To be festive, I added a string of colored led lights to a sequined Santa hat. The cool part? The lights show through the white faux fur brim. The battery pack fit inside the brim in the back, and I wrapped the lights loosely around, then used white thread to make a basting stitch around the brim to hold everything in. The long stitches will be easy to undo, should I need to remove the lights, and I left a gap just large enough to slide the battery pack out.
My youngest had a home-made holiday sweater contest at school. She drew up her design, and I sewed it into a red long sleeved shirt using felt and embroidery floss.
I also harvested a small led switch from a holiday decoration and sewed it in behind the snowman’s face, so there would be flashing lights.
She won.
I have worked my way through the entire bag of acrylic scrap yarn. Here is the lineup of hats I was able to put together with the multitude of colors.
This was actually a good color experiment. I combined colors I never would have picked originally, and I think they turned out well. Looking around a pile of yarn and deciding which colors to put together and in which amounts is a good brain exercise as well. Plus it is an excellent stash buster.
It is time for the annual making of the bookmarks for my youngest’s teachers. We do this every year and they are always well received. This year was a snow theme and she wanted a snowflake as the “tassel”. To attach the two laminated pieces of paper I punched a small hole and did a few half square knots to make a small section of twisted macrame.
I like the way the half square knots twist. To finish it off, I put a dab of white glue, then trimmed the ends close to the work.
Our chorus was taking a private paper vote and we have a member who reads braille. Making the ballots inclusive was important to me and appreciated by her, and it only took a 15 minutes. I found a braille slate on Amazon, which is a small frame and stylus that makes it easy to get the right spacing for the braille dots. The frame is inexpensive, so I didn’t need to invest in a Braille Writer, which would be good for larger projects. The trickiest part is forming the letters, called cells, backwards. I printed the ballots on card stock because the thicker paper holds the embossed braille better, then used the braille slate to mark “yes” and “no” on each ballot so they were all the same. The ballot was read out loud to all members, then we all marked our ballots with pencil.
My message here is that often small changes in the way we do things can make big differences in creating inclusive environments. Could she have orally given her vote? Yes, but it wouldn’t have the same feeling of privacy the other members have. Another option to a paper vote would be that we all could have sent in our votes electronically before the meeting instead. There are many different approaches to solving problems, and it usually only takes a little thought and consideration to make processes accessible and inclusive.
Critters and Craft 