Autumn is Here

Autumn is here.  You can tell by the cooler weather, the falling leaves, the harvest of apples and pumpkins, the falling leaves, the shorter amount of daylight, the falling leaves, the Halloween decorations, and, of course, the falling of leaves.   What is also here is seasonal fun.

To me fall is here when I see caramel apples in the grocery store and rows of potted mums near the parking lot.  I love to see the trees change colors.  Where I grew up in Green Bay Wisconsin there was a park behind my Mother’s house.  It was filled with maple trees, which would turn the most beautiful red and gold every year.  I still to this day can’t decided if I liked the color of the trees against a blue clear or gray cloudy sky.  Each sky changed the hue of the leaves just a little. 

I was always thought to be crazy because I enjoy raking leaves.  Still do.  It allowed me to be outdoors in cool crisp weather.  I love the smell of the air while raking – it was fresh and earthy.  And there is something meditative about pulling the rake back and forth as I worked across the lawn.  I love to rake; I hate to bag the leaves.  I always wanted to do what writer and psychologist Leo Buscaglia talked about doing.  He liked walking through piles of leaves so much he wanted to bring them into his house.  It’s not so crazy, he would add, when you think that people bring whole trees into their house at Christmas. So what’s a few leaves.  And as he would say, “I am not asking you to clean them up.”

Autumn provides a wonderful way to have fun.  It is time for outdoor activities now that the heat of summer has passed.  Why do we need to bag up the leaves?  Put them in a big pile in the middle of your yard and jump in them.  Take a handful and throw them up in the air like confetti.  Roll around in them until your hair is tangled in leaves (you might want that as your Halloween costume.)

Of course Halloween is the highlight of autumn fun.   Halloween was originally associated with death and the supernatural, falling on the eve of All Saint’s Day, a holy holiday for Catholics and Anglicans.  Now it is a day of fun and parties and dressing up in costume.  It allows children of all ages to fantasize.  I have never been a costume person but my favorite one was an old sheet and a plastic mask to be a friendly ghost when I was about 7. I have liked ghosts ever since. 

I remember that holiday as one where my mother created my brother Jim and my costumes.  I can see her on our living room floor copying in white paint the design of a skeleton on to a black costume she’d sewn for Jim.  I know it was a lot of work but my guess is that she enjoyed doing that much more than buying a store bought costume.

Autumn and Halloween is when you can have fun and try your hand at something new.  Carve a different face on the pumpkin you bought.  Roast the pumpkin seeds if you have never done that. Try a little bit of costume designing of your own.  Dance a jig in the pile of leaves you have in the back yard (and when you are done, rake them to a corner of the yard and let them decompose through the winter into compost. It will be great for your garden in the spring.) Decorate your house with goblins and ghouls or leaves and gourds.  Try some new apple or pumpkin recipes.  Let the season into your house and life.

Autumn is here and it can be fun.  So try something new and creative.

 Stuffed Fabric Pumpkins 

 Autumn Fabric

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© 2016 – Cheryl Fillion

Spool Knitting Tutorial

A couple of weeks back I wrote about my renewed interest in spool knitting.  I said I had found my two childhood knitters in my mom’s attic with yarn still in them.  I didn’t want to take the yarn out for fear I wouldn’t know how to start the cord again.

So for those of you who went hunting for your old spool knitters or for those who wanted to start spool knitting, here is how to spool knit (or at least how I do it.) Of course you will need a spool knitter and a tool or crochet hook to “knit” the yarn.

1- Start with a simple knot with a tail of yarn coming off the knot so it is long enough to go through the spool knitter and come out the bottom.  You will need to be able to tug on the yarn to pull the cord through the knitter as you work it.  I am using my little doll knitter which is about 4 inches long.  Many spool knitters these days are shorter in length.   

2    Slide the yarn tail into the hole of the spool knitter making sure it comes out the bottom.  Then slip the knot over one of the pegs and pull the tail to tighten the knot.

