Learning to Knit

So, the kids in my class are learning to knit and the first step today was to begin to make our needles. Following the directions in Kids Knitting, we are doing the polymer clay balls for the end of the dowels. You can buy packs of 12 pre-cut dowels in the Wilton cake decorating section at Walmart for less than 2 bucks, making this a fairly inexpensive craft for a class. The REAL expense is the yarn! Anyway, I am baking the beads tonight.

Baking the polymer clay releases dangerous fumes if it is over-baked and so there are different recommendations of how to do this safely. One is to use a toaster oven that is dedicated to polymer clay so no residue gets in your regular oven. One is to use your regular oven (if you are doing this very infrequently) and to open up all the windows in your house to provide adequate ventilation. One suggestion I just read online is to boil it in water. Obviously you would want a craft-only pot for this.

from http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/6883/basics.html:
To harden Sculpey, bake it in an oven at 225 degrees for 15 minutes for every half-inch thickness of Sculpey. A toaster oven works fine if the piece you're working on is small enough, the kitchen oven is better for large pieces. Just remember to remove it well before dinner time!

Sculpey can also be hardened by boiling it in water. This works great if an oven isn't available, but a pan and hot plate or stove are. Another advantage of boiling over baking is that the pieces never scorch or become discolored from too much heat. Boiling works best on a solid Sculpey piece. If you are boiling a piece that has an armature and foil filler, care must be taken that no cracks develop on the piece, as water can leak into the piece and cause potential problems.

I will try the boiling since I haven't been happy with the regular oven technique and I don't want to open all the windows in January! I will report on how it goes.

The students are dying to try spinning wool and this afternoon after they left to go home for the day I found the bag of wool that had been sheared off our Tidewater sheep this summer (remember when I spent all summer tending the sheep?) so we can wash it, card it, the whole deal... oh, I know they will be so excited. By the way, we are working this into the curriculum under History (the history of clothing) in case you are at a school that won't accept it just for its own merits. We will be making beanbags to start, casting on 12 stitches since 12 is so lovely with fractions and my 2nd years need more practice with fractions. When you have knitted six stitches you are halfway across, three stitches is a quarter of the way across, etc.


Notes on wool pictures:

In my other class (Sunday School) we are making magic wool pictures. This is very labor intensive so we are spreading it out. First we did the story of Epiphany and Herod's decree and the angel telling Joseph to flee to Egypt. Then I had the children each take a tray and go over to the bins of wool roving and choose the colors they wanted and lay them out on the tray. This works as a first draft of the picture, helps them see how much of each color they might need (more sky, less donkey hoof), and to give an overall idea of the color scheme -- does it look balanced? Too dark? For the next step I had them carefully tease out all their wool choices so that they were airy and fluffy. The number one trick to success in dry wool pictures is to have the pieces of wool be quite small and open; if there is too much wool or it is compacted you can't get it to adhere well. By teasing the wool prior to beginning the picture, I hope to ensure their success. Otherwise, kids will be rushing to complete the design and throwing wool down in a hurry.

I will also let you know how this goes... I am doing this project with 5 children ages 3rd - 5th grade. They are quite excited about it! The knitting project is 18 children ages 1st - 5th grade plus three adults.