We made a lot of poppies

Last weekend was Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday. It was also the weekend my sister Jo came to visit, along with her OH, Phil. M was very excited as she likes seeing her relatives, which sadly doesn't happen that often due to the distances involved.

We spent some time on Thursday and Friday making poppies from felt with a sewn on button. We made these last year, but they were mainly my effort with M only doing a little of the stitching. This year, once I'd shown her how to sew on a button, M did most of the work herself. She even cut the shapes out of felt.

A lot of sewing practice!

We added a purple poppy to the collection this year after learning they were to represent all the animals who died in wars, particularly the horses who were very much on the front line in WW1.

M spotted a very similar flower hair tie in a children's sewing book I'd bought her for her birthday. After reading the instructions, M had a go, resulting in the white and purple flower with the blue spotted button.  I helped by sewing it onto a hair tie as that bit was too fiddly for M. Still needing to make more flowers, M decided to make another one for her Auntie Jo, but this time we glued it to a pin along with all the poppies.

A flower for Auntie Jo.

These were all lots of fun to make and served well for teaching M how to sew a button on.

We showed Auntie Jo around Brandon Marsh on Saturday.

Auntie Jo and M pretend to be dormice

Brandon Marsh in Autumn

While on Sunday we drove over to The Black Country Living Museum, which is a fantastic place to visit and the location of most of the external filming for a television program called Peaky Blinders, which both Jo and Phil love.

We're oblivious to the TV show, but love history and exploring buildings, so were happy as well.

M experiences a Victorian School.

M experienced her first lesson in a school, taught very tongue in cheek by a Victorian school master. Baffled, M did her best to recite her 12 times tables, learned about Victorian discipline and the rich fossil record of Dudley. She also learned about the famous one eyed dinosaur of Dudley, something M quizzed Dave about later.


Otherwise we wondered around looking at things, talking to the historical interpreters and trying not to get too cold. It was a bitter wind out there! We hid in the old cafe building by the canal to enjoy some chips, sandwiches and a hot drink. M played with her auntie and Jo took a lot of photographs.

I took a couple of photographs too, including the source reference for this drawing of one of the museum horses being plagued by magpies intent on stealing its mane. As we watched, the magpies would go up to the horse's neck and pluck at a hair, resulting in the horse waving its head at the offending bird, which duly flew off only to return less than a minute later.

Drawing of one of the horses at BCLM.

A good day, but gosh we were cold and it took hours before we felt warm again that evening.

Useful Links:
* The Black Country Living Museum - https://www.bclm.co.uk/
* Peaky Blinders - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaky_Blinders_(TV_series)

Inktober ends with Halloween

Hallowe'en has passed, marking the first day of Allhallowtide and the end of Inktober 2017. My last two drawings for the challenge were:

Inktober day 30 - Found.

Inktober Day 31 - Mask

In terms of lesson's learned...

While the challenge has been fun, it has also been exhausting having to come up with a concept, then turn it into a composition for each day.

Including research and preliminary sketches, each drawing took at least two hours out of my day, which is a huge commitment for me. I have been making a point of drawing on each day this year but the length of time has tended to be an hour or so for each session, which is a lot more manageable.

The other big issue I had with the challenge was thinking of an idea of what I could draw in the first place. I need to practice tuning into my creative process so I can come up with several concepts for a drawing very quickly, then decide on which one I want to develop. Back in the day, I used to be able to do this easily but not any more, I appear to have lost the knack. I'd say it was this rather than anything else which made the Inktober challenge so difficult.

I'll leave it there, other than to hope everyone had a good Hallowe'en and here are M's Jack o'Lanterns.

M's carved pumpkin.

M's carved swede (or turnip).

M carved a face into both a pumpkin and the more traditional swede (or as we used to call them, a turnip or neep), which is what would have been used before pumpkins were widely available.

