Springtime/Easter crafts

I planned on having my spring book post up by now but wouldn't you know it? I can't find our spring books! They are in one of these boxes here but which one? I'll be digging through them this week but in the meantime I thought I would link to some of our past springtime/Easter crafts in case anyone wants to get a head start!

-Wool felted eggs (to replace the plastic Easter eggs)
-Beeswax egg candle
-grow wheat grass in eggs, watercolor painted eggs, and more crafts!
-Beeswax and tissue paper flowers

Springtime/Easter crafts

Crafting On {& an Autumn Leaves Mobile Tutorial}

The act of creating, in one form or another, preserves my sanity amongst the chaos of life. This explains why I always have more than one project going at a time as well as why my housework tends to fall behind. I enjoy seeing what others are working on and keeping calm with, too. What are you creating? What is keeping you going? Snap a picture or two, post it on your blog, on Instagram #craftingon and/or Flickr and then share it with the rest of us by leaving your link below.


Hello, hello! For this week's crafting on I thought I would share a little project the children and I made on Monday - an autumn leaves wall hanging/mobile. It was super easy to make and very inexpensive (especially since we already had all the supplies on hand). I am sure you can figure it out by looking at the photos but I thought I would share this simple tutorial just in case.

What you will need:

- a somewhat straight stick sturdy enough to hold the weight of the beeswaxed leaves
- a collection of beeswaxed leaves*
- string, thread, hemp cord or soft jute cord (we had the soft jute cord on hand and used that.)

Step one: Tie one end of a single piece of jute cord (at a length of your preference) to one end of the stick with a square knot. Take the other end of the cord and tie it to the other end of the stick in the same manner.

Step two: Lay out your leaves underneath the stick. Move them around until you find a pattern that is pleasing. I tried to make mine hang as if they were falling from the trees above.

Step three: Cut a piece of jute cord for each leaf at the length that you have them placed plus 1 - 2" for your square knots. Tie you leaf onto one end of the cord and then tie the other end of the cord onto the stick in the place you reserved for it. Repeat until you have all of your leaves tied on. Trim any lose ends and hang it up. If you hang it on your wall away from indirect sunlight it may very well last all of autumn and then some.

Enjoy!

*You can find my original tutorial for dipping leaves in beeswax here and examples of what to do with your leaves here, here and here (I know I have more but that was all I could find).

ETA - I have all the items used listed in my Amazon shop here. (affiliate link).


What are you working on? Happy creating!

p.s. - I would love to see any autumn leaves wall hangings/mobiles you create! Please share them here or on Instagram. 

An InLinkz Link-up

Crafting On {& an Autumn Leaves Mobile Tutorial}

Mishaps

Looking at our Spring book.

The weather here in Idaho can't seem to make up it's mind. One day it's rather hot like summer and then the next day it's chilly and windy like early spring. It's funny going through my photographs and seeing Baby F go from wool sleepy sacks to short sleeved cotton shirts in a matter of a few days.

Speaking of summer like weather. We tested out our air conditioning recently to make sure it was working for when the hot weather really hits. In case you didn't know, I am not a hot weather person at all and typically suffer from cabin fever in the summer instead of in the winter like most people. I stay inside our air conditioned house only to poke my head out in the late evening to check on the garden or go for a walk. But back to our air conditioning test. It failed. The air was blowing in the house but the a/c unit outside wasn't even turning on. We called the maintenance men and well, long story short, it turns out our dogs killed the a/c unit by marking on it. I knew dog urine was strong and destructive but corroding metal?! Good gracious! Now I praying that they don't make us pay to replace it.

After spending nearly two weeks of frantically trying to find lost library books (which later appeared in the girls' momento boxes kept under their beds) I decided we needed to do something to prevent this all too common mishap from happening again. Going with "less is more" I started out by limiting how many books they each get. I think one of the problems was that they would get so many books each week that it was hard to keep track of them. Then I designated a book basket for library books only. Since we usually forget our due dates I decided to get a little creative and make a sign for the basket to remind us (along with how many books we have). I just took a small block of wood, drilled a hole in it and painted one side with chalk paint. The I attached it to the basket and used a chalk pen to write the important info. We'll be using regular chalk in the future but the chalk pen was just what I had on hand at the moment. Now let's see if this new little system provides us with a solution to those pesky missing books. I'm crossing my fingers!

