To celebrate the company’s new Baby Hugs yarn, Red Heart has released a free pattern ebook with 11 knit and crochet patterns for babies and little kids up to age 8.
The yarn Baby Hugs is a medium weight, … Read More...
Pattern Inspiration: Cross-Stitch Constellations
There is no pattern to go with these lovely stitched constellations from Miniature Rhino, but it wouldn’t be too hard to find a star chart for the constellations you want to stitch and make them freehand.
Hers include things like … Read More...
Do You Know the Velvet Acorn?
If you’ve ever looked at knitting or crochet patterns on Pinterest, you’ve probably seen patterns from the Velvet Acorn.
Designer Heidi May has hundreds of patterns she sells on etsy, which are inspired by nature and styled beautifully and … Read More...
Giveaway: Customize Your Knitting
Lori is the winner!
If you want to learn how to take control of knitting patterns and make projects that better suit your body type, you should check out Margaret Hubert’s Customize Your Knitting.
The book covers the basics … Read More...
Teach Kids Fractions with These Fun Flowers
Fractions are sometimes a hard concept for kids to understand, and the more visual we can make things the more we can help them get what fraction equivalents really look like.
These cute fraction flowers from Teach Beside Me are … Read More...
Check Out These Cute Cross Stitch Sea Creatures and Pirates
I’m really starting to love the DMC blog, Common Thread, which not only has cute, free, downloadable cross-stitch charts, but lots of other cute projects using thread and yarn as well.
They recently posted a set of sea creatures and … Read More...
How to Control Tension with Arm Knitting
Last week I taught a fiber arts class at my daughter’s school, and one of the students was really taken with arm knitting. She made five or six little scarves (which was great for me, because part of my reason … Read More...
Help Your Kids Learn about Shadows with this Free Unit Study
Kid Minds has produced a great, free to subscribers, resource for kids ages 4 to 9 to learn about shadows.
The unit study has information on what a shadow is, books, videos, songs and poems about shadows and a … Read More...
Free Cutie Bear Cross-Stitch Chart
This is a rather old one, but I really love the Cutie Bear cross-stitch pattern that’s a free download from Crafty Guild.
It looks sort of like a ballerina panda, which my daughter no doubt would love. It’s worked with … Read More...
These Knitting Fails Should Make You Feel Better
We all have craft fails from time to time, including and especially in our knitting.
Sometimes the only thing that can make you feel better is remembering that other people have failed at knitting in the past, often spectacularly, and … Read More...
Great Science Experiments for 3-4 Year Olds
Little kids are naturally curious, and it’s lots of fun to do science experiments with preschoolers because so many science concepts are new and amazing to them.
But what to do with little ones?
Go Science Girls has a great … Read More...
An Easy Way to Make Your Bind Off Neater
I’m sure you’ve noticed how the very last stitch of binding off can look a little messy. It’s usually bigger than the others and you can easily tell which end is the end of the bind off for that very … Read More...
Stitch a Chart to Celebrate Summer
Now that summer is officially here, it’s time to stitch up some summer fun. There are lots of cross-stitch charts that use summer images as there themes, but some patterns get even more literal, like this one from Tiny Modernist.… Read More...
Warm Up America Wants You to Stitch Your State
Warm Up America is a fabulous charitable organization that encourages people to knit or crochet and assemble blankets or other items that can be donated locally or given to the national organization to be distributed where they are needed.
But … Read More...
Easy Activities for Letter Recognition
Recognizing letters is an important activity to help kids get ready for learning to read, and there are a lot of fun and easy ways to get kids interested in playing with letters.
These letter recognition activity ideas from Planning … Read More...
Giveaway: One Piece Knits
Andie is the winner.
I’m guessing pretty much every knitter starts out knitting flat, but a lot of knitters never (or at least rarely) look back once they learn how to knit in the round.
Circular knitting is perfect for … Read More...
Mermaid Cross-Stitch Patterns
I guess it’s because I’ve been thinking about the beach that I went looking for mermaid cross-stitch patterns. Of course a lot of what you find is Ariel from “The Little Mermaid,” which is not exactly the look I was … Read More...
Frog Unit Study Ideas for Kids
Somewhat piggybacking off the post about insect and spider crafts, another great creature that some kids really love is frogs.
The Jenny Evolution has a great roundup of books about frogs (The Wide-Mouth Toad is one of our favorites!). … Read More...
Yarn, the Movie, Set for U.S. Tour
Have you heard about the movie Yarn? This documentary by Una Lorenzen made its American debut at SXSW in March and has also had a showing in Newport Beach, Calif.
It’s all about the knitters and crocheters who are keeping … Read More...
Review: A First Book of Knitting for Children
Because I’ve been planning fiber arts classes for children, and I don’t have a whole lot of experience teaching kids to knit beyond the basics, I’ve been looking into some books specifically about knitting for kids lately.