We don't do trick or treating as a family, but explored the more traditional aspects of Allhallowtide, including a feast on All Hallows Eve with added spooky poetry. This was very enjoyable and the first year M has been able to fully take part, selecting and reading book extracts as well as poems of her choice, rather than just listen to us grown ups.

Hop's new dress

M's sewing aspirations are high and just lately she's moved on from drawing countless pictures of dancers in varying pretty dresses, to wanting to make the dresses themselves. Sadly her lack of sewing skills have led to her improvising, which means making clothes for her toys from paper.

These creations take hours to design and then make, but being paper and held together with tape are not particularly robust. The first outfit ripped when she tried to dress the toy, so after some thought M's solution is to:

• Make the dress bigger than the toy
• Use a dress form - in this case a few toilet rolls

Hop's dress on an improvised dress form.

The dress being modelled by Hop herself.

It may not look like much, but there is a lot of design and knowledge about clothing wrapped up in this dress. If you look there is a bodice and a full, layered skirt. The bodice itself is decorated with bows and the whole garment is sized to fit (albeit large with extra room so it can be put on and taken off) a specific toy rabbit.

I'm impressed.

M tells me she is making Hop some pyjamas next.

In the meantime, I've started trying to improve M's sewing skills but it is slow going. Sewing without an end product is not terribly exciting and it is not a craft which lends itself well to instant results. The results are faster than something like knitting or crochet, but you still need to have patience.

For this reason over the past couple of weeks we've worked some threading and beading, making some dream catchers, wind chimes and necklaces.

We've also done some actual needlework, with real needles...

Making a pompom necklace and working on our French colours.

Patchwork cat wearing her new necklace.

A flower stitched onto card.

A heart stitched onto card.

In the meantime I've been altering costume for M's upcoming dance show. The costumes may have come from a theatrical supplier but they do not take into account the real shape of small children. Fortunately I've been able to limit the alterations to shortening straps and adding extra velcro.

An Olympic brolly

In honour of the 2016 Olympic games, M and I have been experimenting with making patterns from interlinked circles. We started out on paper and then moved onto painting another umbrella, taken from what feels like my endless stash of plain umbrellas which are just waiting for some decoration.

The umbrella was a lot smaller this time and only intended for personal use, rather than a huge golf umbrella. Being smaller, it took a lot less time to paint! I mixed up a 50/50 acrylic paint to fabric medium in suitable Olympic colours, i.e. blue, red, yellow, green and black.

For the circles, I cut a dense cardboard tube into smaller pieces. The tube was the kind you find in the middle of aluminium foil or cling film. These are strong and unlikely to disintegrate after being repeatedly dunked in paint.

Paint (acrylic with fabric medium) and cut down cardboard tube.

All set, we retired to the garden with out paints, cardboard tubes and an umbrella.

An hour or so later, we had this umbrella set aside to dry.

The finished Olympic inspired umbrella set aside to dry.

Unfortunately, at this point the wind decided to pick up the umbrella and blow it around the garden. This caused some consternation, not only because of smudges to our newly painted umbrella, but because the laundry was drying on the line!

The umbrella was retrieved, I picked off the worst of the vegetation before standing it to dry in the kitchen for the rest of the day.

Once it was touch dry we signed the umbrella in sharpie, before transferring it to the shed to continue drying for another three days. At that point, I examined it carefully and peeled off any remaining bits of garden before covering each panel in turn with a pressing cloth, then ironing on high to set the colour. Ironing is a mummy only activity.

After ironing, I re-sewed the parasol to the umbrella frame. I'm not sure if it was poor workmanship, or the tumble the brolly took around the garden, but several of the stitches had popped so it needed a bit of repair.

M's favourite part of painting umbrellas is the quality control test at the end, namely testing the umbrella's waterproof properties with a watering can. Personally, I feel that any umbrella which cannot be taken out into the rain for fear of it getting wet, is not much of an umbrella.

Waterproof and the colours don't run.

