters were only $5.99.

Next, felt the sweater, which basically means throwing it in the washing machine on hot, with a little soap, and maybe a tennis ball or an old pair of jeans for extra agitation, and then checking it periodically to see when it’s been felted “enough”. That would mean when you can’t see the stitch definition any more, and the sweater has shrunk significantly. You can find more detailed instructions elsewhere, because I’m moving on to . . .

Making your mitten pattern

Simply lay your hand on a piece of paper, with the bottom edge of the paper being where the cuff will lie, and trace around your hand and wrist, leaving at least a half-inch around which will include space for your seam allowance and for a bit of room in your mitt.

Then round out any edges that might need tweaking, and cut out your pattern. Easy? So easy.

Cutting your pieces

First, check to make sure that you can get four pieces of your pattern to fit on your sweater. If your sweater has ribbing at the bottom edge, this makes a lovely cuff for your mittens. Don’t forget, you will need to have two pieces of fabric with your thumb facing right, and two with the thumb facing left.

Now that you’ve made sure you have enough fabric, start cutting! The beauty of felted wool is that it will not fray, so you can just cut away and never have to worry about finishing the edges.

Like I said above, cut two pieces with the thumb facing left and two with the thumb facing right. You achieve this by flipping your pattern over, keeping the cuff aligned with the bottom of the sweater’s ribbing.

Once you have your four pieces, pin them together, right sides facing, to make your two mitts.

Adding embellishments

When I was making mine, I noticed that the sweater I was using had these lovely mother-of-pearl buttons, and decided to sew them onto the backs of my mittens as an embellishment. I had already sewn my first mitt, and adding buttons to a mitt that’s already sewn up is not easy my friends. On the second mitt I added the buttons BEFORE sewing up the seams. Much easier.

In short, add your embellishments now, before sewing. You could use buttons, or needle felt a cute little forest creature, or embroider a flower . . . endless possibilities.

Sewing Up

Once your embellishments are added, or you’re happy with your simple beautiful wool, you can stitch up your mitts. I tried two different stitches on my mitts and I preferred the overcast stitch, where you are inserting the needle on the same side of the fabric each time, and bringing the thread around the edge of your seam allowance. I used a doubled length of heavy-duty thread for durability.

The nice thing about this stitch is that it allows the seam edges to turn a bit and melt into each other. This makes a smoother inside for your mitts, and it also means your stitches will become visible as you wear your mitts. So use a colour of thread that matches your fabric, or one that contrasts with it if you want to be daring.

Make sure your pieces are pinned with right sides facing (i.e. you are looking at what will be the insides of the mitt when you are sewing). Then stitch around using an overcast stitch, making sure to hide your knots an inch or so from your cuff edge so they won’t show.

Enjoy your mitts!

Once you are done sewing, turn the mitts right-side-in, using a wooden spoon or a chopstick if you need help getting the thumb turned.

And now, put them on, feel their snuggliness, and enjoy! I bet you want to wear them all the time now. Go ahead, put them on. Just be careful, or the kids will want some too!

This tutorial was written by Colleen from Frugal + Urban (http://frugalurban.wordpress.com) where she blogs about baking sourdough bread, homemaking, homeschooling, crafting, and finding sustainable ways to save money, without sacrificing quality.

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Sneaking in a little bit of plant dyeing these days has been a little challenging for my big girl and I. The man-cub is trying to speak, using his sweet little pointer a lot, and very incredibly restless at night. But the plants are fresh now, right now, and capturing their color in dye baths and (hopefully) onto fabrics and fibres is, well, imminently important.

(photo at top shows turmeric – gold and avocado skin – purple, both with alum-dyed cotton strips)

Ha! “Immenintly important” are not words you could apply to just about anything! Laundry, dishes, weeding, shop work. Sometimes it feels good to leave all that alone and make a dye bath.

Here’s what fresh beets gave us, on cotton strips soaked in alum for a few days.

And here are all our plant and naturally-dyed cotton strips, all laid out (note: the beet-dyed one, above, is not included).

Here is what we used, in clockwise order starting with the green in the bottom left-hand corner of the photo:

• Carrot top greens with no mordant

• Nettle dye bath (with a little bee balm dye bath added at the end) with pre-mordanted alum

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• Turmeric with pre-mordanted alum

• Avocado skins with pre-mordanted alum

• Purple cabbage with pre-mordanted alum

• Beebalm with pre-mordanted alum

• Beebalm + coffee dye bath with pre-mordanted alum

• Purple cabbage, unmordanted

• Beebalm, unmordanted

Here, a close-up of beebalm with alum (pinks), purple cabbage with alum (purple at top) and purple cabbage dye bath with baking soda to change the acidity (mottled green).

Here you can see beebalm with no mordant (light pink), purple cabbage with no mordant, and then one of my favorite – beebalm dye bath mixed with a whole espresso coffee bean dye bath, using allum pre-mordanted cotton.

Hopefully we will still get to fennel-dyeing, as well as elderberry, apple tree bark, acorns and walnuts. Phew. But breakfast first. Now. Have a great day!

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We’ve been dyeing up a storm, and now into our 2nd summer I feel comfortable sharing a little (sweet) tidbit with you, something we discovered through trial and error, and trying all sorts of plants and flowers we didn’t find information about in our books. Finding an easy, pretty pink was not the easiest thing – lots of yellows and greens and grays abound in nature, but pink (especially without mordant) was more elusive.

