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By Mom Unplugged, June 11, 2008 12:11 pm

Are you tired of birthday parties at the pool, Chuck E. Cheese’s, or the local bowling alley? But perhaps the thought of entertaining a large group of over-excited kids at your house fills you with dread? The solution: Think outside the birthday box.

My good friend Wishy‘s daughter recently had an original and totally fun party at a local knitting store! Her daughter had become fascinated with the idea of learning to knit after watching her aunt knit, and announced that for her 8th birthday she wanted to have a “Knitting Party.”

Wishy was understandably perplexed, but gets a Mom of the Year Award for researching the possibilities instead of just saying with a sinking heart: ” But wouldn’t you rather just go to the pool like last year?” (Like I probably would have done).

She called up our one, tiny local knitting store and asked them if they ever did birthday parties. Well, no they had never done a birthday party, but they said that they thought it sounded fun and would be willing to give it a try.

Ten 7 and 8 year-old girls (including my oldest daughter) went to the party and learned how to knit a book mark. The shop gave each girl needles and yarn and they had three instructors on hand to help the girls. All Wishy had to do was bring the cake, plates, napkins, and drinks.

The girls had a ball and each went home with a completed book mark plus a goody bag put together by the shop containing more needles, two more balls of yarn, the directions for the book mark, and instructions for a pot holder to try at home.

The girls had fun, even the shop-owner claims to have enjoyed it (and hopefully has gained a few future customers), and now ten little girls (and Wishy) know how to knit.

That beats Chuck E. Cheese’s any day!

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Other unusual birthday party ideas:

• A visit to a fire station
• Visit a zoo, petting zoo, or alpaca farm
• See if you can tour a movie theater (many will allow school groups to tour, why not a birthday group?)
• Horse birthday: See if a local riding school or club might allow your group to come and give each child a short, guided ride on a horse around the arena
• Airport birthday: Visit your local small airport (I’m not talking O’Hare or JFK here). Picnic on the grass and watch the planes take off and land. Better yet, if you know someone who owns a plane, see if your friend would allow the kids to take turns sitting in the pilot’s seat. If your pilot friend has a handheld aviation radio, borrow it and tune it to the local airport frequency (the airport employees or your friend can help you with this) then the kids will be able to hear the pilots talk.
• Go Geocaching: Pick an easy one and give each child a small object to leave in the cache in exchange for taking one out. (You should probably try finding it on your own first to make sure it is easy enough and to avoid disappointments if it can’t be found).
• Go Letterboxing: Perhaps the kids could each create their own stamp before heading out to find the box. Be sure to pick an easy one. (Again, better do a trial run on your own first).
• See if your local pizza parlor would let you bring some kids in for a tour and to make their own pizzas. My daughter’s Brownie Troop did this and the girls loved it.

I’ll post more ideas as I think of them. Do you have any easy but unusual party ideas?

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For a charity party idea, please read about my daughter’s Humane Society birthday party.

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Cool knitting cake designed, baked and decorated by Wishy’s talented husband! Photo courtesy of Wishy.

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By Mom Unplugged, May 25, 2008 8:09 pm

Above you can see the product of this week’s Unplugged Project theme of metal: a knitted hamster.

I know what you’re thinking: “Wait a minute, the theme was metal, why is she showing us a knitted hamster?” Well, my point here is to prove just how flexible the Unplugged Project can be.

This is not just any old knitted hamster, it is a hamster that was knitted on a homemade tin can knitter. A tin can is made of metal. Voilà! There is the connection! Our finished product was made of yarn, but it was made by using something metal, so it “counts.”

This type of knitting apparatus is known as a French Knitter, a Corker, a Spool Knitter, a Mushroom Knitter, a Knitting Nancy, a Knitting Knobby, and a few other names too I believe. My daughter has a commercially produced wooden one like this with four prongs that produces long, narrow, “snakes.” But you can easily make these knitters yourself (see links at the end of this post).

For even more fun, you can make big ones with various sizes of tin can which will produce different sizes of knitted tube. Ours is made from a 15 ounce can.

I found the instructions for the knitter and the hamster in the wonderful book Corking (Kids Can Easy Crafts) by Judy Sadler and Linda Hendry. There are also some instructions online here.

