Wednesday, May 9, 2012

a little bit of sunshine...


In Class 2,  the children are venturing out into the world a little more adventurously: climbing trees becomes an obsession, feeling the wind in their hair, the elements are experienced intensely. In the Steiner school s here in Australia, the fairy tales of Class 1 become longer, episodic journeys , often from the Celtic tradition, and these stories seem to expand like the rays of the sun.
In craft, the children pick up their sewing needles again, and stitch the sunburst stitch on colourful muslin. The stitches ray out, stitched from the middle out in a circle,  multi coloured and arranged so that each expanding circle of stitches sits just inside the previous row's stitches.
I really needed to concentrate making this article, yet felt so expanded by the colours starting to ray out in front of me. There are two sides, with a piece of muslin inside to thicken, in case you want to use it like an oven mitt or pot rest.
It opened my heart and delighted me, and now hangs in my kitchen waiting for it's first pot to sit under!
yippee!

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

in and out and in and out...

 "There are big waves and little waves,
green waves and blue,
Waves you can jump over,
Waves you dive through,
Waves that rise up like a great water wall,
Waves that swell softly and don't break at all,
Waves that can whisper,
Waves that can roar,
And tiny waves that run at you running on the shore"
Eleanor Farjeon

In my most splendid craft course we have been weaving!!
In Class One in Steiner schools here in Australia, the children start their first weaving on a flat loom, using an assortment of colours of the rainbow (but no greens or neutrals).
It is a task in finger dexterity, rhythmical (nurturing the child's physicality and life force), requires a degree of concentration and focus, and produces such a simple yet ever so useful and delicious little bag/purse! The children have already been running and playing these in and out movements in their circle work in the morning, and now in this little woven article, they bring these big wave movements into their fingers.
There is something so reassuring in doing a simple weaving. The rhythm holds you, the colours tantalise, the progress is steady and meditative.

In Class 2 the children move onto circular/cylindrical weaving, using a tube. This could become a recorder bag or a water bottle holder, or any other useful bag. Later in the years this cylindrical weaving can be scaled down to make tiny bags woven with a needle around a toilet roll!
A tiny little bag ready for a secret treasure!