Colouring our Days with Playdough

May you always have work for your hands to do.

May your pockets hold always a coin or two.
May the sun shine bright on your windowpane.
May the rainbow be certain to follow each rain.
May the hand of a friend always be near you.
And may God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.
~Irish Blessing

Our days have been filled with rainbows here lately, with our artwork, marbling and rainbow colouring. We have also seen the occasional rainbow in the sky towards the hills. Ess has longed to follow them until we find the pot of gold at the end of it. Secretly, I think we all wish we could find it. However often the rainbow's end is apparently atop another family's house (sigh).

Ess is very passionate about colour at the moment and particularly all the colours of the rainbow. I recently asked her to choose her seven favourite colours over here so I could begin to plan my next blanket as I have finished the one I have been knitting for little Eee. Yes, I have finally finished it. She's still 2, that is still classed as a baby isn't it?? :) Ess chose seven pinky/purply tones and then finally wrote down "all of them" on her list. The selection is a lovely array of colour isn't it!

Here Ess is creating her own rainbow using the new playdough we made today along with our older colours which have become a lot less vibrant over the years. We think it looks fabulous.

Little Eee was adamant that I photograph the little balls we made together which she rolled and collected often requesting new ones from me to add to her growing collection.

I love to watch the way the children play and how it changes over the years. Little Eee's chubby hands are keen to explore the texture of the dough seeing how it moves, crumbles, cuts, rolls, squishes etc. She's also very keen to observe others making sausages and balls and rainbows and plaits.

Ess is keen to use colour to create patterns. She began with her own rainbow and followed this with a pattern made of shapes - all in red, the brightest of our new colours. Seen in the background of the above photograph.

These are the three new colours of the day, somewhat distorted in this image. They are actually red, orange and purple. I wonder how they look on your screen!

Learning to plait with playdough was very intriguing for Ess.

She was delighted with her result, as was I.

I guess it was the three new colours which drew me to plait the dough together. As a teenager I often plaited others hair and was in high demand in boarding school. I have never tried plaiting dough however. It seems like too much effort to me to plait together pieces of dough before placing them into the oven to make a loaf of bread.

So despite the sunny days of winter we are currently enjoying, it is still lovely to be cosy inside with my girls enjoying creating together with bright colours that delight our hearts and inspire our minds.

The Marble Effect

is so much fun!!

Simply take an idea from this book, the only idea Ess was really taken by,

two eager and budding artists keen to try something new,

some oil paints and some mineral turpentine, (still amazed I attempted this with my two year old, but clad with lovely plastic gloves she fared quite well)

a tray of water, a bit of swilling and swirling and...

ta da!!

:: most definitely a fairy ::

:: a river ::

:: would make a beautiful fabric ::

:: an angelfish ::

:: yellow balls being tossed ::

Lots of fun was had in finding images in the prints

reminiscent of the way we discover animals in the clouds in the sky.

The effect of marbling is achieved as a result of the fact that oil and water don't mix. As the paper is placed in the tray of water onto swirling blobs of diluted oil paint it effectively picks up a print of the paints swirling round.

The repeated exclamation was an enormous "Wow!" on behalf of both girls as the paper was pulled out to reveal yet another marvellous effect of colour marbling.

It was so wonderful that even I was keen for all the repetition the girls love by inserting paper after paper into each new swirling bath of oil paint and water.

Preparations for a Warm Woollen Hat or two

I'm making preparations for some sewing to adorn and warm my two lassies.

Here's some completed cutting out and browsing books to plan some embroidery before too much stitching together is complete and the hat become awkward to hold and embroider.

The book lying there on the right is:

The holidays we are enjoying now should afford me time to finish them...now just searching for the motivation.

Kangaroos on Millbrook

The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man. ~Author Unknown

Across the creek, resting amidst the trees in the long shadows cast in the late afternoon we spotted that which we were on the hunt for.

They stopped to take a peek at us as well before bounding further up the hill and away from our curious eyes.

Travelling on our favourite road in the Adelaide Hills after being out and about enjoying the sunshine on a very cool winter's day we felt certain we would be rewarded.

There is nothing more fun than spotting wildlife in the bush for our dear little girls...all right, and their parents as well.

As Ess says, "it is so much more fun to play "Spot the ...." in real life rather than just in a book Mummy".

Needles Clacking

If the knitter is weary the baby will have no new bonnet. ~Irish Proverb

Writing a previous post about focus must have been just what I needed as I have found that the last week or so have allowed me some more creative time, space and energy to begin working again on the blanket I have been knitting for little Eee ever since she was a baby. I am determined to finish it this season. We have both been using it lots already as the mornings have been very cool these past few days, leading into the house staying cooler during the day. This is particularly so when the pilot light on our central heating refuses to light and we are left waiting for the tradesman to replace it. (Fortunately it is all repaired as of this morning).

I really love this blanket, as do most visitors we have here, and I will find it hard to give away to little Eee however it will stay around our home for many years to come.

I have even got my hook out also in order to make a little gift for my nephew. I hope he likes his little 'blue' pear.

I'm hoping this newfound energy will last so I can complete some unfinished projects (am counting on the nesting phase to take care of that) and then to create something new for our new little cherub.

Decorator Chalk Drawing

Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor, and your picture begins to lighten up. ~Allen Klein

Today I was somehow inspired to allow my girls to use decorating chalks for some artwork. Perhaps it was the uniquely shaded illustrations in The Story about Ping which combine multiple colours of pencils or crayons that led me to thinking the chalks would work well. Perhaps I knew they'd like the large palette of colours to choose from, or it might even have been the practical me, resisting getting out paints when it is a bit too chilly to enjoy the outdoors with no sunshine.

All three of us had a lovely time using the chalks to create different effects, combining colours with ease using our fingers and simple cottonbuds.

I don't consider myself an artist at all but I do love sitting down with my girls to create colourful fancies for each other, admiring each other's drawings, observing and trying new techniques. And I absolutely adore Ess' fingerprint ducks paddling under the setting sun on the Yangtze River in the very first picture.

Simply being creative together.

Focus - the new growth in winter

I adore bare wintry branches with buds forming upon them, set against the blue sky of a clear sunny day.

It reflects a little the way I am feeling at the moment, being with child!

Each time I have been pregnant my usual nurturing and creative pursuits seem to go on hold as my body assumes its full role in nurturing a tiny one within.

My desire to pick up a needle and stitch seems to be taking a little break.

The urges I usually have to go outside and dabble in my garden wanes, although I still visit there daily to harvest greens for a lunchtime salad. It was fortunate that my girls and I spent a sunny morning in Autumn planting out some winter greens for this purpose.

It is very fortunate it is winter and the rainy season as getting outdoors to water the plants doesn't happen as regularly as it might need to during summer.

It is not that I am tired these days. In the middle of my second trimester I feel well and healthy and full of life and energy. It is just focussed on my family, the ones I am raising and nurturing day by day.

So my life is very focused at the moment on keeping this little one growing well inside me just like the bud on the wintery tree, waiting for the right time to blossom.