World Children's Festival @ Washington, D.C. (Jul 1, 2015)

The World Children's Festival is an annual celebration of creativity, diversity and unity, with participants from all over the world. The theme on Jul 1 was Creativity and Imagination, and Creativity Labs hosted a LED Light-Up Bookmark activity at one of the tents between 2-4pm. Sophia Bender, Anthony Phonethibsavads and Verily Tan helped close to 70 participants sew the Light-Up Bookmark on felt material. This consisted of an LED, and a battery holder. When the positive and negative lines have been sewn with conductive thread, putting a 3V battery into the battery holder causes the LED to light up. Children were fascinated, and excitedly sewed the lines for their LED to light up! Some children decorated their bookmarks with beads, sequins and fabric markers.
The event was indeed an international encounter for the facilitators - we had participants from Poland, Germany, China, and Korea. There were also Americans from across the country. Many children came with their parents, or mentors - and they made bookmarks together. It was a lovely sight to see mothers guiding their children with the sewing, following the instruction sheet or receiving help from the facilitators. We invited parents to create their own bookmark, and in many cases, both parent and child left with Light Up Bookmarks!
The children who participated were between 5-15 years of age, and it was interesting working with them. There was a group of girls from Tennessee who were performing at the Festival. One by one, they brought their friends and guided each other in the sewing. We were inspired by some of the very young children who were determined to sew and complete the Bookmark - we supported them, sometimes holding the felt material for them as they manipulated the needle and thread.
Reflecting on the two hour activity, we love the creativity and diversity of the children, and the inter-generational making. This really was a celebration of creativity, diversity and unity!

One of the well-decorated bookmarks!

Mother and daughter from California: Smiling with success!

Students from Tennessee who participated and guided each other through the process

Siblings from South Korea: Happy with their bookmark!

Winners of the Art Olympiad (from Poland) sewing with their teacher

With special thanks to the International Child Art Foundation for this opportunity!

Creativity Labs Learns to Knit

A post by Kate Samson, Anna Keune, and Naomi Thompson

This is the second in a series of blog posts about the Creativity Labs’ fiber arts summer workshops. The workshops are experiential opportunities to learn new crafting skills, which have connections to the current Re-Crafting Education project. We are learning from and working with experienced crafters in the community to strengthen our understanding of and connection to the regional fiber arts community.

In this second workshop, the Creativity Labs team took on the next fiber arts challenge during a group knitting lesson at Yarns Unlimited in downtown Bloomington, IN. The local yarn shop has been a key site for observation and instruction during the Re-Crafting project, and offers both a rich collection of beautiful, soft and colorful materials and fiber arts classes for crafters in the community, including knitting, crocheting, and weaving among many more. In addition to the playful storefront, where fibers, yarns and felt as well as knitting needles of all sizes and books inspire to make, the shop contains a classroom dedicated to fiber arts lessons.

The crafting classroom at Yarns Unlimited. 

The teaching staff comprises of passionate, skilled and dedicated knitters, crocheters, and weavers. Our instructor, Karen Canapa, has been knitting and crocheting most of her life, attesting to its therapeutic benefits. She works with fiber artists of all levels, but is particularly patient throughout the (sometimes frustrating) first minutes of a new knitter’s quest to get in the loop. Her extensive work with beginner knitters has given her the opportunity to observe and to design effective and fun instructions for a knitter’s first lesson. 

Here is a glimpse of what we learned when we picked up our needles:

• The Slip Knot: To start a new project, the knitter can make the first loop to slip onto the knitting needles. This loop is called a slip knot, and the yarn “slips” right onto the needle as the knitter prepares the project. Karen warned us that the slip knot can be “super tricky” to make - we agree with her! 

“The [slip knot] is a small knot that leaves a loop on one end,” Karen explained, “and if you pull the two ends, the knot completely disappears. So, it allows us to have a variable size beginning stitch.”

From left to right: Karen shows Anna another variation of the slip-knot technique. Sophia practices making slip knots in the crafting classroom. 

• The Cast-On: The first row of a knitted project is the row that is cast onto the needle by the knitter. The knitter will put both needles into the slip knot to make an “X” shape. 

 

From left to right: Putting the needles through the slip knot. Folding the yarn over the needle to prepare for the first stitch. Starting the second row of stitches.

• The Knit and Purl: Knitting consists of two basic stitches: knit stitches and purl stitches. The first stitch the beginner knitter learns is the knit. A series of knit stitches is called the garter stitch pattern. We learned to knit a few rows of knit stitches. We also worked together fix some of our mistakes. In doing so, we were able to see that knitting is actually a process of crafting that generates loops, instead of knots (as some may think). A row of stitches is essentially a connected line of loops! After learning the knit stitch, Karen taught us the purl stitch, which can be thought of as a reverse knit stitch.

Sophia learns to knit and purl across the row on her stitches.  

These 3 techniques work together to form a knitter’s first tool kit. The knit stitch itself can be used to create an extensive collection of projects. Together, we learned that the first moments of knitting can be complex and challenging, but as one of us (Kate) writes about in her first weeks as an embedded knitter, mistake-making is a valuable component of the learning process. Karen recommends 15 minutes of practice a day to develop a natural flow to your knitting practice. It may only be a matter of time before the Creativity Labs knits a matching team uniform.