Mishaps

Makings

There has been quite a flurry of making around here lately. Unmaking too, as the cat on the baby laundry pile proves. I guess we just prefer to create instead of clean. Can you blame us?

When we were in Oregon during the fall, K and I had gathered a bag full of walnuts from Walnut Hill (at our beloved school) for the purpose of dyeing yarn. I forgot about the walnuts for awhile but then found them again at the end of November. K wanted to make a dye bath immediately so we researched how to do so. We found quite a few different recipes and tutorials for making walnut dye but K and I ended up choosing the fermentation method in this book. The walnuts sat in a bucket fermenting (the book said at least 3 weeks) until last weekend when we finally opened it up and made our dye bath. It was an intense dark brown but the dye yielded a beautiful warm honey brown. I'll share photographs once it's dry.

The children has all been immensely enjoying a new part of our baking rhythm - grinding our own grain in a grain mill Grandma gave them for Christmas. Little L, especially, loves to grind the grain. I swear he could go on for hours! This wonderful gift has inspired us to grow some grains in our garden this year so we can enjoy bread truly made from our own hands from seed to finished product. How great will that be? I just hope we have enough space to grow enough for this endeavor.

And what is a post without something pregnancy/baby related (at least this month)? The children and I are also working on some baby bum bath salt (a natural remedy for diaper rashes). We made our chickweed, plantain and calendula infused oil and now just have to add the rest of the ingredients. Funny thing about our infused oil - I don't know what I was thinking but I put it outside in the sun for a solar infusion like we normally do (as indicated in this book), forgetting that the current temperatures are below freezing. My oil became solid so we brought it back inside and did a double boiler infusion instead.

I was hoping to finish up the baby bum bath salt today but when I opened the Epsom salt that I had purchased a strong smell came from it. I checked the ingredients and there was fragrance added to it. I hadn't come across that before so I never thought to check the ingredients when I picked it up. Oh well. So our salt soak is on hold a couple days longer until I can get to the store again. Now what else can I find to make whilst avoiding the laundry?

Makings

Our new yarn dyeing habit

late night yarn dyeing

knitting with the dockseed dyed yarn (I'm so happy about the subtle variation! I have had a hard time trying to achieve that with our yarn dyeing so far)

two skeins of wool yarn and one skein of silk yarn soaking in a black bean dye bath

wool yarn dyed with black beans

wool yarn on left, silk yarn on right - both dyed at the same time in the same black bean dye bath

yarn simmering in a marigold dye bath (leftover from Michaelmas)

the marigold dyed yarn being over-dyed in the black bean dye bath

progression of color: yarn in front is a skein of marigold dyed yarn after soaking in the black bean dye bath for an hour, the skein in back was just placed in a few minutes before

I have had a few requests to share how K and I have been dyeing our yarn with natural dyes so I thought I would try my best to share our madness methods. Please keep in mind that I am by no means an expert and am learning alongside K (the yarn dyeing mastermind) by trial and error, and advice from wonderful friends. We have had a failure with our bachelor button dye bath trial but we think the experimenting is rather fun! This book has been our number one resource, along with help from K's former handwork teacher at Portland Waldorf School, but you can also find a lot of yarn dyeing information online.

We start out by applying a mordant to our yarn. We typically do about 8 ounces of yarn at a time which works out to a mordant solution of 2 tbsp. alum and 2 tsp. cream of tartar in a pot of water. We simmer the yarn in the solution for about twenty minutes or so and then move it into the dye bath.

