Cowbell

June 30, 2012

You can find our first collection of songs to download from the series here.

The books from our series which come with CDs of amazing original music (for which Judith and I do not take any credit): Sunny, Snowy & Chinook and Foggy, will soon be sold out and the next print run won't come with CDs, so we are putting them up for you to download for free.

This is a collection of music produced by cowbell (Brady Cranfield), who is also my lovely husband. We are very grateful to him and to everyone who contributed music to the books. These songs feature lyrics and vocals by Miko Hoffman, Larissa Loyva, Nicholas Krgovich, Dan Bejar, Kathy Slade, and Chris Harris.

We'll try to put up the full CDs soon with some artwork from the books, we're just quite, extremely busy so it may take a little time.

The pineapple bird

June 9, 2012

Ooh, ok, I think this is a pretty good one. We found a video on youtube called Jim Henson on Making Muppets, 1969, from Iowa Public Television. Jim Henson shows children how to make puppets from household objects like socks, potatoes, spoons and tennis balls. It is great ! Above is our potato puppet — named "The Pineapple Bird" by the designer, aged 3.

Sunny's shoebox guitar

May 19, 2012

Here's a version of the shoebox guitar activity (instructions at this link) from our second book, Sunny. We used a sturdy little giftbox and some paper straws.

Chinook's Scarf (free pattern)

March 3, 2012

Print this activity

This project is inspired by Chinook’s mauve scarf in Snowy & Chinook and the flower they find in the snow.

This lace stitch used in this scarf, called the four-spot,

came from the book The Essential Stitch Collection by Leslie Stanfield and Melody Griffiths

This pattern is sized for small children: 5 × 36 inches (125 × 915 mm). You can easily size it up for older children or adults. Just be sure that any additional stitches you add in are the right multiple for the pattern: 6 + 9 (see pattern notes for details). You may download the pattern for free here (PDF link)

I am not crazy about knitting lace in general. I liked this one because it reminds me of eyelet. Also, the pattern is simple enough that once you have done a few rows you don't have to concentrate on it too, too much. Also, one really nice feature of lace is that it knits up very quickly because of the holes as they open up.

To do this pattern, you will need to know how to: yo (you can find a continental version at the same site) skpo / skp s2kpo

One suggestion I have is that you do a little test with one or two pattern repeats before casting on the whole scarf. The lace stitch is really easy, but I was making one mistake which took me a few tries to figure out, and it was easier to solve it when I did a little test. I used the test as a scarf for someone's doll when I was done. By the way, this scarf curls. I find that quite cuddly myself, but just so you know, it will curl.

Match Box Advent Calendar

November 26, 2011

As there's less than a week before the start of Advent, we thought we'd quickly offer a classic project that your kids can enjoy all the way until Christmas. Here are our directions for an advent calendar made of matchboxes, including a PDF, if you'd like extra help.

Katsumi Komagata

October 22, 2011

Here is one of many incredible books by Japanese children’s book designer, Katsumi Komagata. It’s called Feuilles (leaves) and is co-published by all of these amazing people: One Stroke (the author’s company), Les Trois Ourses , Les Droigts Qui Rêves and the Centre Pompidou in 2004. Every single one of Komagata’s books is better than the last, but this one is double fantastic as it tells the life of leaves and it’s clever tactility is as captivating for visually impaired children as for colour obsessed designers.

You can start here , click on the orange arrows, and take a tour through Komagata's work.

More after the jump.