Thankfully, the Olympic inspired umbrella passed the final test with flying colours.

The finished umbrella.

And the view from the underside.

The artwork on this umbrella was shared equally by myself and M. We both just stamped circles in whatever way we felt like doing, having lots of fun in the process. Again, I think it turned out well and we were both happy with the result.

An autumnal umbrella

Following on from the Daddy Umbrella, I found myself with extra umbrellas just waiting for someone to decorate them. In the meantime, M and I are doing a project on trees so I thought we should attempt a craft involving leaves.

Painting by taking prints from leaves or bits of plants is something we've done before and it can be very effective. I found myself wondering if I could print onto an umbrella using leaves.

Lessons learned from the Daddy Umbrella told me that acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium becomes transparent. Multiple layers help, but the umbrella fabric colour is still visible through the paint. This is fine with pale fabric, but a strong colour like black (as on the umbrella I had available to take paint) would mean most colours are likely to be muted and difficult to see. Personally, if I'm going to put in the effort to hand paint an umbrella, I want it to have a bit of visual punch and to stand out from a distance.

One way to overcome this is to lay down a base colour, a foundation onto which you then paint the rest of your masterpiece.

I had my plan. I decided we'd try taking prints in white paint, then fill in the resulting shape to give a white silhouette. Once this was dry, we could paint over the top in autumnal colours to hopefully give the effect of an umbrella covered in fallen leaves.

I explained the plan to M who may have been doubtful, but loves me and so went along with the idea. Last weekend, we collected a few leaves while out on our cycle around the park, then got to work.

M loved painting the leaves white, even if she didn't like having white fingers and kept running off to wash her hands. Together we applied leaf prints, taking a few prints before stopping to paint over the top. I went around the edges, neatening the leaves up and making them more 'leaf shaped' where either the print or M's painting ability had failed a little.

After a couple of hours work, we had this:

Leaf prints, painted over to give white silhouettes.

It was actually very striking and M was so excited, she ran around the garden a few times whooping. When you're a six year old artist, you get to do that sort of thing. I just oohed and ahhed, and was quietly impressed.

The umbrella went into the shed to dry for two days, then we started on the next stage. We added colour.

We worked with a limited palette of green, orange, yellow and red. The brief was to think autumn leaves as they fall from trees, but to only paint over the white. M finds paint difficult to work with, or rather she finds it harder to achieve the results she wants with paint, so this was a bit of a challenge. We talked about holding the brush as she would a pencil, not overloading with paint and steadying the umbrella with your spare hand. I was also ready with a clean finger to remove any excess paint before it had a chance to set into the fabric.

As it was, M painted a whole panel herself plus a few leaves scattered around the umbrella. I painted the rest. It took probably another two hours.

M signed the umbrella using a bronze Sharpie and I dated it, then it went back into the shed to dry.

Three days later, I ironed it using a hot iron and pressing cloth, before revealing the final result to M.

An autumnal umbrella.

We were both impressed. I think the brushwork could do with a bit of practice in terms of technique, but the colours are beautiful.

A water proof test followed, with both of us using a watering can to simulate rain. The umbrella was of course very good at repelling water, but what we were interested in was is the paint going to run. Fortunately, the paint stayed where it was so all our hard work was not in vain.

Dave got in on the act, holding the umbrella while I tried to get a better angle as well as showing off the view from underneath.

The view from the underside.

Looking closely, the original print of each leaf is still visible on the underside, giving a new dimension to the piece.

The veins of the original leaf prints are still visible from under the umbrella.

Suffice it to say, I think this was a successful experiment. The resulting umbrella is eye catching, autumnal and colourful. Considering one of the artists was six, I think we did a good job.

