Craft Challenge: Desk supplies tree topper

We discussed the idea of running some craft challenges. Then I put up the little Christmas tree at work, and it needed something for the top. Therefore, challenge 1: "make a tree-topper with things you have at your desk."

Here's mine, suitably themed for the maths staffroom:

I emailed it off to Rhiannon, and she responded with this index-card present:
 

Then I emailed our mother, and our stepfather came back with this penknife angel:

Join us! Make a tree topper with the stuff at your desk! We'd love to see what you come up with.

Sock Snowmen

Rhiannon and I feel very differently about Pinterest. This is why I love it - cute easy project ideas. And finding cool blogs or websites you otherwise wouldn't find. This sock snowman comes from the blog "Then She Made" and includes lots of nice pictures with the instructions.

It can be no-sew, and it can be very ethical/eco. If you have socks you don't want any more, buttons, ribbon or string, rubber bands and rice, you're there. In my case, I got rid of some knee socks that I've been keeping despite the fact they cut off circulation to my legs.

I have a few reservations about the rice. As you can see, all the rice creeps to the butt and stays there. Like all foods.

Also when you move him, his head lolls around in a disturbing way that makes me feel like someone will call the soft toy docs on me.

This second one I did with stuffing after a bit of rice at the bottom. The rice helps him sit up properly, but the stuffing stays where you tell it to.

My noses are made from bits of this orange twine that our cat net came wrapped in.

Bennie said he likes the mismatched but colour-coordinated buttons. "They look like homeless snowmen."

Soft Toy Spheres, Baseball-style

I've mentioned before, as I explored designing a pattern for a polar bear, I have a class doing Soft Toy Design as a unit for year 7 technology. Teaching is such a great way to learn! They've come up with all these ideas and I'm trying my best to find achievable ways to make them happen. One girl wants to do the head and body of her leprechaun as spheres.

I remembered reading Abby Glassenburg talk about baseball heads, so I said I'd try that out and we'd see if it was easy. I wanted more of a complete baseball though, minus the neck. So with help from this wikihow article, I drafted my baseball pattern.

Gosh I really enjoy drafting stuff like this. It takes me back to the good old tech drawing days of year 9 and 10.

I brainstormed some ideas for what I could make my sample sphere into. Pea? Tomato? Blueberry? Snowman? Caterpillar? Eyeball?

Ultimately it would be up to my fabric stash to decide. Blueberry/Ribena-berry it is. (Ok I could also have done snowman but it was already 8:30 by then and I like to get to bed early.)

Why do people who write tutorials never say "This is going to be fiddly and annoying to get it to line up" or "You will probably end up with more left on one side than the other"? I'm going to say it - these things might happen to you too. Be warned.

I decided to give mine safety eyes for the best of all reasons: because I happened to have some safety eyes. Also a little stitched smile.

"If your ball looks rather "squarish" ... you drew your two original circles too far apart." I did think they looked too far apart, but I went with my carefully calculated two thirds, like they told me to. Next time, round down lots. *sigh*

Still, he can be a slightly squashed blueberry.

Also, this was my first project using eco-friendly corn fiber stuffing from innergreen (and the fabric scraps, of course). The weird thing is that it smells like a foodstuff. Innergreen only sell in large quantities, so I bought mine through Tomni Design, from whom I also bought a rattle for my shapes cube.

My students are my most generous critics, they love everything I do! The blueberry was very popular, and was named "Violet Puffle". They are also very impressionable. I've brought in various examples to show them, and they suddenly say "I'm changing what I'm making!" There's a polar bear and a zombie and then the polar-bear kid today wanted to make a blob like this instead.

Pencil Pals Wall Decal

First secret! You didn't have to wait long. Once Spoonflower announced wallpaper and decals, I was pretty excited! I thought that my pencils could be really cute on a classroom wall. So I ordered one. Picked it up yesterday with the others, cleaned a section of wall first thing this morning and here it is!

As you can see, it's hard to find wall space in my classroom. My lovely year 7s commented right away and recognised it as being from Donald in Mathmagic Land. They also said that the pencil was kind of in the shape of a 7! Cute. This lovely pencil decal is also for sale in my Spoonflower shop.

School Fabrics

Spoonflower is so awesome. I have a new addiction. It is so immensely weird and cool and satisfying to see something you imagined as a genuine real life fabric.

