pottering about

The last day of school holidays upon us, we decided some quality crafting time was in order. Putting Beetle down for a sleep, I pulled open the toyroom cupboards, and was faced a multitude of craft kits and projects that had been collected along the way that we had to do. Needing something reasonably quick to set up, that required not a huge amount of assistance from me, and that all three big children could enjoy, I settled on a box of clay. Looking at it, it appears it was actually a top up box for a kit that included a small wheel, but I figured we could get messy and have some fun with it anyway. We cracked open the box, and settled down at the patio table as we split it in quarters. Of course, we had to pick a windy day to do it, so the newspaper we’d laid down to protect the table kept blowing up and generally being annoying, so we gathered a few heaving things to weigh it down, and got to work. Butterfly had a lovely time making clay worms, Bear made a vase for mummy and a pot for daddy, and Boy2, after being told he had to make something *other* than a dinosaur, made a little bowl after seeing what I was making.

And what was it I was making? On holidays I tweeted about a yarn dilemma, and in amongst various useful (read: enabling) replies, Jo-anne introduced me to the concept of a yarn bowl. Ever since, I’ve had an itching to have a go a making. I’d love to find someone with a wheel and kiln to do it properly, but for now, a miniature version in air drying clay was enough to soothe the itch slightly.

It’s small, but should be enough to hold a small hand-wound ball of yarn. It’s not perfect, but I like it’s rustic feel. It was enough of a project to get me hands dirty and my mojo running, and to me, that’s the most important measure of crafty success.

We’ve had a delightful morning of playing and music lessons and chatting to friends as we chase over town in search of our final Woolies animal cards. We had a little boy with birthday money burning a hole in his pocket so a trip to BigW has yielded us a Ninjago Lego set, and a napping Butterfly and content-in-mummy’s-lap Beetle gave us a chance to sit and build. School pickup rapidly approaches, and so too the end of my chance to create. But tomorrow it’s the weekend and there’ll be time for that then. For now, it’s me and my boy and some Lego.