We try some weaving

Last week, we had a go at basket weaving using a plastic milk bottle as a base, taking it with us as a group activity for our local home education group meetup. Along with the other children, M found it fiddly as the plastic kept bending inwards. She got the hang of it after a while, but at six years old, M likes quick projects that produce fast results. She wanted the basket and did a fair amount of the weaving without complaint, but half way through wanted me to do it for her. I helped of course, but pushed her a little into completing her basket herself. The results are charming and M loved it, immediately taking both baskets (I made one too) and claiming them for her own.

Simple baskets woven on plastic milk bottles. The handles are also made from milk bottle. I've used Duck tape on the tops and handle to finish.

I wanted to build on the experience, but without the frustrations M had experienced working on the plastic bottle.

A while back, Dave bought me a book called Weaving Without A Loom (Sarita R. Rainey). Now due to life busy-ness, I've not really had much of an opportunity to try any of the ideas in this book, but with M getting a little older and following on from last week's baskets, I wanted to try some of the easier projects to see how she got on.

I decided to start with paper weaving, as the supplies are readily available around our house. We had a go at home so I could give M one to one attention, before taking the same craft to group the next day.

The idea is simple, we drew an outline in crayon onto a piece of construction paper, incorporating an area in the design to weave and representing it with parallel lines. The lines don't have to be regular in shape or length, they are there to be woven into. The design was cut out and the lines were also cut, making slits.

If I was doing this on my own, I'd have probably used a craft knife and mat, but doing this with M we used children's safety scissors. The lines weren't as crisp, but more than acceptable.

For our first attempt, I suggested we make trees as we are doing a project on trees at the moment. I also thought the shapes would be easy to draw and incorporate some weaving.

Once the design had been cut out, we cut some strips in a contrast colour and wove them through the slits. The ends were secured with a glue stick, then the whole thing is glued onto another piece of construction paper.

My design is on the left, M's is on the right.

In my case, I decided to cut the resulting design out, which could then have been used in another picture to complete the design.

M preferred to leave hers on the contrast paper as it was.

I thought it worked well. M had completed the brief, we both had acceptable woven paper designs, but M wasn't happy. She said my tree was beautiful but didn't like hers. I thought it was lovely, very Dr Seuss like and said so, but M protested that she wasn't trying to make a tree look like something out of a Dr Seuss book.

I suggested that maybe trees didn't inspire her in terms of art and that perhaps she could incorporate the weaving into another design. M's little eyes lit up and she immediately started a second picture, on a topic more to her liking.

M's ballerina with a woven tutu, complete with background figures. M elected to weave in a slightly different shade of blue.

And next day, without any instruction or help, she produced another similar piece at the home ed group.

M's dancer.

I meanwhile decided to make a goldfish.

My goldfish.

Paper weaving like this is certainly doable for small children. Her own designs have a certain charm and stand well on their own as pieces of art. I liked my own goldfish a lot. It was easy to create and I could see how it would build up into an interesting and eye catching collage.

The Daddy Umbrella

Going back a couple of months to the beginning of May, May Day weekend saw us visit Clun for their Green Man Festival. Sadly, Dave's umbrella was a casualty of the battle between winter and spring. The weather was bad, with heavy rain and strong winds. A gust took Dave's umbrella, pulling it inside out and snapping the struts holding up the canopy.

M noted the loss and promised Dave a new umbrella for Fathers Day.

So began operation Daddy's Umbrella.

M and I talked, discussing what sort of umbrella she'd like to give to him and before you know it, M's talking about decorating an umbrella to make it special. This meant I had to swing into research mode, working out how she could decorate an umbrella without affecting its practical use.

We took to the internet, spending some time looking at pictures, M sketched out ideas and together we came up with a plan. M would paint an umbrella for Fathers Day.

The only issue was trying to find an umbrella!

Trying to find a plain white or blue umbrella locally proved impossible. We did buy some plain umbrellas for practice, but nothing that suited M's plans. In the end, we came across the Jolly Brolly website, M approved and two weeks before Fathers Day, the umbrella was delivered.

