String Art

Today was Spiders Spin Webs and making our nail boards for our string art pieces. I thought that instead of making the boards up in advance I'd give the kids the opportunity to help. They loved hammering the nails in (with help). This was Natalie and Leah only -- Becca I think is too little for a hammer and real nails and too young also to manipulate the ball of yarn to make patterns. After making our nail boards I gave Natalie a small ball of yellow yarn and Leah a small ball of orange yarn and sent them off to make designs while I made lunch. Leah's string art turned out to be really beautiful, I was somewhat surprised. We kept it simple -- and really cheap. The frames were old picture frames that Steve found on freecycle, the finishing nails and hammer we already owned, and ditto with the yarn (another example of the usefulness of my stash of odds and ends of craft stuff). If you're making this at home, I recommend a picture frame that is at least 1 1/2 inches thick so that it doesn't split when you put the nails in. Keep them spaced pretty far apart also. We used three nails each for the long sides of the frames and two nails on each short side for a total of 10. If the children were older I'd probably have us do more nails to allow for more complicated patterns.

This afternoon is a special Spider Snack. I had planned to use MaryAnn Kohl's recipe but decided instead to make No-Bake Fudgy Oat Cookies with chow mein noodle legs and a web drawn on the plate with chocolate syrup. Should be fun!

Tonight my prep for tomorrow's lesson is to make Little Miss Muffet, her bowl of curds and whey, and a spider. I can't wait to sink my hands into wool again. I love love love needle felting and it's been a while since I've done a project... not since Little Bo Peep.

The organizational streak continues. I washed all my handwash-only dishes (a HUGE feat) last night, and have been sorting through misc. boxes again today. I found two boxes of shells, which I consolidated into one, and went through and organized all my vintage sewing stuff, as well as my quilting supplies. Hurrah! I bet that right at the time that the garage is all cleaned out and everything has a home, I'll be moving again. Oh well. It's still worth it to try, I guess. :-)