Butterflies, Birds, and a Birthday

Guess who just turned 1! It's hard to believe how much my nearly-niece Maggie has grown and changed and learned in one brief year. She took her first steps at nine months, and now she cruises anywhere she wants to go. She waves bye and she says "hi" when she picks up her toy phone. She claps her hands to request either of her two favorite songs: "Itsy Bitsy Spider" or the University of Michigan fight song. At her party, she ate homemade pizza and cake and charmed all the people gathered to celebrate her first birthday milestone.

It was the perfect opportunity for some craftiness, of course.

I made the birthday girl a little stuffed bird in a knitted nest, a project I've had in mind for a while.

It's inspired by the bird mobile I made when she was born, but instead of just watching it fly on high, this bird is for playing. I thought a nest with eggs and a bird inside would make a fun game for a girl who likes to take things out and put them back in...although I'm sure she'll come up with her own ways to play with it. The bird is a slightly-larger version of the ones I've made before, with a green corduroy body, an orange-flowered belly, and two felt eyes.

I knit the nest from two strands of a chunky wool-blend yarn, using an invented-on-the-spot pattern that's much like most of the hats I've made. When I finished it, it seemed too pointy and hat-like, and I thought I'd need to refine the prototype a bit. Then I turned it inside out. Aha! Perfect!

The wooden eggs I bought, and I made this beeswax polish to finish them. Nontoxic, of course!

(photo by Sarah Gano)

To continue the theme of winged, springy things, I also brought some festive butterflies to decorate for the party.

Rain was pouring down, but it was a warm spring rain instead of the cold and suspiciously white precipitation we've had until very recently. The soft light illuminated the colors through the windows, and daffodils bloomed in the yard outside.

I made the butterflies from grated-up bits of crayons, melted with a warm iron between sheets of waxed paper (inspiration here). Against the slowly-greening spring landscape, they're a cheerful burst of color.