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Here is how we made it:

You will need a clean tin can, some finishing nails (small heads) that are about 1.5″ long, and some sturdy tape. Small nail heads are important because the knitting process involves slipping loops of yarn up over the top of the nails, so you don’t want the yarn to get stuck on the nail heads. The book calls for cloth tape, but all I could find was colorful duct tape and that worked fine despite being a bit annoying to cut (I recommend slicing it with a box cutter instead of using scissors, which tend to stick):

First we removed the bottom of the can. You can usually do it with a can opener, but sometimes the bottom edge is rounded and must be removed with a dremel tool, or small saw. My advice: make sure you use a can whose bottom rim is narrow enough to be removed with a can opener.

Beware of sharp edges. I had a sharp shard that was sticking out on my can, so I squashed it down with some pliers, and then wrapped both raw edges with the tape.

Next apply a strip of tape just under the lip of the can sticky side out. Stick a pair of nails side by side (they should be touching) to the tape. Make sure to have about half an inch of the nail sticking up above the can edge and the other inch below. In order to knit, the nails must be stable so you’ll want a lot of the nail to be attached to the can:

Put another pair of nails on opposite the first. Continue putting on sets of nails around the can. It doesn’t have to be scientifically precise, but try and space them about 5/8th” (1.5cm) apart. After all the nails are stuck to the can, wrap a few strips of tape all the way around the diameter of the can to hold the nails in place.

Press the tape down between each pair of nails. Next cut short strips of tape and apply them to the can between the pairs of nails like this:

Wrap more tape around the diameter of the can. I did two layers of tape, and finished off with more little strips between the nails for added stability and to cover up any raw sticky edges. You can either leave your can like that, or decorate it with glued on paper, fabric , or ribbon. We glued some fabric on and this is what we ended up with:

You can experiment with different sized cans which will produce different sized knitted tubes. If you use a jumbo, restaurant-sized can, you can even make an infant hat!

This was so much fun that after my daughter finishes her own hamster (which is well underway), I think I will steal the knitter back and make some nice, cozy socks for my two year-old. The tube that comes off this sized can looks to be just about the right size for her feet!

So that is it for the metal part of our post. If you want to know how to make the hamster, then you should buy Corking, or borrow it from the library.

LINKS:

Make a Sculpey Clay Spool Knitter

Make a Spool knitter out of a wooden thread spool

Spool Knitting (instructions on how to make a knitter, and how to knit)

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What did your family make for the theme metal? If you did a metal Unplugged Project this week, then please leave your link in Mr. Linky (and a comment in case Mr. Linky malfunctions and I have to remove him).

If you didn’t join us, then feel free to explore everyone’s projects to get inspired, and please consider joining us next week. You don’t have to do anything fancy or complicated! For more information on the Unplugged Project as well as instructions about how to participate even if you don’t have a blog, read more here.

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Next week’s Unplugged Project theme will be:

Paint

So far we’ve done quite a few Unplugged Projects that used paint, but I don’t think that it has ever been the theme before. Hope to see you here next week!

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Comments (11)

By Mom Unplugged, December 18, 2007 1:58 pm

This week’s Unplugged Project (Yarn / String) has inspired me to try a little knitting! As I child I used to knit, but my mother did the casting on and off, and I never got as far as learning how to purl. Unfortunately any small amount of knitting knowledge that I once had, has been buried under thirty years of other information.

But nonetheless, today I saw some pretty cotton yarn and some needles in a store and I bought them! My Christmas present to myself I guess. I must be a “Crafty Mom Wannabe.”

Now, how does one knit? I know that there are a lot of wonderful knitters out there in the blogosphere. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good, basic, “how to knit” website?

I promise to post a picture of my first effort, no matter how dreadful it turns out to be!

Comments (3)

By Mom Unplugged, December 14, 2007 12:29 pm

I had one of these as a child and just loved it. Even my mother had one as a child! My daughter has had one since the age of six and enjoys hers too.

This easy-to-use knitting contraption lets children simply knit long “snakes” that can be coiled and sewn together to make any number of projects.

There is something so calming and zen-like about knitting and this is a great way to introduce this calming activity to your children. Plus you the parent can also experience peace of mind because, although there are less-expensive plastic versions of this out there, this one is made of wood in Germany by well-respected European toy-maker .

I have also found that it makes a wonderful travel activity since it is very small, light, and easily packable in a carry-on toy/activity bag. It would fit in a Christmas stocking too!

Are the “snakes” piling up with no purpose? Then here is also a link to a great book that has lots of fun and easy craft ideas for using all these little “snakes.”