                            

3- Take the yarn coming off your skein and wrap it around the next peg going clockwise.  So start the wrap going inside the pegs toward the hole. Now come clockwise around the peg taking the yarn again inside the pegs to the next peg.  (You can go in either direction depending on whether you are right or left handed.  I go to the right since I am right handed. )  Repeat the wrap with the other pegs until you get to the first peg with the knot..

                  

4- Now you can begin knitting.  Lay the yarn coming off your skein above the yarn wrapped around the peg.  Then with your tool or crochet hook bring the lower yarn (in this case the one wrapped around the peg) over the top yarn strand. 

                               

5- Repeat this step with each of the remaining pegs.  Every once in a while take a tug on the yarn coming out of the bottom of your knitter.  It helps pull the cord through.

When you are back at the first peg, your ‘knitting’ should looks something like this from the top of the spool knitter.  If you went to the left in wrapping the pegs, your knitting might be a little different since the yarn had gone in a different direction.   But either way, YOU ARE KNITTING. 

6- That is all there is to spool knitting.  Just continue steps 4 and 5 until you have a cord the length you want.   If the yarn you are pulling up and over seems a little tight, when you bring the yarn loop over, take your tool and pull out or loosen the yarn remaining on the peg.

                                                   

7- When you have the length of cord you want, cut the yarn from your skein about 4 inches long.   Bring the yarn tail around the peg and knit as before but this time pull your yarn tail through the loop so it comes off the peg.          

                       

8- Do the same thing with the other three pegs.  Pull the coil out of the spool knitter. If you want you can hide the two tails of un-knitted yarn in the coil. If I am making bracelets, I leave tails as they are so the bracelet can be tied.

But if I hide the tails, I use a plastic yarn needle but any big eyed needle would do (like tapestry or needle point).  Thread the yarn through the needle and then work the needle into the coil entering at the very end of the coil.  Once you have hidden the yarn into the coil, cut off the excess yarn.

                            

With the strings hidden, you can now make anything you want with it.

© 2016 – Cheryl Fillion

Kid’s Crafts at the Farmers Market

For the last two summers I have volunteered at one of our local Farmers Markets (Rose City Farmer’s Market in Tyler Texas, to be exact).  Every third Saturday is Kid’s Crafts with Miss Cheryl.  I have easy and quick crafts that kids can make for free.

Tomorrow we are decorating braided yarn weather forecasters.  Little yarn figures you hang outside to tell you the weather.  If yarn forecaster is dry, it is sunny out.  If it is wet, it’s raining.  If it is blowing around, it’s windy.

I have learned a lot about what to do or not do with kids.  For one thing most of the kids will be about 6 years old and younger so it has to be very easy with not a lot of steps.  I often do some of the boring prep work. So for our forecasters, I braided the yarn and glued the googly eyes and felt mouth on.  With that done, the kids do the fun part by gluing on the sequins.

Also due to the age of the children, using a bottle of glue can be hard for their little fingers to squeeze and control.  So I put a little glue in an empty peanut butter jar lid and the kids apply the glue with a small paint brush.  I use the jar lid because it is heavy enough to not blow away and it’s free.  Paper plates would work too (but if you are someplace breezy, tape the plate to the table).

I only use a little bit of glue at time – maybe a teaspoon or less.  If you don’t have a steady stream of children to the table, the glue will dry before it can be used.   I also have a jar of water to keep the paint brushes clean and moist.  If the glue dries on the brush, it is hard for the kids to use them.

I let the kids use sequins to decorate the weather forecasters.  The shapes are fun and they sparkle in the light.  But again because the kids are young and may not have the dexterity in their fingers, I use shapes that are about ¼ to ½ inch in size.  It is easier for them to pick up.

I have copy paper to use under what the kids are gluing and then I wrap the paper around the weather forecaster and tape it closed so that they won’t lose any of the decorations before everything dries.   

I rely on money donations at the market with a little donation jar. And last year when I started this, I asked for craft supply donations from others.  My local quilt guild was very generous.  Give a crafter an excuse to clean out a drawer or closet and she will always donate (gives her room for new fabric).