In the meantime, I'd also bought acrylic paint and fabric medium. Acrylic paint is normally water resistant, but it doesn't apply well to fabric. It is too thick, changes the consistency of fabrics and is prone to cracking when dry. Fabric medium can be added to acrylic, thinning it and reducing the impact of the paint on fabric. The plan was to use a 50/50 mix of medium and paint, allow it to dry and then fix it using an iron. Naturally, I'd use a pressing cloth to protect both the iron from the paint and the umbrella from excessive heat. I'd also taken care to avoid acquiring an umbrella with a plastic canopy as that would have resisted the paint and most likely melted at the sight of an iron.

M and I agreed that we needed a stunt umbrella. A semi-sacrificial umbrella, that she could paint to test the technique and prove it would result in a usable brolly where the paint stayed put. M decided that she would paint the Northern Lights coming across mountains. We looked at many pictures of the Northern Lights and M got started.

M paints her first umbrella.

Two hours and one painted sock later, we had an umbrella covered with swirls and dramatic mountains. It retired to the shed to dry for three days and then I ironed it. M volunteered to stand under it while I used a watering can to test how waterproof the paint was. Thankfully the paint stayed put and M was dry, at least until it was my turn to stand (or crouch) under the umbrella while M tested it with a watering can. M learned that water runs off an umbrella and if you are standing close to the overhang, will pour all over you.

The Northern Lights umbrella.

Satisfied with the result, we set the umbrella aside to dry and M worked on the design for the Daddy umbrella.

Several sketches later, M told me she wanted to paint the word DADDY around the rim with hearts above it. She would then paint pictures of Dave in various weather types above the hearts.

We had a plan and got started. I mixed the paint/fabric medium, M painted. I grabbed a brush and applied a second layer of paint, following M's lead. It took a long time and we started with the DADDY and hearts. The umbrella was a full sized golfing umbrella and huge, which presented problems for M who is not very tall and would be leaning over wet paint. I suggested we allow the hearts to dry, then paint in the Daddy's a couple of days later. M agreed, but this meant the umbrella was not finished in time for Fathers Day. We also decided to use sharpie pens to draw the outlines for the figures and pick out the edges of the hearts.

The finished Daddy Umbrella.

Finally however, after four days of drying time it was ready. I ironed it, we tested it and declared it done.

I think anyone seeing this will know it's owner is a Daddy.

As you can see, it is a sizeable umbrella and Dave should be very recognisable as a Daddy when out and about in the rain.

A very happy M who is pleased with the result.

M is happy and we may need to paint more umbrellas in the near future.

Useful websites:

• The Jolly Brolly - http://www.jollybrolly.co.uk/

Yellow, or maybe blue

Saturday I placed my last stitch on the cat scarf I've been making for M, meaning I'm very close to the end of what seems to be an epic project as the scarf has been on my hook since Christmas Day. Even as I considered sewing up and finishing, my mind turned to the next project, namely a cardigan for M. If the scarf hadn't taken so long, I had intended to make another winter cardigan, but with spring upon us I've changed my mind. M needs a summer cardi (or maybe two) that she can live in through the cooler days and use to protect herself from the sun on warmer days.

M agreed and declared she wanted a yellow cardigan, or maybe a blue one. The only problem was, I don't have much in the way of cotton or bamboo, let alone in yellow or blue. If buying yarn, really I needed a pattern first, which presented another issue. M is five and at the top end of desirable target for knitwear designers. There are lots of patterns for babies, but the number dwindles as children get older. I have some patterns for older children, picked up a year ago, but not an abundant supply.

Saturday is a busy day for us, with a lunchtime dance class carving out a huge chunk of the day, meaning we weren't free to hit the shops until after 4pm. By this time my favoured Local Yarn Shop was closed, so we went to Hobbycraft instead.

Unsurprisingly, I did not find the pattern book I was looking for. Neither did I find suitable yarn at a price that I was willing to pay.