For the dockseed dyed yarn shown above and in last Wednesday's post we did the following:

We simmered about 4 ounces of chopped dockseed stalks we collected back in Oregon (I have a jar of the seeds leftover to make crackers with and perhaps try planting in our garden) in a large pot on the stovetop for about an hour and then let the dye bath sit overnight. The next day we strained out the stalks and brought the pot back to a simmer. We added our premordanted (and still wet) yarn to the pot and let it continue to simmer. We were supposed to leave it in for an hour but I took ours out after about thirty five minutes or so. I was afraid it would become a dark brown and I was hoping for a warm, light nutmeg shade. We took the yarn out with some tongs and let it cool down to room temperature. Then we rinsed it in lukewarm water and hung it to dry.

The black bean dyed yarn was a bit more time consuming as it involves soaking for longer periods and not simmering on the stove top. We again planned on dyeing about 8 ounces of yarn total. To do so we poured eight cups of dried black beans in our largest pot and filled it with warm water. We let it soak for forty eight hours (word of caution - this dye bath gets smelly so a laundry room, basement or garage would be a good place to store it while it soaks). Then we strained out the beans and added our premordanted yarn to the dye bath. This time we tried dyeing a couple of skeins of wool yarn and one skein of pure silk yarn (K really has her heart set on knitting the baby a silk hat). I was told to let the yarn sit for forty eight hours but, as usual, we couldn't wait that long. After about twenty four hours we took our yarn out. We rinsed it with lukewarm water (really, really well to remove any smell) and hung it up to dry. You can see in the photographs above that the silk took the dye differently than the wool. The wool is a brighter blue while the silk is almost purple/blue.

Seeing our pretty blue yarn gave K and I an idea. She had been wanting to make a green dye so we thought we would experiment with the dye baths we already had to create our own green by over-dyeing. First we grabbed eight ounces of wool yarn and applied our mordant solution. Then we got out our leftover marigold dye bath, poured it into a pot, added the yarn and simmered it for thirty minutes. We took the marigold dyed yarn out, let it cool and rinsed it with lukewarm water. Then we immediately placed one of the skeins into our leftover black bean dye bath (not on the stove top!). I only did one skein at first because I didn't know how our experiment would turn out and I was a bit attached to the pale yellow yarn we made. At first the yarn looked like it was going to turn an unattractive shade of brown but after about an hour it turned green! Happy with our little experiment, I then added the second skein of marigold yarn. I didn't keep track of exactly how long we left the skeins in, I just kept checking on them throughout the day until I thought they were just the shade of green we were hoping for. I would guess they spent maybe four or five hours total in the black bean dye bath. We rinsed them in lukewarm water and hung them to dry. They turned into this beautiful spring green color. I wasn't able to capture it with my camera today but I will try again this week so you can see what I mean.

I warn you, dyeing yarn with materials found in your backyard or garden is highly addictive. I can't sleep some nights thinking about what we can dye with next. This week I think we'll try using our black walnuts we collected at Walnut Hill (Portland Waldorf School).

Our new yarn dyeing habit

Wool Felted Egg tutorial for Easter or Spring {Appearance of the Root Children}

This article/tutorial originally appeared in the spring 2010 edition of Rhythm of the Home. I was told by the editors that it was one of their most popular articles. It is funny to look back at this now. I can remember when we first started our Root Children celebration. This was before we celebrated Easter as a family (and before I joined the church). I wanted a way for my child (it was only K, then) to experience an egg hunt and all the fun associated with springtime. Now my three children still receive small gifts (like seeds) to welcome spring but our focus is more on the Easter season. These eggs, of course, could be made for whatever celebration you like!

I apologize for the quality of the photographs and that some of them are different sizes. That's how they were saved in my e-mail for whatever reason.

