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Scrapbooking and Textile Expo

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Well I am so out of touch with reality these days (have a 1 and 3 year old) that these two events nearly slipped passed me.

The scrapbook and paper craft expo and the Textile Art Festival was great. It’s been a while since I attended a local Craft convention so I had lots of new products to check out. It certainly would have been much easier without 2 kids and a pram. The small booths overloaded with stock actually prevented me from even getting in to look at them let alone buy them. The only stuff I bought (there was still a pram full) was from stalls that had stock on the outside table so I could push my pram up.

I actually bought more stuff in the Textile Art festival as Felting has peaked my interest in crafting again, not just writing, working or blogging about craft but actually getting my hands dirty. The only problem is even though I bought fabulous hand dyed wool and silk yarn no one was actually selling “Time” so the chance of me getting any “time” soon to play with my stash is unlikely.

There was lot’s of classes and Make and takes on but I could not participate due to the kids which was very disappointing as I really wanted to jump in and give it a go, especially the felted scarfs.

As usual the Brisbane Convention center provided overpriced crappy food and terrible wheelchair/pram access that resulted in us walking a mile just to access the lift.

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Moss and Lichen Unit Study

I guess moss and lichen are more things that you see in the spring than in the summer, but there are some deep shady parts of our yard that stay mossy all year, and summer is a fine time to look for plants that like to live in shady, wet areas.

Raising Up Wild Things has a really pretty set of printables to use for a moss and lichen unit study.

And just in case you’re like me and don’t really know the difference, moss is a plant that grows in damp wooded areas, while lichen is a combination of fungus and algae that live together. Lichen can live in different environments but are often found in places where you would find moss, too.

The printable includes drawings of some common moss such as sphagnum moss and wood moss, as well as common lichen shapes (crusty, leafy and shrubby). There are good sized images you can print out and laminate to use to compare to specimens you find when you are exploring nature.

There’s also a forest floor coloring page and a printable journaling page where kids can write or draw their observations and there are a few questions older kids can answer.

You can use these when you go on a walk in the woods (or the back yard) to talk about what you are seeing, or combine them with other resources to talk about things that live in the forest. Check them out at Raising Up Wild Things.

This PDF from the Morton Arboretum has a bunch of pictures of different kinds of moss and where to find them, which could also be helpful in your studies. Learn more about lichen, including what they are and what they are not, in this article from the US Forest Service.

[Photo: Raising Up Wild Things]