I picked up my samples from the post office today. I'd ordered the Pencil Pals before, my Donald-in-Mathmagic-Land-inspired entry into the "School Supplies" contest, but it failed to arrive. The envelope arrived, slit open at the end with no swatch inside. I told the lovely Spoonflower people and they gave me credit for it, which was super nice. I was happy to finally see it!

One thing I'm finding it hard to get the hang of is size. I don't know how big I want my design to print. This one I did in two sizes to find out. This one might be a more useful size.

Plus my plane shapes fabric swatch came too. There's actually another column of shapes that don't fit onto the swatch - the trapezium, parallelogram and ellipse. Sometimes you just can't stop the maths stuff from being in your brain.

Also two things which I won't show you yet. One will have to wait until I get it installed and one until after the present is given. Yay! Secrets!

These 3 designs are now FOR SALE at Spoonflower. I have a "Shop" now, apparently. You should check it out, it is to be found here. I'd better get it a banner because right now it has my name hovering in a big white box!

Christmas Craft Plans - and the question of who deserves craft

There's just something about the calendar switching over to November that brings on Christmas plans. Not that I haven't had plans all year, but November crystallizes and accelerates them. The truth is, big craft projects for Christmas need a lot more lead time than November.  But there are lots of little things - cards, tags, packaging, tree ornaments, etc - that can be made very quickly. Presents for family and close friends I've had planned for a while, so I've done a lot of preparation for them, and November is the month that I need to evaluate whether they will actually get finished! Tanith kicked things off with a Christmas craft party over last weekend, and I've been spending lots of spare minutes stitching.

I'm involved in several exchanges over at RPG Geek this year: a Christmas card exchange and two present exchanges. One of the present exchanges is just games off people's wishlists, but the other, a less formal, smaller exchange in the 'Tavern' (the off-topic forum area) is a mixed bag of stuff related to their gaming and non-gaming interests. And we don't get told who our targets are until mid-November. I'm crafting three of my five cards (the other two I'm buying, as I want to send 'Australian Christmas' cards to some overseas people and I'm not in the mood to stitch koalas).  And I'm also making a card and a tree ornament for my Tavern exchange target.  This means very quick crafting - trying to figure out what I can make that relates to their interests and won't be too time consuming.

I love making crafted items, so I don't mind putting the work into these items (and current state of unemployment does at least give me plenty of time to work on them). But I do sometimes wonder if I'm being silly to do these for people I don't know.

Even when I look at my own close circles of family and friends, there are people for whom I rarely make gifts. Sometimes it is because it is difficult to find things they'd like that I can make - my husband falls into this category, one of the reasons I'm so excited about the Rogue Trader cape I'm making for him. I know he'll actually use this. My brother is another - he has a very tight list of interests, and is streamlining his life. As I can't craft weightlifting equipment, I'm stumped on what I could make for him. But both of these guys have hung around crafters for long enough that I think they would at least appreciate the work that went into a present.  There are others, however, who shall remain unnamed, for whom I am reluctant to make presents because I don't think they realise how much work is involved and don't appreciate them. The targets of my various geek exchanges are people I've only met online, and talking about roleplaying. I have no idea what category they will fall into. Will they see them as special craft items or just another card?

Or is that a relevant question? If I've enjoyed the process - if I've enjoyed researching their interests through their profiles, and finding a suitable pattern or card design, enjoyed the crafting - then does anything that happens after they leave my hands matter? If I've had a good time and am proud of my work, does it matter whether the recipient appreciates the work involved? Does my effort 'require' suitable acknowledgement to make it worthwhile?
Questions I'm pondering. Meanwhile, back to stitching...

My First Gingerbread House

Last Saturday I went to a Gingerbread-House-Decorating evening with a colleague. We were supplied with everything pre-made and ready to go, which made the whole process very easy. I feel that my cooking skills would let me down more than my decorating skills.

I took a photo once the major construction was finished, just in case it later collapsed.

While that set, last year's MasterChef winner, Kate, talked to us about food and Jesus and stuff.

Then we got to decorate. I had to steal some of the supper items to complete my vision, and it was very hard  not to constantly eat the decorating supplies, but I succeeded on both counts. Mostly.

I feel inspired. Next time I think I'd like to take on something more ambitious (of course I would). But with less Jesus. We're going to have our own gingerbread house making. With Blackjack. And hookers.