One of my family's favorite yearly rhythms is the arrival of Spring. My children look forward to it more than any other day of the year. That is the day the Root Children visit our home in celebration of returning above ground to play. Staying true to Waldorf holiday traditions, we start preparing about a week before the actual day by getting out our copy of 'The Root Children' by Sibylle Von Olfers and reading it every night before bed. I can see my little ones' anticipation build every time we read it, as they wait excitedly for spring to come. My oldest will often update me on what the Root Children living underground in our own yard are doing. She will see a flower emerging from the ground and tell it to wait until Mother Earth opens the door before it can blossom, or she'll see a beetle outside and tell me the Root Children just finished cleaning him and let him above ground to dry off.
When spring finally comes, my little ones wake up to find a Root Child waiting for them on our kitchen table in front of a decked out festivity stand. When they see her they know spring is officially here.
The Root Children are very generous and like to announce their arrival with small gifts for my children. To make it even more fun, they hide these gifts in wool felted eggs all over our backyard for my little ones to find. Here are simple instructions for making your own wool felted eggs to celebrate spring's arrival (or Easter!). You can do this alone to surprise your little ones, or you can have them help. This is a great craft for children of all ages. My youngest loves to play with the wool in the 'bubble water.'

Supplies needed:
- natural dish detergent (we like to use Seventh Generation)
- a large bowl
- hot water
- wooden eggs OR plastic easter eggs taped shut with packing tape or duct tape
- a washboard or bubble wrap
- wool roving in colors of your choice (we try to use bright colors so they really stand out when hidden in our yard)
- scissors

Instructions:
Wrap the plastic (or wooden) egg in a thin layer of wool with it all going in the same direction. Use just enough wool to cover it. Next, wrap or lay cross-ways another thin layer of the same wool or another color. The important thing here is to criss-cross the wool so that the fibers will lock together.
Now that your egg is ready to felt, prepare your bowl by adding a few drops of dish detergent and some hot water. The hotter the better but if little ones are going to be helping, make it more on the warmer side. Swish the water and detergent around to thoroughly mix together.
Start out by holding your wool covered egg in one hand and using the other hand to scoop a little bit of water at a time and gently sprinkle over your egg, very carefully patting the water in so as not to dislodge the wool.You do not want to pour or submerge your egg into the water until it has started felting. Once the wool is wet and beginning to cling to itself, you can start to lightly rub the wool in your hands. After doing this for a couple of minutes, you will see that the wool has begun to felt. You can now rub it more vigorously in your hands, or rub it on the wash board, or even wrap it up in the bubble wrap and roll it back and forth. Do this for about 10 minutes. You will need to continuously sprinkle more hot water on it or even submerge it in the bowl. The wool needs the heat along with the friction to be able to fully felt. After those first layers have fully felted you can add more layers one at a time, and just felt each layer as you did the first. I have found that adding many layers of thin wool is easier to work with than a few thick layers, so after each layer seems tough and felted I add another thin layer going in the opposite direction of the past layer. There really is no right or wrong with how many layers to add just continue adding until you are satisfied. Just remember : the more layers you add the sturdier your egg will be. One tip I learned recently is if you don't feel that the egg has felted well enough you can put the felted egg into the toe of a pair of pantyhose and knot them right above so it can not move and run it through your washing machine on a HOT rinse cycle. Once you feel it has enough layers, rinse your felted egg in cold water to remove any of the left over detergent and then let it dry thoroughly, this usually takes a day or two. Once dry, you can add designs to your egg by needle felting them on, or leave them as they are. To remove the plastic (or wooden) egg from inside the felted egg, cut horizontally in a straight line or zigzagged (so it looks like the egg was cracked open) about halfway to 3/4 of the way up the egg . Make sure you cut only a little more than halfway around the egg. If you cut it open too much you risk it ripping from excited little hands.
You can make the openings of the eggs look neater you can use some embroidery floss and do a simple blanket stitch around the edge of the opening.
Fill the eggs with whatever simple gifts you like. When the Root Children leave these eggs for our children they usually like to fill them with seeds to plant in our garden, crystals and stones, and perhaps a little wooden or knitted animal. Now place them outside all over your yard the morning of the first day of spring and let your little ones discover the magic of the Root Children in their own yard. Enjoy!!

Wool Felted Egg tutorial for Easter or Spring {Appearance of the Root Children}