Toddler-Proof Lift-the-Flap Books

I worked in public libraries before I worked in a college library.  Part of my duties involved time spent in the children's section of those libraries.  One of the first things you realize when you are working with children's books is the fact that "lift-the-flap" books will NEVER come back unscathed.  Whoever invented those types of books had a cute idea.  Children LOVE to lift flaps and discover things underneath those flaps.  However, they also love to tear off those flaps.  It's just inevitable.  So it was no surprise to me when I observed my little granddaughter enthusiastically ripping off the interactive flaps on her little storybooks.

I happened to be working on putting together a fabric book for her sewn from pre-printed fabric story frames.  Hmmm, was there a way to modify the book to indulge her love of lifting flaps while keeping those flaps intact?

 I decided to cut out some felted wool squares and sew them securely over key pictures on the pages.  If you wanted to try this yourself, you could use other fabric such as batik cloth, which is densely woven and not prone to unraveling or a heavy felt.

All you have to do is decide what you want to cover and then cut out your flap big enough to cover the picture you want to hide.  Then sew it securely on the top edge only so that baby can lift up the flap easily.

Here's a little bird hiding under a flap, just waiting to be discovered.  Of course, half the fun is for the reader or child to provide the sound effects of the bird when the flap is lifted.

This little mouse is just waiting to squeak a "hello" when its flap is lifted up.  I'll be taking this little book with me when I go off to visit my granddaughter and I'll be sure to give you a full report on whether or not it passes the "childproof" test.

The Best Laid Plans

Even though I know I have this trip coming up to my brother's and I'm not even close to being ready to go, I have been captivated by my little Schacht Cricket loom and wanting to at least warp it.  Well, once I got it warped, I HAD to try a little bit of weaving.  I'm slowly getting the hang of it.  You can see where my edges were too loose at the beginning but are gradually getting more even.

I think once it is off the loom and I give it a good soak, things will even out a tad.  It's definitely a learning process but I'm pleased with the chance to learn on a small loom.  This morning I had to weave another 6-7 inches on it before it was time to head over to a friend's home for an all-day scrapbooking get-together.   I even took my camera to take pictures and completely forgot to do so.

When I left her house, I knew that I'd have to be a whirling dervish once I got home and really start getting things together for my trip, which is in two days.  Tomorrow I have several appointments which will eat into my day, plus I was planning to go over to see my mom and that will take a big chunk out of the day.  So imagine my consternation when I was nearing home and happened to glance down at the dashboard and noticed that the "Check Engine" symbol was lit.  I had to drive all the way back to the house and get the manual out of the glove compartment to check what the heck that symbol meant because it's not one I've seen lit up before.  Groan!

I made a quick call to the Commander and then a call to the Service Department and back I got into the car to head over to drop it off.  Poor hubby!  He had to come pick me up and now my car is sitting in the Repair Shop waiting to be checked out tomorrow.  This is NOT good.  He'll have to take me to my first appointment in the morning, which means he'll be working from home for a few hours and then I'll be stuck at home for the duration of the day and quite possibly be unable to get to my knitting class tomorrow evening, depending upon when the car is ready (keeping my fingers crossed that it WILL be ready).

In the meantime, I started packing and also gathering things for the road.  I'm going to be optimistic that this trip will begin on time.  And truly, I should be thankful that the problem popped up now and not on my trip.

(I forgot to post my Project 365 pic yesterday so you get two today.)

Project 365 - June 14, 2010 (Day 18)

Project 365 - June 15, 2010 (Day 19)

And Off They Go

Today Jason and his family, including my beloved little Mika, headed off to Asia, to what could be a three-year adventure.  I've been dreading this day for a long time.  But now that it is here, well, we make the best of it, don't we?  Sometimes we just have to place our children in God's hands and stand back out of the way.

To keep my mind occupied, I unpacked my new Schacht Cricket loom.  It came unassembled but ready to put together.  However, I had decided to stain it before assembling the parts.  So I put newspaper down, put on an old shirt, and started my staining.