We did however find buttons, which M insisted I should buy in readiness for her cardigan. Blue buttons. Lots of them.

We also found card stock, so I replenished my craft supplies.

I also found some booklets on drawing cats and horses, so I picked those up as well.

Hobbycraft were selling off their 'paint your own' money boxes at half price. M wasn't too interested in these until she spotted a Beetle Car...

M couldn't resist this paint your own money box.

It had to be bought, brought home beeping in my bag and painted immediately!

After which, M had to play with these dress up stickers, on sale for half price. Apparently, the children were feeling cold.

And dress up stickers.

This demonstrates why M and I should never visit a craft store of any kind together. We just can't help ourselves!

As for the yarn and pattern. I decided to do my best with the patterns I've got... And placed an order for blue cotton from Wool Warehouse.

Blue.

M is happy.

Flowers and paint

The park called on Saturday morning, where we stopped by the market at Allseley Park Walled Garden. I almost bought yarn, but was distracted by cake at the last moment. Whether this was a good or a bad thing is still up for debate!

We stopped by the potato beds, to visit M's potato which we'd planted earlier in the year but couldn't see the marker under the overgrown bed. We'll hopefully go along to dig up any resulting potatoes later this week, so fingers crossed we get a crop.

Yarn stroked, cake eaten and potato visited, we continued our walk around the park with the highlight for all of us being the wild flower meadow. Coventry has taken to seeding unused parts of parks, grass verges and roundabouts with wild flowers, something I heartily approve of. Allseley Park was in full bloom, presenting us with an impressive field of colour.

Wild flowers in full bloom.

Wild flowers in full bloom.

M was particularly impressed with the vivid pinks and oranges, insisting that I take several pictures.

M was particularly drawn to the colours in this clump of flowers.

Can you blame a girl for loving these colours?

Just beautiful.

We also stopped by the pond, startling a family of moorhens who sped for the cover of the reeds, only coming out again when they were certain we weren't going to do anything dangerous. Looking at the rubbish other visitors had thrown into the pond, I fear they were right to be wary. We were on the lookout for newts, newtlets and froglets, but alas saw none. We did spot a fish in the water, but my phone's camera was unable to pick it out.

After a play in the playground, we headed home for some lunch. Later, inspired by all the colours
we had seen, I suggested M could do some painting. I'd been keen to show M how wax resist worked with watercolours, but our crayons needed a firmer pressure to transfer enough wax to the paper than M was able to manage on her own. Hence this turned into a collaborative project, with me drawing the wax designs sometimes by my own initiative and sometimes under M's careful direction. I painted a couple of sheets myself, but these are mostly M's creations.

Wax resist and watercolours.

Wax resist and watercolour.

The idea was to draw geometric designs in wax crayon, then paint over the top using watercolours, followed by a wash of water. M's use of colour is vivid and she found the effect of adding a water wash interesting.

A Chinese sheep

February is full of holidays with so many crafting opportunities for myself and M, which has led to a busy few weeks. I've signed up for a MOOC with FutureLearn on Richard III which is taking up what little free time I have in the evenings, plus I have a BSL course to make progress on, meaning I'm feeling a bit over commited at the moment.

It is all good though, I just need more hours in the day!

Knitting wise, I've been plodding along, making another cardigan for M. Sadly I've been thwarted by the yarn. I am one of those people who likes to match up stripes in self striping yarn. Knots in said yarn are frustrating, because it makes matching those stripes harder. The more knots, the more difficult it gets. I ditched the yarn I was using, frogged and started again after the seventh knot. The yarn in question is now destined for pompoms, or kids crafts, or dresses for teddies, or anything where I don't care if the stripes don't match.

I restarted the cardigan immediately using a different self striping yarn and this time it is coming along nicely. I have only one piece to finish before making up, so hopefully it will be finished this side of summer!

Work in progress cardigan.

Most of my crafting efforts have been directed at things I can make with M.

