Earth Day 2010

Some of you know I have been working with my friend, Emanuela-maker-of perfect-things, on a larger project in April. We will be at Berkeley's Earth Day festival on April 24th from 11am-5pm, with a table of handmade goods. Here is a preview of what we've been working on:


Our theme is natural fibers with an emphasis on soft play things, or slow grown toys for imaginative play. I like that my kids get to witness the process of making play things, I like that they can ask for something, lochness monster say, and that we can find a pattern or make up a pattern and make it ourselves. Each of these toys took at least a week to make (for myself anyways-Manu is a faster knitter than I) and often a little more. This knitting time was found in the evenings, in the car, at the park, in the library and basically carried around town everywhere I went just to get a row or two in. Considering I had virtually no designated "work" time or uninterrupted daylight hours to make these, I feel pretty good about what we got accomplished in a couple of months. Of course, it wasn't even half of our goals or ideas but there it is. The softies are stuffed with humanely raised sheep's wool or alpaca and knit with wool yarns.

For this fair, a lot of the knit toy patterns are Debi Birkin patterns, which she sells to home knitters and graciously allows folks to sell on a very small scale. By no means will we be "going into production" on these, and after this you will likely see them here as birthday gifts and school charity auction items after this-that is if my fingers can stand anymore. I do love these patterns and the sweet individual faces the animals all come out with.


Emanuela has an amazing sense of color, check out these striped dolly legs that she came up with. She also worked on some play food sewn with both traditional wool felt and ecofelt, which is a recycled fabric.

There are a few waldorf styled sheep as well, ironically stuffed with alpaca. In back of the animals is a lot of work's worth of naturally dyed fiber and handspun yarn. That's right, all that dyeing was for a purpose! If I'm good I'm going to try to dye a few more playsilks as well.

Notice my lone waldorf doll is hiding in the mix, I think I might put her up for sale if she is done in time.

I hope that if you are local you might stop by and say hi, I will be there playing with toys and spinning on my wheel. If you have kids there will be a large climbing wall and sidewalk chalk art area along with great food and other kid friendly activities. This is my first craft show or festival ever so it would be lovely to see some friendly and familiar faces!