I have lots of photos and colors to show you in the coming days, and the pillow sham covers my little one and I made with long, thin, hand-dyed strips of cotton in so many delicate colors. And photos of our tentative forays into shibori folding, and dyeing.

By chance, last year, we discovered bee balm. One of our favorite perennial (and self-seeding) plants in the garden because it smells delightful and attracts its namesake very well. The pinkish red petals produce a beautiful pink color and here is how to prepare your dye bath.

After gathering up the petals (leaving the flower centers and seeds to dry up and sow for next year) put them in your dye pot with some water, and vinegar. We found that the acid vinegar brightens the dye bath and intensifies the pink color. Dyeing with little ones is a fantastic hands-on chemistry lesson – about what acids and bases do to dye baths. And a history lesson, about how ancient peoples (right up through pioneer days) used plants and materials from nature to color their worlds, especially their textiles. And a crafting lesson, about how to slowly produce a pillow sham cover, Waldorf playsilk or doll quilt from scratch – including the dyes.

I usually bring the pot to boil and then turn it down to a simmer. Once the petals have given all of their color (could be about an hour, but it depends on how you are cooking them down), you can strain your dye bath to remove the petals and leafy bits.

A large tea strainer works well, I’ve found.

The pink liquid is now ready to be used immediately, or stored for use later on. Below I’ve explained a little bit more about how to use the dye bath to make an eco friendly, non-toxic, naturally dyed pink playsilk, or dye cotton strips for sewing together into doll quilts, pillow sham covers or anything like that.

I generally use 30″ square playsilks, and find the beebalm produces a lovely, intense rose color on the playsilks. It’s even more saturated on the playsilks than on the cotton (see below).

To prepare our playsilks, I soak them in a bowl with hot water and vinegar (2:1 water to vinegar).

After a half an hour or so, and once my dye bath is hot in the pot once again, I unfold the pre-soaked playsilk and place it into the dye pot, where I let it sit for at least an hour, slowly soaking in the beebalm pink.

Then it’s time to rinse in cool water, and dry. A larger amount of beebalm, producing a more intense dye bath, will easily dye a few playsilks.

We also dyed some 2″ wide cotton strips, perfect for piecing together with other similarly dyed strips later on. I’ve found these work well when pre-mordanted with alum.

We found our alum at the local bulk store where it was found in the pickling section. I soaked our cotton strips in a hot water + few tbsp of alum for a few hours. You can even leave it in the pre-mordant for a day or more, until you are ready to dye with them. Then I followed exactly the same method as above, dyeing them, rinsing them and air drying them.

What sorts of plants and natural dyes have you experimented with?

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Do you ever feel like there’s just too much paper around?

We’ve been dreaming of display-type  bookshelves for a few years now, ever since we had our first little reader and realized how much better it would be to actually see the book covers. And to allow her to choose, selecting from Mama and Daddy-edited shelves.  The ability to rotate, curate, and make themes. Inspired by the wonderful library display bookshelves in our own neighborhood branch. After years of having piles of books, in piles, we decided we were going to do something about that. Ah, the “something about that”. Then we (very surprisingly) became pregnant and … fast forward to now. When the bookshelves finally made it onto The Short Short List.

With help from his father-in-law and somewhat extremely keen daughter, my partner put this little one together in a few hours. With some sustainable pine, though I think our next one two will be walnut.

We made a few fixes adaptations, especially adding a rear dowel on all the shelves as our 100 year old mouldings on the walls mean the shelf sits back from the wall just enough to let books fall out the back (if we didn’t have the dowelling there).

Now we have a wonderful place to see our books.

And, speaking of paper, last weekend we were delighted to have our little organic toys and kids’ accessories written up in our local Ottawa Citizen newspaper. It has helped us connect with even more local customers, who can always pick up their orders from one of our homes here in Ottawa, rather than pay to have it shipped. This helps us support “shop local” even though we are currently selling online. So neat. And to see our work in the paper? A huge, tummy-tickling  thrill.

(photo at the top via Flick here)

Hope you are having a lovely weekend, and see you back here with that retro feather hat tutorial I promised last week.

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Here is what we prepared as birthday favours for my daughter to give to her friends at her birthday party this weekend. We did a twist on a traditional snow globe, using upcycled jam and honey jars, and vintage 1970s plastic cake toppers. And gold glitter.

First we prepared our jars (often the longest part! and tried to get as much of the leftover adhesive off the outside of the jars as possible…)

Then we filled them with filtered or distilled water, a tablespoon or so of glycerin, and glitter. Lots of glitter.

Then I carefully scraped off some of the white coating on the inside of the jar lids (being very careful not to spread that dust, as it contains toxic BPA) and hot glued our vintage plastic cake toppers to the inside of the jar lids.

Also, as the plastic figurines are from the 1960s or ’70s it’s quite possible they have lead paint on them, so I handled them carefully and washed hands well afterwards.

Screw on the lid, shake well… and repeat

When we prepared our skier snow globe, we noticed that we couldn’t see the skis very well… so we added a plastic lid we found in our pantry.

Hope you have a wonderful week!

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