For example, we made this ram for Chinese New Year (it being the Year of the Sheep, or Wood Sheep, or Ram or Goat).

Our Chinese NY sheep

He is a rather cute ram, made from two pompoms glued together. A big pompom for the body, with a smaller one for the head. I pushed some pipe cleaners through the middle for the legs and stuck a felt face on the front.

M did her share of wrapping the pompoms, a good fine-motor activity for little ones. This was her first attempt at making pompoms and M was worried when I cut the threads, asking me if I was _sure_ that was what we should do. I assured her that this was indeed what we needed to do, so M watched closely, but with a doubtful expression, as I snipped my way around the proto-pompom. I tied the pompom tightly before easing the template off, then presented the resulting oval ball to the delighted M for fluffing, which she did an expert job of.

M drew the face for the sheep, which I used as a template for cutting out the felt shape you can see in the picture above. M was worried it looked too much like a cow, but I assured her the face was suitably sheep like and you can see the result for yourself. M also chose the eyes she felt were most appropriate in size. I warmed up the hot glue gun and went to work, the sheep taking shape quickly in my hands.

Next time I do this, I want to look for extra strong sticky dots so the glueing can stay within M's remit and it might be nice to have more substantial pipe cleaners to hand, as my standard stock ones are a bit spindly.

We were both very happy with the result and M ran off to add the ram to her flock of sheep in her toy farm.

A caterpillar by any other name

Monday brought a bit of a surprise for M. She pulled a sock onto her foot, only to have her big toe go through the end. A new experience for M, because it is only recently that her growth rate has slowed enough that she is giving clothing a chance to wear out before it needs to be retired because it is too small.

M stared at her toe for a moment before asking me what we should do. I hesitated for only a moment before telling her to throw the holey sock away and we would make the other sock into a toy.

I received a booklet about making sock creatures for Christmas and this seemed the perfect opportunity to have a go.

Today, after a discussion with M, we settled on making a caterpillar, which while rated as a medium difficulty project in the book, seemed straight forward enough. We read the instructions together and M studied the photographs, then we gathered our materials and began.

A lonesome sock.

M is an experienced stuffer of home made toys, so took charge of that side of things, only needing the occasional reminder to pull the fluff apart and not to roll it into a tight ball unless she wanted a lumpy caterpillar. M stuffed the sock's toe and when it was full to our satisfaction, I tied it off with some yarn, forming a ball.

We repeated the process along the length of the sock, until we had a 'lumpy sock' as M called it. I cut the cuff, braiding in antennae whilst M held the caterpillar still to stop it from wriggling away. M then spent a happy hour delving in my button tin before emerging with the perfect eyes.

And here is Leaf Poppy, the caterpillar.

Introducing Leaf Poppy the caterpillar.

I have offered to sew pompoms on as feet, but M said she couldn't wait to claim Leaf as her own, which she has done, involving the caterpillar in all activities this afternoon. A successful project for both of us I think.

C is for Candle

Christmas preparations are in full swing in our house as we throw ourselves into the festive season. Following on from looking at angels and baubles we moved onto candles.

In addition to talking about the significance of the advent wreath, M had a go at making her own candle wreath from a paper plate.

A candle wreath.

This was made with cutting help from Daddy, but the sticking and colouring was all M.

In the meantime I'd had this idea that it would be fun to somehow imprint M's artwork onto a candle. My thinking was that it would make a good Christmas gift for the grandparent types in our respective families.

I took to Pinterest to look for an appropriate method for getting M's artwork transferred onto the surface of a candle and eventually settled on this 'tutorial'.

From the pictures it looked so easy.

Ahem, lets just say pictures can be deceiving as this one was harder than it looked!

The idea is to get your small person to draw onto a piece of tissue paper, which is wrapped around the candle. The tissue is covered with greaseproof paper and heat is applied via a hair dryer. Remove the paper and voila! The image should be imprinted on the candle.

