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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 (14)

By Mom Unplugged, May 19, 2008 6:56 am

Sorry this didn’t get up last night, but when I went to post it, my site was down! The support people told me that there was a “migration” taking place on my server. “Oh, of course!” I said with knowledgeable techie certainty, but I was really thinking: “Isn’t that what geese do?”

I decided that whatever it was, it sounded important enough to take a Long Time, so I went to bed. I’m happy to report that the geese did not fly away with my site, as it is back this morning. So finally, here’s my post:

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This week’s theme, chosen by my oldest daughter, was ribbon. It seems that she had bookmarks in mind when she chose that theme. In between running around outside in the glorious weather, and despite my lack of preparation, we somehow managed to make two kinds of ribbon bookmarks for this week’s Unplugged Project.

As usual, I had not prepared for this project and at the last minute we scoured the house for odd bits of ribbon or anything that we might be able to use. Here’s what we found:

My daughter wanted to decorate a bookmark-length ribbon with glitter glue, buttons, and flat beads. First she cut a length of wide ribbon, and then she added some glitter glue, and positioned some beads and buttons that I glued on with the glue gun. Here is her finished book mark:

For my book mark, I decided to do a bit more experimenting with weaving with pipecleaners. I attached four pipecleaners at the top like this:

Then I tied two different colored ribbons at the top too. I then weaved the ribbons between the pipecleaners, twisting the two ribbons together as I went along:

When I had about 2 inches of pipecleaner unwoven at the end, I stopped and knotted the ribbons around the pipecleaners. I then threaded beads on the ends of each pipecleaner, and a few on the ribbon ends. TIP: To thread beads onto fat ribbons, wrap the end in scotch tape (so it is kind of like the end of a shoelace) thread the beads, then cut off the tape:

I also added a few beads to the hanging ends of the ribbon at the top of the bookmark, just to dress it up a bit. Here is my final product:

I was rather pleased with the result of this. It would be fun to experiment with different colors and widths of ribbon instead of just using what one has on hand.

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Did you join us this week? If so, then link to your ribbon project post in Mr. Linky and please leave a comment.

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The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project :

Metal

I look forward to seeing your wonderful ideas! Hopefully the geese will leave my server alone from now on, and my post should be up Sunday night as usual. Enjoy your week!

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Comments (15)

By Mom Unplugged, February 17, 2008 7:33 pm

This week’s Unplugged Project theme was fabric. I must admit to having had a hard time with this one, so I finally decided to quit worrying about it and leave it up to the kids. I asked them what they thought they could do with fabric and my oldest daughter immediately began talking about a picture of a tiger that would be filled in with scraps of fabric instead of being colored-in with markers. I thought this sounded like a fine idea, but then I made the mistake of mentioning the word “sewing.”

Both faces lit up. The fabric collage was forgotten and out came the sewing machine. They have both used it before and can manage, even my 5 year-old, with some assistance.

I found some pretty fabric pieces in a laundry room cupboard. I also hauled out a big tub of fabric remnants that has moved with me, unopened, from garage to garage for the last 8 years or so. At least I thought it was unopened. Upon removing the lid, this is what we found:

A mouse pantry! At least I guess it was a mouse, although I saw no droppings. Whatever it was had stocked up quite a larder full of sunflower seeds! How embarrassing. When you have rodents living comfortably in your fabric storage container, you really can’t claim to be very “crafty,”can you?

Once we got over the laugh about the mouse nest, we settled down to business with the laundry room fabric (I’ll wash the other, just in case).

My 7 year-old daughter decided to make a small pillow for herself. I remembered that I had some very nice potpourri stashed away in the linen closet and suggested that she put some of that in there too, to make it smell good. Unfortunately even WordPress can’t create a scratch-and-sniff blog post yet, but it really does smell lovely!

This was the process:

After the success of the pillow the kids really went to town and began making little flags by cutting triangles and sewing a small open hem through which they pushed a drinking straw. This was all their own idea. They then thundered around the house holding “races” until dinner time (the flags were the “prizes”):

And here is the baby’s fabric project (simple, but fun for a 2 year-old…and all her idea!):

All in all, we had a surprisingly fun time! (And the kids were amused for HOURS!!!)

So what did you do with fabric? Or did I scare you all away by choosing such a potentially intimidating theme! I hope not. If you did do the project, please leave your name in Mr. Linky (if he decides to work this week). Please also be sure to leave a comment if you participated, that way if Mr. Linky fails and I have to remove him, we’ll still have a link to your project.

By the way, for those of you Unplugged Project “old-timers,” please check out this link, I gave you all a little something (at least any of you who collect blog awards). I think everyone missed it!

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Next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Letters (Alphabet)

Hopefully it will be less intimidating than fabric, and it offers a wide variety of activity options.

Please feel free to join in and remember to have fun!

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Comments (30)

By Mom Unplugged, January 1, 2008 6:59 pm

This is a public service post for all the people who find me by Googling something like: “taking potholder off loom” and for the one or two people who have left comments asking me how to take it off. It is really quite easy:

You will need the hook that came with the loom or a crochet hook.

Start at a corner and pull the second loop in the row, through the first loop. Then you pull the third loop through the second, the fourth through the third, etc. etc. all the way around the pot holder. It will be kind of a linked chain around the edge like in the photo.

You will eventually end up with only one final loop. That is the loop that you can use to hang the potholder on a hook.

If you have any other questions about it, feel free to comment or email me (my email is in the right sidebar).

Hope this helps!

Comments (21)

By Mom Unplugged, December 16, 2007 10:31 pm

This week has been crazy for us with a school play, some gifts to make, my 7 year-old daughter’s book project (in addition to other homework), trying to peddle a few Christmas ornaments for Heifer International, etc., etc., etc. So our Unplugged Project fell a bit by the wayside, as did many of yours in this busy season I am sure!

So as to not appear totally lame (after all, the Weekly Unplugged Project is my idea so I can’t very well opt out can I?), I will post a String/Yarn themed project that my daughter has been continuously working on.

My 7 year-old daughter received a wooden “knitting mushroom” from Santa last year and really enjoys it. In case you are wondering about age-appropriateness, my daughter could manage all the knitting herself at age 6, although she needed my help to cast-on and off.

I recently reviewed a very nice one from Haba. The “knitting mushroom” creates a very simple, tubular, snake-like knitted strand that can be crafted into various objects, or simply knitted for the pleasure of knitting as ours have been so far, despite owning the inspirational book in the photo: Corking (Kids Can Easy Crafts). Ah well, we’ll get to it eventually.

My thoughts for this week had been: gluing yarn to construction paper to make designs or pictures with my 5 year-old, or trying finger knitting with my oldest. That will all have to be for another time however.

Next week I will be out of the country and most likely computer-less (AAAGHHHH!!! HELP!!!!!), so the following Unplugged Project will be due two-weeks from now - Monday, December 31st (New Year’s Eve? Time sure does go by fast!).

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New Year’s Unplugged Project:

Collage

Perhaps a collage of fun things remembered from the past year?

Or things that would be fun for the coming year?

Or, for children old enough to understand the concept of “New Year’s Resolutions,” a collage of pictures relating to their resolutions.

Or…a white collage for little ones…white like the winter snow of January.

Or…anything you want to do!

Have fun! I hope anyone who reads this and is interested, will join in and meet back here on Monday, December 31st to share posts. Happy Holidays!