Kokka Not Lego Fabric

Kokka Let's Play fabric -- washimatta shop on Etsy

Okay, it’s really called Let’s Play or something, but it totally looks like Legos.  Wouldn’t this be fun on the back of a Lego play mat?  I’ve been thinking of making one that is like the one the hubby remembers from childhood.  Sort of a circle, with a drawstring all around.  You play on the mat with your Legos, and when you are done, cinch it up and hang it on a hook or doorknob.

Thanks to True Up for highlighting it in their latest Quilt Market post about Kokka.  Love True Up.

Halloween Houses and Random Crafting

Pumpkins carved by the boys

Well, October has not been a good blogging month.  I have been busy crafting (and working like a dog at the paid job), just not blogging about it.  And I was able to get together with my girlfriends this weekend for our annual Girl’s Weekend!  Fun!  We went to the White Mountains of NH and it was gorgeous and perfect weather.  A bit chilly, but it is mid-October after all.

I also had my monthly crafty night with my local friends last weekend and got to work on some things.  I made some mummies for the Halloween Houses, and also some ghosts!  I dusted off the scroll saw and made the ghosts from the hubby’s scrap pile.  The first ghost I made from pine, so I decided to paint him with some acrylic paint.  The second ghost I made from some gorgeous curly maple, so I kept him unpainted, and just used a beeswax polish on him.  Love them!  I also did an inaugural run on the wood burner, and burned in the ghosts’ features.

Wooden ghosts

The mummies are just “men” people turnings and I wrapped little strips of an old white sheet around and used some Aileen’s craft glue.  Before I glued on the strips of fabric though, I painted them white with some acrylic paint, and used a thin brush to make some tiny eyes.  I got the idea originally from looking at the little gnome mummies that were posted on Wee Folk Art last year.

Mummies!

And since I had the wood burner out, I pulled out a penguin that I made many months ago on the scroll saw for my youngest.  I hadn’t finished him because I wanted to wood burn the lines in before painting with the watercolors, in an effort to keep the watercolor paint from bleeding into the different areas.  I thought he turned out very well!  Stocking stuffer!

Wooden penguin

I have also been working on a little embroidery.  The “pink house” tutorial that Melissa posted on Sew Mama Sew a few months ago.  I love her stuff, and was so excited that she posted a tutorial!

My "pink" house embroidery

And then all the other stuff of fall, like pumpkin carving, apple picking and cider making, soccer games, football in the yard, watching football on the TV (Go Blue!), and starting to anticipate winter.  I was watching the Patriots play in Foxborough tonight and it was snowing!  Eek!  Just rain here….so far.

Our new favorite backyard game -- "tackle soccer"

Oh,……and did I forget to mention the super-cute wet-felted wool acorns??  More on those later…

Wet felted wool acorns

MOFGA’s Common Ground Fair

This year was our third Common Ground Fair.  Put on by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association every September, it is quite the event.  This is not your typical New England country fair.   There’s no midway, no carny rides, no skee-ball.  Just a big, beautiful Maine field with gorgeous animals, awesome fiber, and yummy Maine organic food.  Although of course there was fried dough – but it was Maine organic ingredients fried dough.  The boys had a ball in the Children’s Area where they got their faces painted, jumped in the haystack…many times, and hammered nails.  We did the cardboard sledding hill both on the way in and out.

Cardboard sledding is not as easy as snow sledding

Woo-hoo! Haystack!

Hammering nails

Go organic. Buy local!

We visited on Saturday because of the expected rain on Sunday.  Along with 52,000 other people, I think.  We met some friends there who were having their first Common Ground experience, and got to meet their new baby!  Wee!  She was precious.

Border Collie / Sheep demonstration - always extremely popular

Cool foot-operated lathe

Hand drilling

As always, my favorite is all the yummy wool and fiber.  I was good though, and only bought one thing.  A kit to make little table mats.  I’m not sure what they are called, but it has this weaving cloth that reminds me of latch hook, and you weave bits of wool roving in and out.  The boys had fun picking out a bunch of different colors of roving.  So, who knows how it is going to turn out!  The fair artwork this year was Maine heirloom apples, so with the hubby’s current obsession with cider making, we had to get something from the MOFGA store.  (Who am I kidding, we ALWAYS get something at the country store.)  The boys/men all got t-shirts, and I got this super-cool bag that I love, which I don’t seem to have a picture of.  I’ll remedy that.  It’s very cool.

Yummy yarn

More yummy yarn

Until next year, Common Ground Fair!

Hey wait! Who's selling the kids?

Halloween Houses, Part 1

Houses painted inside and out

Step 1 is completed.  The houses are all painted (standard, black acrylic paint) inside and out, and are now dry.  I did help the boys out and touched up their houses after they had gone to bed.  But, now what, you ask???

The boys are very excited about decorating their houses!  You should have heard them in the car on the way home from school.  They were listing off all the little characters that they could make to live in the houses.  Ghosts, skeletons, headless horsemen, mummies, zombies, Frankenstein, witches, etc.  They have very grandiose plans!  I guess we’ll see how it all turns out.  So far, I’m thinking the following:

1) Cover the inside of some of the window with black crepe paper.  DH had the great idea to buy a flickering battery-powered tea light for inside.  Ooh, spooky!  And then board up some of the windows with popsicle sticks.

2) Thought I would make a few  little pumpkins, maybe find some mini hay bales, etc., to decorate the outside.

3) Mummies! Similar to the ones on Wee Folk Art.

4) Spooky poseable skeleton guys and walking ghosts a la The Small Object.

5) I’m going to try to make a witch out of a clothespin doll.  We’ll see.  I had the idea to make a little witch’s broom using a fallen stick and some raffia or something.  Who knows?

6) I think I might be able to cobble together a Frankenstein likeness with a little wooden gnome guy, painted green with maybe a brown tunic/pants made out of felt.

7) Oh and I want to do something to the roof.  Sarah at The Small Object put black glitter glass on the roof which looked super-cool.  But, I might just try regular black glitter if I can find it locally somewhere.

8) And I think I might Kool-Aid dye some silk scarves in browns and dark greens to function as the base for the houses (or maybe use tea/coffee for the brown ones since brown Kool-Aid is hard to find here, however I have heard of a brown Kool-Aid flavor in Mexico).  The boys want to make spooky trees too, and we’ll need to figure out some spider webs to throw in there.  (And sort of as an aside, check out this thread on Mothering where someone dyed wool yarn with black beans!  Super cool colors.)