What the tutorial doesn't make clear is that the image is not transferred from the tissue paper onto the candle. What actually happens is the melted wax seeps through the tissue paper, so that when the wax hardens the tissue is held against the candle under a thin layer of wax.

Believe me, both Dave and I did quite a bit of head scratching trying to figure that out before I had the 'Aha!' moment.

To be absolutely clear for my own benefit should I decide to do this again, what you need:-

• Tissue paper
• Felt tip pens
• Greaseproof paper
• Church candles
• Tape
• A piece of normal paper
• A hair dryer
• A mug that you don't mind getting wax on
• A cork mat to protect your work surface
• A teaspoon (optional)
• A combination of persistence and patience

To allow your child to create their masterpiece, firstly cut a piece of flat, uncrumpled tissue paper to size based on the candle. Make the tissue slightly shorter than the candle and try to minimise overlap.

Tape the tissue to a normal piece of paper, then ask your small person to draw a suitable Christmas scene using felt tips. The paper is to protect your table as the ink from the pens will leak through as your child draws.

M excelled herself here and drew the following:-

• Some Christmas trees
• Father Christmas and his elves
• Baby Jesus with his Mummy and Daddy
• Dancing snowmen, wearing leotards
• An angel visiting the shepherds who are so scared their clothes fall off

Needless to say, M she was chortling away by the time she had finished, as she is greatly amused by the plight of the angels who have messages to deliver, but have to stop folks running away before they can do so. Every. Single. Time. The angels find this very frustrating. Or at least they do in our version of the Nativity story.

I asked M to draw one more picture, explaining this was the one we'd use for our first try with the candle. M drew a cat and declared it her favourite, so was delighted when the first candle was a success.

Once you have an image to transfer, wrap it tightly around the candle then lay the it onto a piece of greaseproof paper, with the overlap in the tissue on the underside to hold it in place. Align the base of the candle with the edge of the greaseproof paper. Wrap the greaseproof layer as tightly as you can, covering the tissue and secure with tape.

The grease proof paper should be slightly bigger than the candle, it needs to wrap around the candle with an overlap of about 3cm. It should also be taller than the candle once the candle is standing up.

Put an upended cup onto a heat resistant mat (I used a cork backed place mat) and stand the covered candle on top of it. Use a hair dryer on its highest heat setting to  melt the wax under the paper. Keep the dryer moving and it should take a few seconds for the design to start showing clearly through the paper, which is a sign the wax is softening.

Rotate the cup (with the candle on top), applying heat to the entire candle. Once the greaseproof paper starts to look shiny all over, the task should be done and you can stop.

In reality I found that the transfer was patchy. Some of the tissue paper had sunk into the candle wax, but in other places the tissue would be unaffected. Since M's designs didn't cover all of the tissue paper, it was hard to see where I'd missed through the greaseproof outer layer.

At this point I applied the heat directly to the candle and pushed the bits of tissue I'd missed earlier into the wax as it melted. Initially I used the back of a spoon to do this, but switched to using my fingers as I found it easier. The heat from my hair dryer wasn't sufficient to do more than make the wax uncomfortably hot, but I'd advise caution here.

Applying heat to any patches of tissue that hadn't been absorbed into the wax.

The wax cooled quickly, allowing the candles to be moved aside. I used a kitchen knife to trim any dribbled wax, neatening up the base and finishing the candle.

The finished candles.

M was surprised at how her pictures had changed, taking on the circular nature of the candle, with figures that had been on opposite sides of the paper now standing next to each other. She decided she like the effect, but confirmed the cat candle was still her favourite.

M with her favourite candle, which now has a cat on it.

I was pleased with the effect too, but found it difficult getting an even finish on how much wax was absorbed into the tissue. It was also very fiddly trying to get the tissue tightly wrapped around the candle. Nonetheless, for a first attempt I think it worked well and it is a technique I might try again.