I have a great deal of fun doing these crafts.  What ideas these little ones come up with are amazing.  Plus it lets me do a little kid crafting myself. 

my forecaster

© 2016 – Cheryl Fillion

Old is new again

I had a spool knitter as a child. A spool knitter is a usually wooden tube with pegs on the top where yarn is woven around these pegs to created a knitted cord.  All kinds of things can be made with various sized spool knitters and various sized cords. 

In fact I had two knitters.  One was given to me with a collection of crafts and looked like a little soldier.


 

I also had one I made as a child with an empty wooden thread spool with 6 nails in one end.  I had taped a psychedelic sticker with my name on it (so everyone knew who owned it) around the body of the spool.  

For a long time they were in my mother’s attic.  Each still had yarn in them.  I was afraid to take the yarn out for fear of not knowing how to restring them again. As luck would have it so many years after finding them, I found a book on spool knitting as well as all kinds of information on the internet.

 So I started playing with them and I have to admit I was hooked.  Before I knew it I was carrying the spool knitter around everywhere.  I made dozens of knitted coasters in various colors.  I even found myself teaching the wonderful world of spool knitting to a group of teachers.  

spool knitted coasters

It is a calming craft.  It is a colorful craft.  It is a craft I could do without thinking much about it (I did have to watch how long my cord became so I could make table mats and not afghans from it.).  It was also a craft that gave me comfort and pleasure as a child and now as an adult. 

People laughed at me about it.  Some people reminded me that it was a child’s craft and that I was acting like a child by doing it.  Oh well, I can think of worse things to be acting like than a child.  It gives me pleasure.  And what is wrong with that. 

If there was something you did as a child that gave you pleasure, think about taking it up again. Even if it was making mud pies – just exchange the mud with clay and start making pots or sculptures.  Did you like finger paint? So take them up again, it will save you money on brushes and you can make some pretty abstract pictures with your fingers. That’s why adult coloring books are so popular right now.  It is a pleasure from childhood renewed in grown-ups.

Don’t worry what people will say.  Worry about what toy you will play with next.  Let these pleasures of childhood remind you of your dreams of what and who you wanted to be when you grew up.  Let these youthful delights take you to the person you were meant to be.  And for goodness sake, have fun.

You can find little spool knitted snakes in my etsy shop, Heartfully Cheryl.

Spool knitted Snakes

© 2016 – Cheryl Fillion

Beginnings

    I have come across two philosophers in my life who have the best advice ever for people exploring their creativity.  The first was a German poet and scientist by the name of Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe who wrote "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." (That quote gives me goosebumps.)

    The second philosopher was my nephew, Alex, at the age of five who, when I asked him how we were to make a housecleaning robot he wanted to give his father for Christmas, very blunted told me that "You just do it, Auntie Cheryl." 

    Both wise men had a point.  If there is something you want to do, you will never know whether you can do it until you begin it.  Is there some creative technique you want to try but are afraid to?  Just dive in.

    Now it is okay to start at the shallow end (sorry, it is hot outside and water metaphors seem cooling to me somehow right now.).  Dip your toes in.  Paint a page of just one color. One color can express any emotion. Write one line to start a poem.  One line can say a lot (Alex had a lot to say with his one line and it has stuck with me for 23 years.)  Sing one note.  A continuous note can be very relaxing to the diaphragm.

    Just begin it. Don't jump from the high dive. Don't plan a gallery show yet.  Don't figure out your office at the Library of Congress for when you are considered the next Poet Laureate.  And the Grammy nominations are already made for this year.  So relax.  All you are doing is beginning.

    And beginnings are wonderful.  There is mystery in them - you aren't quite sure what will happen next.   And there is an adventure in them - traveling to a new area of your heart.   And the excitement of them - you actually did whatever it is you were wanting to begin.

 You have had beginnings all of your life.  You survived all of those  - school, college, work, marriage, family.  You can survive this one.  But you have to just begin. As Alex said, "You just do it, Auntie Cheryl."  Who can argue with that?

© 2016 – Cheryl Fillion