Unplugged project - clothing

I've been intending to join the unplugged project for a few weeks now. We finally got around to it this week albeit a little bit late. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we'll be in sync with all the other participants. For more information about this project, go to unplug your kids.

Last summer I made Percy some felted slippers and recently Sarah and Bill have been asking for some too. So when I saw that this weeks unplugged theme was clothing I immediately ordered the merino wool in Sarah and Bill's chosen colours.

Making Bill's slippers: to make the template, Sarah drew around Bill's feet, then I drew a line around it, rounding it off and enlarging it by about an inch all round. I drew two lines up to make a boot shape then cut out a template using a plastic placemat. Meanwhile Sarah decided to make a pair of slippers for one of their Power Rangers!

I then started to lay the wool over the template. On the first layer we lay the fibres running from left to right then on the next layer we positioned the fibres running from top to bottom. I repeated this so that we had four layers making sure that each layer was about 1 inch larger than the template. Then we dampened the wool with some hot, soapy water to press the fibres to gether before carefully lifting the template and wool up and turning it so the the wool was now on the table (on top of a towel, beach mat and bubble wrap). Next, I folded the excess wool over the sides of the template then repeated the above process.

Next I covered the wool with a net curtain and massaged the wool through the curtain. When the wool appeared to be felting I removed the curtain and rolled the wool covered template in the the bubble wrap and beach mat and rolled backwards continuously, only stopping to move the template around in different directions.

I then cut through the wool and template to separate the slippers and continued to roll them a few more times.

Then I started on Sarah's slippers. At some point the children decided that their Power Rangers and dolls needed rugs and blankets, so this is what they were doing:

And the end results:

For some reason neither of the two pairs of slippers that I made yesterday felted as well as Percy's (in the middle). I'll have to find an experienced felter to ask where I'm going wrong. Nonetheless, we had fun and I'm still reasonably pleased with the results. If you want to try making these slippers, I used this pattern and from there you can link to the method.

The next theme for the unplugged project is bottle, due to be blogged on Monday.

Unplugged?

Does wireless count? Thought not!

About time we start our first Unplugged Project then!

Starting a blog: Take two!

There have been loads of things in the last four weeks that I would have liked to have blogged; there was the snow, Sarah's birthday party, her seventh birthday, walking up one of the Malvern Hills with my parents and plenty of other things that I can't remember right now. Then there are all those little 'educational' moments like Bill counting and wanting to know how to write the initial letter of his name, Percy taking a guess at reading some words based on their initial sound, and Sarah coming up with the idea of separating alfalfa seeds from rice using a sieve. The fact that I'm struggling to remember many examples even though I know that there have been loads of these moments is a good reminder of why I wanted to start a blog in the first place. Must try harder this time!

Today was our busy HE day. We went to French Club this morning which is conveniently held in a lovely arts cafe so we got there early and had croissants for breakfast. Usually Bill and I go and do a few errands whilst the older two are at French but I was still drinking my tea and Bill was still eating his croissant when the class started so we stayed in to watch today. Sarah was really keen to participate today although she forgot how to say how old she is despite practising on the way! Percy introduced himself well and appeared to enjoy joining in the actions to the songs and rhymes but was reluctant to speak too much. This isn't unusual for him and we are really lucky that the French teacher is very patient and understanding; he always speaks to all the children and gives them a turn but never pushes them to answer just moves on to the next child.

After French we went to Oxfam to get the dried mango that the children like and as usual I picked up a couple of books. Meanwhile Percy was looking at the toys and found two of the Power Ranger figures that we were looking to replace, still in their packaging. I never have that kind of luck in charity shops!

We went home, the children played and I caught up with a few emails. We had lunch and I looked up a playdough recipe on the internet only to find that we had no salt. I decided that I would buy the salt on the way to our HE meeting and make the playdough there instead of interupting the children's play.

Today was the HE meeting that my friend and I run together. There were two families there that I haven't met before and both seemed really nice. One live in the same town as us and the other live not far from us and have a seven year old girl who Sarah got on really well with. As usual most of the children spent most of the time outside. Sarah, Percy and Bill were all playing Power Rangers with some of their friends, none of whom had known anything about Power Rangers before today!

Tonight Sarah took herself off to bed about 8 o'clock, Bill came and asked for 'mummy milk' and went to sleep on the sofa about an hour later and Percy played a game which involved lining up his plastic dinosaurs and soft animal toys and numbering them, starting at 50 and working backwards! Eventually he came give me a cuddle and fell asleep shortly after asking me to leave his toys out so that he can play the same game in the morning!

Time for me to go to sleep now I think. I have plans for a blog-worthy day tomorrow!