Here is what it looked like last night when I had all the pieces stained with an English Chestnut stain.  I thought it was looking pretty good.  Tonight I started applying the first coat of polyurethane on the pieces.  Oh my!  I carefully laid each piece back down on the newspaper and worked methodically away at it.  When I went back to my first piece to check on it, I discovered to my horror that each piece was stuck to the newspaper.  Ugh!  We had to pull each piece off and then I had to sand the pieces of newsprint off that were stuck to the wood.  So out came the wax paper and I tried again.  Looks like this is going to be a longer process than I originally anticipated.

When it's finished and put together, the loom will look like this, but stained.  I don't guarantee that my weaving will initially look like this.  In fact, I think I CAN guarantee that it will NOT look like this.   But there will be plenty of room for improvement.

Speaking of improvement, my day greatly improved this morning when I met two dear friends for breakfast and we laughed and talked and laughed some more.  They really cheered me up.  Friends are really a blessing, aren't they?  My "Project 365" picture today was taken at breakfast but only one friend would agree to be in the picture (although the other one's hand can be seen).

Project 365 - June 8 (Day 12)

Whipping That Craft Room Into Shape

 It's Springtime and this is the time of year when I get the urge to a.  Move to another part of the country and b. Reorganize my craft and sewing spaces.  Well, since we probably won't be moving anywhere at this point in time, I decided to concentrate on the second urge.  Now that I have three spinning wheels, my little craft room is getting a tad crowded.  Plus I have a tendency to not keep things totally squared away every day.  I'm not a slob, mind you, but over time..little transgressions can mount up into a disorganized mess.  It's rather like our lives, isn't it?  At any rate, I've decided to whip my craft room back into shape.

The first place I am concentrating on is my worktable.  I actually cleared out quite a bit of junk yesterday and did some much-needed dusting.  Today I'm picking up where I left off and working on organizing the smaller bits of scrapbooking papers and embellishments and getting them into storage boxes and labeled so that I can easily find what I need when I'm doing traditional scrapbooking or card-making.  You'll notice that the duster hasn't moved far away.  I have no doubt that its services will still be needed.  And I found one of the candy bars from Mika's shower so I have that handy in case I need a little sustenance.

My closet in the craft room is a total disaster.  It looks bad but actually, I don't think it is going to take a lot to get it whipped into shape.  I'm thinking that I might want to put some pegboard along the back of the closet to hang some of my spinning tools, including the bobbins which are cluttering up some of my open shelving in the main room.  I crammed some of my fiber stash in the bookcase when I was making room in the guestroom closets for our son and his family when they visited.  However, now that they have left, I really could reorganize, especially since I can now reclaim the guestroom.  I suspect I could find a better place for my exercise hoop.  It's obviously not doing a heck of a lot of good sitting in my closet.  Oh, I have some ideas for this space and I think it will look much better once I implement those ideas.

Lest you think "poor thing....stuck inside on a nice spring day having to organize"...well, don't feel too bad for me.  I am one of those strange people who actually enjoy organizing.  In fact, I can really lose myself in such an exercise.  I think that's why I always enjoyed secretarial work and working in a library.  I always LOVED filing and organizing.

Speaking of filing and organizing, here I have a great system all set up for filing photographs and over the winter months, I've pulled out photos at various times and then just stuck them on top of my organizing boxes, being too lazy to open up the boxes and refile them.  Bad Dee!  So that's another spot that I intend to tackle and whip into shape.  I even have old photographs from the 1800's in those piles and cartes d'visites and here I've just piled them on top of each other.  I really do know better.

So today I'm going to put on some music, open the windows and get busy.  I'll try to document my progress on the blog.  Maybe it will help get some of you inspired to do some "spring organizing."  Mainly though, it will help keep me accountable.  I've also done some Web surfing to get some inspiration for better ways I can do my craft organizing.  I've found some neat websites that I thought I'd share with you.

Carol Younge Has a great list of links to folks who have posted pictures of their organized sewing and quilting rooms. 

Over at Prairie Home Quilts, they've also come up with another list of folks who have posted pictures of their sewing spaces.

Sewing.org features a different sewing & craft room each month.

You can also find neat ideas by going to your favorite blog host such as Blogger or Wordpress  and search for "organizing craft rooms".  Ravelry , which is a free site for knitters, crocheters, and spinners  has entire groups dedicated to those who are organizing their rooms, along with great pictures.  Check out the groups "Organized Knitting Club" and "My Craft Room."

Until tomorrow, I'm off to do some organizing.