Mural Painting

There was a bit of a lull in January this year, about a week before I was supposed to go back to work, and I realised no one had done any painting at school over the holidays. The P&C have been quite prolific at painting things since 2020, when we started with a tuckshop mural (and then moved on to a garden themed one, the entire prep area and pavers in a garden. This year there was also an ANZAC mural of poppies and a spontaneous bush turkey, but I don't have photos of those.) 

We have a couple of murals that are pre-approved and are really just on the wait list that will get done when people have the time. The school admin also have a wish list of murals that they want done mostly to increase the kids gross motor skills. It was this list that I was looking at when I text my friend Imogen (who usually organises painting things) to ask if she was free to tick some off. 

The fates aligned and Imogen was free, so the two of us went up to school and got to work. We decided that it was time for the senior side of the school to have some love, since we had thus far painted predominantly in the junior half. The mural on the wish list from admin was a city scape with roads that the kids could walk down, give directions with, or drive cars along. 

We cleaned it back and discussed the new mural. Happy with the city scape with all it's learning applications, we began mapping things out, but of course, we didn't want to just paint a boring city with houses and trees. So what was a city, became a rather enormous zoo, complete with oversized animals of every kind, including the mythical. (My justification there is that it gives students the opportunity to use their imaginations, and increase their creativity: learning yo!)

I think between us, Imogen and I spent at least 50 hours painting the mural, and we had other people come and help out too. It's certainly time intensive when you decide to upscale and take the entire area available. When Imogen mentioned that she would label all of the animals (since that's what you'd see at a Zoo), I jumped at the chance to add the Japanese names as well. And when we couldn't find a good inspiration picture for the emu, we pivoted to add a crane. 

The whole mural is difficult to photograph, since it is pretty huge. We talked about adding cool looking insects in the two yellow roundabouts, but when it came to it, we didn't quite get there. Sophie and Rachel, who had been pretty heavily invested in the mural since I dragged them up to school with me while I painted three days out of five, have been vocal in their disappointment. Steve has come to my defence though, given the sheer amount of time I'd already spent at their school painting things. 

For the most part though, the mural is fun perfection. We've given it a protection coat and roped it off to let the paint set before the kids start running all over it. I hope they love it as much as we do. 

Chit-Chat the Squirrel

After my spontaneous decision to graciously make Rachel another cow to be friends with Moo-Moo, it only made logical sense to also make a similar toy for Sophie. Lest I be accused of favouritism. Knowing the girls' love for fluffy things, I had a look through the scraps and figured I had just enough of the faux fur left from making Sophie's Squirrel Girl outfit to make a small squirrel for her. 

There is no squirrel included in the Menagerie Pattern, but the only real feature I figured I needed to capture was that tail. I ended up just tracing out the shape that I had used for Sophie's costume but on a much smaller scale. I was on the fence about sewing it to the back of the squirrel so it would be permanently up or letting it fall free, but Sophie said she'd prefer the flexibility. 

The squirrel has been named Chit Chat, after a squirrel character from the Wild Robot books. I should say that I made both Chit Chat and Mini Moo-Moo last year, I think in late November/early December, but life got away from me and I'm only just getting around to posting about them now. Busy busy. Sophie just turned ten this January though, so I wonder if Chit Chat will be the last soft toy I make for her. We shall see. 

Here is Chit Chat, Mini Moo-Moo and Star Tiger together.  

Oh, how far I've come, and how many lovely friendly soft toys I've made these girls. Makes me hope that my newest little nephew Archie will also need some cuddly friends in his life too. 

Mini Moo-Moo

 Ahh, Moo-Moo. Was there ever a cow who was more loved than this? Since I've made Moo-Moo, she's had a very full and loved life, including a couple of surgeries to help her through. Not sure when it was, but Rachel noticed the bit of fabric that I had had leftover from making Moo-Moo in my stash and asked if I could make a second cow. 

Initially I told her no. Then when she asked again, I told her no. Then when she asked a third time, I told her I'd sell her the fabric and she could make her cow. Rachel bought the fabric. I realised I'd need to do a bit of hand holding, especially since the amount of fabric was quite small, found the pieces of cow pattern and scaled them down so they would fit. 

We spent an afternoon figuring out where to put and pin everything, then put it away for a couple of weeks before she cut it out. Watching Rachel cut the pieces I began to doubt my initial plan of having her sew the cow herself. The fur fabric was just a little too tricky to deal with for a beginner sewer. 

So I bit the bullet and sat down to make the cow. Rachel informed me that this cow, already named "Mini Moo-Moo" was a boy cow, and was not to be a baby for Moo-Moo, but in fact her friend. She even had a story of how they met and became friends written down before Mini Moo-Moo was made. 

Not being a girl cow, I was sadly deprived of udder making, but otherwise this cow came together about as smoothly as the last one. Mini Moo-Moo is made with the same cow print fur and some brown and white felt. He is about the same size as the Pikachu I originally made with this pattern, maybe a little bit bigger, and is the perfect friend for Moo-Moo and Rachel. 

And, since I was suddenly making a new soft toy for Rachel, I figured I'd better make one for Sophie too, so come back soon to hear all about that. 

Bucket Drum Dampers

One down side to teaching music to a bunch of kids is that you generally want to get them drumming and that is loud. When they are little and just using their hands, it's bearable, but a class of 25 grade 6 students all using bucket drums with sticks in a confined space is not. Last year I ran lots of my lessons outside to combat the noise factor, but it's not always feasible. 

So I took the bucket drum home in December and did a shout out to my community for anyone going through their old towels over Christmas. With the donated towels and sheets, I cut circles and sewed three layers together on Olivia the Overlocker to fit the top of the drum. Noise damping success! 

Glad I could recycle the towels before they were thrown away, and have saved my ears in the process. The sad news was that Olivia began making funny noises as I sewed the last five or so. I assumed she was protesting at the thick layers of towelling I was making her sew, but after taking her to the sewing machine guy, it turns out the plastic casing on her motor is cracked. Alas for my hard working Olivia! 

Library Crawl

Yesterday the girls were grumpy, so today, I took them on a Library Crawl. It's like a pub crawl, but you visit lots of libraries and spend time reading books and borrowing in each library.

It really made a difference to how we were all feeling about life. So much reading and book exploring. 

Sophie was on a hunt for Wings of Fire books each time, and often would spend time reorganising the section on the shelf so the books were all in order. Is that some signs of OCD that she's showing maybe? 

I also caught her talking to the books. Librarian in the making perhaps? 

We came home with 27 books between us, and I read and returned one on our journey as well. Not a bad day at all. 

I have a slew of draft posts waiting for me to write/finish and while I've crossed off nearly all of the things I had on my to-do list at the start of the holidays, I found while chatting to Steve tonight that there are a bunch of new things to do, probably before school goes back in a week and a bit. Blergh. Hopefully I'll be able to kick my butt into gear soon, but in the meantime, I'm going to go read some books.