Reading

We are now into our latest read "The Princess and The Goblin" by George MacDonald. I was doing some reading about Tolkien and CS Lewis when I came across George MacDonald's name, and discovered that he wrote kids books. So far this has gotten everyone entranced. Around the World in 80 days, was excellent but some of it was a little dry for Willow and Gabriel.

Activities

Recently we've tried out a few different activities. In my corner I have a multitude of repair work, and other things to do. Willow and Gabriel have some pants needing to be fixed, as do I, and there are a few other bits there too. For my brother, Justin, I am crocheting a hat as a very early Christmas present, before he heads off to Germany later in the year. I'm also still in the middle of doing Damien a jumper- I'm now onto the front, but unfortunately with all this other work I'm not quite getting through it quickly enough for him. On the plus side I have finished the corduroy pants of mine that I was redecorating into 3/4 pants, so that's one thing off the list.

Homeschool wise we've been trying out a few things. Last week we made pompoms, with varying success depending on the thickness of the wool. I read it works better to have a very fine ply, but we wanted to try a few colours, and some of the thicker ones really didn't work all that well. Still it was a fun exercise, and they look quite nice hanging in our carport.

Today we tried out making our own felted sheets. We're not sure yet if it was a success- they're still drying, so time will tell. I found a method using sushi mats, so since we have an abundance of them that seemed perfect. It was a bit tricky with Elessar, he was very enthused to join in, and help with laying the wool. If it comes out nicely I plan to use some on the slippers I'm making for Gabriel.

Gabriel has just felted his first bit of knitting and sewn it into a beautiful pillow for his doll.

And Willow is still working on knitting her baby booties, they're coming on a little slowly, but very nicely.

Farmer's Market

Historically, we rise late and slowly on Sundays. However the last two weeks we have managed to make it to our local farmer's market, much to our kids pleasure, in time for the kids cooking session. Funnily enough one has wanted to bake one week, and the other the following week, but neither both together, and I'm not at all sure why.

Yesterday, Gabriel got to make a hamburger, from all local ingredients, and last week Willow made orange poppyseed muffins. It's lovely getting them to participate in a cooking session there with the growers, farmers and their produce.

Current Reading

Our latest afternoon read is by Jules Verne.  "Around the World in 80 Days."

the things I made

I made a pompom today.

• A blanket for my grandma's cat

• a recorder bag

• two rice bags

• a necklace and some earrings

Shopping

After a nice relaxing two weeks off school, we headed off to do some shopping for some bits that we needed around home.

The first stop was The Conservatory, our local nursery shop, to purchase a Blood Orange tree for our garden. Xavier was suggesting a lime, but it cost a bit more, and I love blood oranges. Earlier in the week, we'd planted our Kumquat, since it is looking much happier again, after the hot March we had. It struggled along during the heat wave, sitting in the pot, and it only seemed fair to plant it. The poor thing was rather neglected after the birth of Arden, and didn't get nearly enough water when the heat finally arrived. Anyhow we found a nice home for our Blood Orange in the back corner, just along from the Kumquat, and provided it with some Devic Essence to help with it's move to our garden. I haven't tried this out on my plants before, but there was some discussion on the idea at the White Light Essence course I attended, so we decided to give it a try.

After the tree planting we headed to town, and into Lincraft, where I selected some ribbon and lace to add onto a pair of old corduroy pants of mine that I'm presently revitalising. I have cut the ends off, and added some stitching, and also was in need of something extra for them, which is why the lace and ribbon was needed. I was happy with the selection, but disappointed with the service at Lincraft. I had noticed before, but commented on this occassion, that it seems they no longer neatly loop up and tie lace, ribbon, etc. The girl agreed, and I commented that I would prefer to pay a bit extra for quality service rather than have my pile of ribbon and lace shoved in a bag. I think I'll have to find somewhere else to shop, maybe even on the internet. The two big shops here Spotlight and Lincraft seem like craft shops with the quality of a $2 shop. I must say that I miss buying my craft supplies at John Lewis where everything was so neat, and the service was pleasant and helpful.

On the plus side though I did finally find some nice wooden buttons for the cardigan I knitted last year. I have been wearing it for quite a while, and it will be so much better to be able to button it up. Actually Willow found the buttons, and they weren't the colour that I had envisaged, but they suit the cardigan nicely, and I will certainly be feeling much warmer!

Birthday Crafts

Recently our neice and cousin, Elly, celebrated her fourth birthday. Since they were staying in Adelaide it was the first time we've been able to attend her birthday party- they reside in Mt Gambier. So since we usually have a rule where we don't give presents for cousins at birthday time- there are too many of us- Willow, Gabriel and I had a crafting session to make a present for her.

We recently bought a knitting book called 'Usborne's How to Knit' which has some nice simple patterns for children learning to knit, with simple instructions to help them learn to follow a pattern. So I decided to give a try felting some wool, that was in my basket, from when we lived in Scotland. Unfortunately I had no idea as to what type of wool it was- ie if it would felt, so I knitted a few pieces to see what would happen. The result was one unfelted yellow piece, one felted magenta piece, and one stretched and much more fluffy purple piece. Gabriel and I used the magenta to make some shapes- his were placed in the gift box, whilst I sewed mine onto the purple which had made a very nice small scarfe shape through all the washing.

Meanwhile Willow had been hard at work knitting a party bag from the same knitting book, and after some dedicated knitting finished it in time for the party. We thread some ribbon through just before it was time to go, and everything looked lovely!

Knitting

Since we mostly follow a Steiner based curriculum at our Unicorn school, both Gabriel and Willow have been learning to knit. To teach them to knit I also had to learn. To be honest that isn't entirely true, I actually learnt to knit when I was six, and then spent the next four years knitting my dad a scarf- it was a nightmare, and that combined with my mum taking forever to knit anything, totally put me off knitting.

Anyhow further down the track, and Willow is at the Glasgow Steiner School, and loads of the parents knit, I didn't really feel ready to face knitting, so instead I learnt to crochet. I crocheted a variety of hats for everyone in the family, making them up as I went along. After leaving Glasgow, homeschooling, returning to Adelaide, messing about with schools, we decided to homeschool again and I had to learn to knit to teach the kids, so now all three of us are busy knitting a variety of things.

Gabriel has only started to knit this year, and this has been challenging for me, as I knit left handed, and I had to teach him to knit right handed. Obviously essentially it is the same, but reversed. Apparently my Grandma taught me to knit left handed using a mirror, but since I've learnt most things by watching and reversing them, I figured I could do the same to help Gabriel. Now I'm able to knit both right and left handed, but I am much faster knitting left handed unsurprisingly. Willow ended up being taught by my Mum. She went for a sleepover one weekend with her Grandma, and came home being able to knit. So for the last couple of years I've mostly helped her with dropped stitches, and showed her how to purl, but on the whole it was much simpler, as she already knew the basics.

Welcome to our Unicorn and Crafts School Blog

Willow, Gabriel and Myself have decided to start our own blog based around some of our homeschool activities. Enjoy our adventures.