30 Days Wild - Day 12

Today we picked some strawberries from our garden! Pickle and Penguin love to stoop and peer at the strawberries beginning to blush. They are learning to check and see if they are ripe before picking them.

Both of them love strawberries and they love to pick them fresh from their very own garden.

30 Days Wild - Day 3

Today we had a little scavenger hunt to make a rainbow from the plants in our garden. We struggled a bit for blue, strange as it is my favourite colour......

Sorry for the bad light in the photo. I took the picture after Pickle and Penguin were in bed, we were just too busy before hand!!

Dying Flowers

Over the Easter holidays Pickle and I decided to try and dye some flowers. We had a lovely chat about how plants get their water and how it travels around the plant. I would be interested to try this experiment at some point with a potted plant rather than cut flowers to show the involvement of the roots...I think this level is sufficient for now but it would be an interesting extension.

So Pickle had tried this experiment at preschool but they did not see a very strong colour change. When we did it we decided to make the colour of the water very concentrated. We used a lot of food colouring, so much that the water was very dark and you couldn't easily see which colour was which from first glance.

We also cut some of the stems very short to see what difference that would make....

It turns out quite a lot! The shorter stems meant that the colour showed up in the flowers much faster, within a couple of hours.

 After an extended period of several days the shorter stemed flowers also had a more intense colour. I would conclude that this is due to the fact less of the colouring is lost on the way up, in the stem and remaining leaves for instance.

I love the pretty striping of the colours running through the veins of the petals.

The blue and red were more successful than the green colouring. We swapped a red and blue flower over to see if the colours would mix afterwards. They didn't. When placed in the blue water the red one went blue with just some red patches left at the tips of the petals; the blue flower stayed blue in the red water. This gives me ideas about future experiments mixing the food colouring to make purple before adding the flowers....what would happen? The green colouring did give green lines in the petals rather than blue and yellow so I don't really expect a chormotographic effect....but I am not sure what would happen, it might be an interesting conversation to have with Pickle in the future after some chromatography adventures....

Until next time...

Skittles Experiment

We did the Skittles experiment.We put skittles in a circle on a white plate and then poured on some warm water. Pickle was really excited to be able to do an experiment with us all. He was very happy taking photographs of the result with his own camera, received for Christmas.

We talked a little about the colours dissolving in the water and looked at what happened to the colours as they started to mix. Pickle had a grand old time and enjoyed seeing how the skittles themselves had dissolved later in the afternoon.

Until next time....S x

Painting on Foil

Penguin is not very good with the cold. She is still little and is quite slight. In this weather we can't generally stay out for very long before taking her back inside to warm up. Last week was a welcome break from the icy weather but one colder day we decided to get on with some painting. 

I am rather a Pintrest fan and have seen various Pins about painting on foil so I thought we would give it a try. I rolled a long sheet of foil out on the kitchen floor, taped the ends down and let the kids go at it with a brush each and a few colours of paint. Here we used green, blue, white and a blue glitter paint.

It was quite fun, although I am not sure how different Pickle and Penguin found it from painting on paper. Pickle later in the week asked to to painting. On paper. Penguin was a little more intrigued sticking her finger in and sliding it in the wet paint, although she ended up sticking her painty finger in her mouth (typical) and then trying to walk all over it with her socks still on (Mummy Error!!!).

I think it will be a nice activity to try again when Pickle is big enough to think about shapes and to look at some examples of Swirly Monet painting. I have seen swirly patterns work very nicely on Pintrest....here and here are just two examples.

Rainbow Mice

Pickle started pre school at the start of January. As I am a SAHM he has never really been left, just a few times with my Mum and a few times at a church group. I must say he has been a champ. No tears, loads of happy faces. Immense relief.

One day, on the way home, he said he had been sad because he missed me. I suggested I could make him something small for his picket so if he missed me he could hold it and know I loved him and was thinking of him too. His little face lit up and he began to chatter excitedly.

I suggested a little crochet heart thinking I could whip up one nice a quickly before I went to bed, maybe in a few colours so he could choose....Pickle claimed that would be too big, it should be small like a mouse. Yes it must be a mouse. So a mouse it was. A little purple mouse.

On day two of the little purple mouse the pre school leader asked about the mice, if I had in fact made it and if she could pay me to make some for her. I whipped up 5 as a gift for the pre school, and a rather cute collection they are too. Pickles teacher was very pleased and I got to test a new pattern! Watch this space for the little mouse pattern and tutorial!

They are just the perfect size for little hands and little pockets.

I used Patons 100% cotton as found here. The colours are Delta, Candy, Apple and Jade. The Yellow one is the same type of yarn but doesn't seem to be in the current range. I have sadly lost the ball band as it has been in my stash for a while. It is a very pretty yellow, I am sad to see it is no longer on the stock list at Wool Warehouse.

I loved working in this yarn, it is so smooth and has a beautiful sheen to it. I love that it is cotton too. Will certainly be using this type of yarn again. It looks like it may be similar to the Scheepjes Catona which has a lot more colour options! Wow, Scheepjes you are winning me over from sight only. I am absolutely going to need some of this yarn in my life....on my next order for sure.

Have you seen....?

Oh My, have you seen the Scheepjes CAL? It starts in February and it is so beautiful. There are 3 original colourways, Jewel, Rainbow and Pastel. Rainbow is my personal preference, I love how the colours pop on the dark smokey background.



Mmmmmmmmm sooooo pretty!!! I am going to follow too keep an eye on the goings on. I am in awe of the beauty! I will definitely have to follow a CAL with my blog one day. Maybe I will even be able to run one sometime in the future, who knows! I will certainly have a look at the Scheepjes yarn next time I am looking to order, it looks so very pretty!

It is fair to say the crochet world is alive with CALs right now with Attic 24 midway through the moorland CAL. A blanket would have been my preference but I just love the techniques int he shawl. I wish I could justify the outlay to buy the kit! I would love to try the Scheepjes yarn. At the moment I mostly work in Stylecraft special dk because we don't have a local yarn shop and I like to know that the yarn I am buying is going to be a lovely texture as well as affordable!

I love the idea of a CAL and I hope that it encourages more people to pick up a hook and give it a go!