Froggy Banquet & WIP Wednesday

Last week, about 2 days into our torrential rains, we discovered that Philip's beanbag frog, which had been the subject of several manhunts (or is that froghunt?) over the last few days, was sitting in the backyard atop the play structure. I sadly informed the kids that when beanbag frogs get left outside in the rain, it's generally death to the poor froggy. When he was finally retrieved during a break in the rain, they saw that the poor froggy was bursting at the seams, quite literally, with sprouted beans. Philip was briefly sad, but his sister immediately set to work finding the exact same fabric in our scrap stash and cutting out a new froggy friend.

When the frog was sewn together and stuffed with non-sprouting beans, Elizabeth decided a celebratory banquet was in order. Yummy felted food for all! She wanted a dinner candle for their silky table (yet another use for last week's rainbow cape), as has become our autumn/winter dinnertime custom, but mommy had to inform her that open flames on silky tablecloths on the carpet are probably not the safest combination, especially with a 2.5 year old brother on the loose. She quickly came up with an alternative solution with a few pieces from Paulie's Snap Circuits kit, including the small lightbulb.

Grilled cheese and tea! Yum!

As for WIP Wednesday, I'm now finished with Paulie's Christmas blanket, save tucking in a few loose strings. Yay! I think I only have one or two small items left to work on for my handmade Christmas.

I'm also more than half-way done with Finn's scarf. I was thinking of possible adding an embroidered detail, maybe out of wool felt, to either end. Ideas?

Over the last few months, I was thinking it might be fun to have a knitted Santa hat for the kids to play around with during December, but couldn't find a pattern that I liked and also thought would work well with natural fibers. I found this white baby alpaca yarn and hand-dyed red wool at a destash sale so I'm kind of winging my own version of a Santa hat. If it works in actuality as I'm envisioning, I'll post the pattern.

Same story for this prototype of a Christmas bell ornament. I'm not quite finished with it, but if it works, I'll post a pattern for it as well. :)

I'm loving all this Christmas and winter knitting! What are you crafting right now?