Oh the Humanity!

We spent the evening at the Humanities Fair at my daughter's school tonite. The Humanities Fair occurs every other year, alternating with the Science Fair, and is a chance for individual students, as well as classes, to show their creativity and talents. They can do any sort of project that challenges them to do/learn/perform something that is new for them or will help them to grow in a certain area and also to show what they learned about themselves and about God in the process (it is a Christian school). All of their processes and discoveries are written up in a report and the final products are shown at the Fair. It was great to see all the students' projects and to see them stretch themselves and put their creativity on display. The elementary school did projects as a class-one class made and published their own book, one group studied and made models of the products of Colonial Virginian tradesmen, and my daughter's class made beautiful wind chimes. In the older grades, the students did individual projects and also a few live preformances, including one pretty amazing electric guitar performance by one of the middle school boys. There were kids who made their own furniture-impressive!-one who interviewed and wrote a book about his grandmother, and there was even a girl who sewed a Civil War era dress-complete with hoop skirt-all by herself and it was GORGEOUS! (My daughters thought she was a real live princess!) However, one of the 8th graders had one project that really caught my eye:(The picture is a wee bit blurry because I had to take it with my cell phone-I think I'm going to need to carry my camera everywhere now-just in case there is a blog photo op!!) It was a great display of different stitch patterns, types of yarn, differences in gauge when using different needle sizes, and finished projects. How fun! I give her an A+++!!! I'm pretty sure what she learned about God is that knitting with lovely yarn is a gift from Him, yes? (Well, that's what she should have learned, anyway:) ) All in all though, I really enjoyed the evening and seeing the work of the kids-more than I thought I would, actually. They are a great group and came up with some really cool, thought-provoking ideas as well as some really, uh, interesting, ones-such as the "gerbil vest" made of plastic rodent crawly tubes, worn as a vest, through which the little fuzzy critter can crawl. Also a highlight for my girls, naturally... I think I'll stick with knitted vests.

Speaking of which, here is a picture of a felted vest a friend made that came out of the washer cabbage patch sized and resulted in a SOS call to my house for a good old fashioned wool pull (like taffy, only less sticky and smells a lot worse-it never ceases to amaze me how bad wet animal fibers smell...). We stretched and STRETCHED and STRETCHED and then I sewed it to my chair to block it out into a normal human size and shape-here's hopin'....

Btw, that is waste cotton holding the place for the border, not a wonky white border and the colors in the yarn in person are really beautiful. That is my chair covered in a trash bag and stuffed with a pillow-like MacGyver only better 'cuz it's with knitting. I have decided that this is my Humanities Fair project and I have learned that I do not like to think things cannot be fixed, I will do whatever I can to fix them and that I will continually thank the Lord the days of the corset are OVER (and also that He gave wet animals a weird smell). It may not be pretty, but I think it will get the job done in the end-I'll keep you posted!