My Twitter knitter

Twitter is a wonderful way to make new friends. Recently a head teacher I follow drew my attention to a knitted puffin that a Glasgow teacher had put up on Twitter. She thought it looked very like one of the characters of my puffin books, Lewis Clowns Around and Harris the Hero.

Knitted puffin by Susan Quinn.

I was impressed, and wondered if Susan the clever knitter would be able to create a fluffy grey puffling to go with me on school and nursery visits when I’m reading my new puffin story, Skye the Puffling. Through Twitter I was able to chat to Susan about what Skye should look like, and show her the lovely illustration by Jon Mitchell:

Susan immediately set to work, and soon I was able to see my little puffling taking shape! Not being a knitter myself, I was baffled by the complex knitting instructions she seemed to be following. A fluffy little grey thing began to emerge…

Next she sent me a little bird shape and I could imagine a very cute, fluffy puffling who looked soft and snuggly:

Finally, Susan sent me a picture of Skye with eyes and a beak, with the message, “only the feet to add.” Little Skye was soon finished, and Susan and I agreed to meet up so I could repay her with three copies of my puffin books.

My fluffy Skye has already come with me to a Bookbug Library Challenge event at Drymen Library, and she was very well received! I’ve got another event tomorrow at Alloa Library, and Skye will be coming with me again, to be sure.

I was very touched by Susan’s generosity, and it was a real pleasure to meet her for a chat as we exchanged puffins. Many thanks to Joyce Hawkins who first alerted me to Susan’s impressive knitting talents!

Cute knitted cactus plants I spotted at fnac bookshop in Barcelona.

While I was on holiday in Spain another knitted item caught my eye. It was a pair of soft and squishy cactus plants with brilliant care instructions: “Cactus of extremely slow, almost imperceptible growth. Easy to care for, simply give abundant morning smiles.” As my daughter is a huge cactus fan, I took a photo of them to show her. I’m glad I did, as it meant I could show the same photo to Susan. I thought she could easily knit a cactus and find a pot for it, and sure enough, she had already done it!

Susan Quinn’s cactus.

It seems there is no end to what you can do with knitting needles! Susan is already thinking about Christmas…

Little free libraries

Woodland Park Cooperative Preschool in Seattle has a new community library. From http://www.teachertomsblog.blogspot.co.uk

It’s nice to know that in these days of library closures and cutbacks, the desire to share books and celebrate reading is still a powerful force in many communities. I follow the blog of a preschool teacher in Seattle called Teacher Tom, who recently posted about the new community library he has installed (with the help of a parent who built it!)

The idea of providing free access to a small collection of books on a local level has been around for generations, and one particular movement called Little Free Library developed recently in the United States. Its aim is “to promote literacy and the love of reading by building free book exchanges worldwide and to build a sense of community as we share skills, creativity and wisdom across generations.”

The first Little Free Library, from https://littlefreelibrary.org/history/

The first Little Free Library was built in 2009 by Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin. It was designed to look like a one-room schoolhouse, and was created as a memorial to Todd’s mother Esther Bol who was a teacher. He filled it with books and set it on a post in his front garden for anyone in the neighbourhood to enjoy. I think the concept may have sprung in part from the American tradition of the curbside mailbox.

The traditional mailbox found in rural and suburban settings in the USA.

These are similar in concept – a box on a pole at the end of the drive – and can be quite fanciful in design, ranging from red barns and Victorian houses to boldly painted American flags. There is just as much variety in the Little Free Library designs, and many have outdoor seating and shady umbrellas for your reading pleasure.

Todd Bol’s original library spawned a growing movement, and by the summer of 2010 little postbox-style structures made of recycled wood were popping up all over Wisconsin. By the end of 2011 there were four hundred of them across the United States. Today that number has reached 36,000 and is still growing!

Anyone in the US and Canada can order a Little Free Library box online to install in their own neighbourhood. Its location will then be pinpointed on a map on the Little Free Library website. If you live elsewhere in the world, you can still be part of the scheme by registering your own mini-library with Little Free Library. This will put you on the map too!

If you happen to live near Minneapolis, Minnesota, you can catch the first Little Free Library Festival:

The festival will feature live music, poetry, storytelling and of course library-building. That last option appeals to me, as I love all the amazing designs and would quite enjoy giving my library a colourful and distinctive paint job!

One example of a rather unusual mini-library is this TARDIS one from Macon, Georgia:

The TARDIS Little Free Library built by Christopher Marney. From http://www.littlefreelibrary.org

It has room for all sorts of books and access for all heights, from the smallest readers to the tallest ones. Not everyone can have a TARDIS in their neighbourhood (although I do!) Ours is a real Police box that now serves as a tiny coffee shop outside the Botanic Gardens. I wonder if they might consider having a collection of free books on one shelf…

From http://www.littlefreelibrary.org

 

Meet the Bobbly Bunnies!

The very first Bobbly Bunny, born on Christmas Eve 2014.

Over Christmas we went to visit some friends who have a 5-year-old daughter. I decided to make her a little present from some bobbly socks that were perfect for sewing. As you can see from the picture, two socks were all I needed to make a cute toy rabbit, and she loved it! When my own daughter was that age, she used to be fascinated by miniature things, so I gave the first Bobbly Bunny a little yellow backpack full of interesting items. I put in a shiny toy trumpet (a Christmas decoration) and some sheet music, a small notebook and a set of mini crayons. These tiny items were such a hit that I later sent a few more, including a map of the London Underground, a photo album (with pictures of bunnies) and an even smaller toy bunny that would fit inside the backpack.

This bunny has a blue felt satchel for her music lessons.

After that first success, I thought it would be fun to make more Bobbly Bunnies, and give them cute little bags full of goodies. I rushed off to buy more bobbly socks, and looked for just the right sort of fabric to make the bags.

Inside her satchel, this bunny has a trumpet, some sheet music and a pink notebook.

It’s fun to think up all sorts of accessories for the bunnies. Some of them play musical instruments. Others carry toys and books, maps, diaries, photo albums and more! I’m wondering whether perhaps I should make each bunny a birth certificate, too…

This bunny has a flowery backpack with a French horn, sheet music and a yellow notebook.

At Hillhead Library in the West End of Glasgow there is a craft fair that’s held once a month as part of The Makers Markets. It’s a great place to find unique hand-made gifts of all sorts, and at the next fair (Saturday the 28th of March, 11:00am to 4:00pm) I’ll have a table laden with my Bobbly Bunnies! There are baby- and toddler-safe bunnies (with soft, stitched faces) and little boy blue bunnies. There are button-eyed bunnies for older kids (4+) and all sorts of bags and accessories that can be mixed-and-matched.

Just a few of the Bobbly Bunnies waiting to meet you!

If you can’t get to the Hillhead Library to meet the Bobbly Bunnies on 28 March, just visit my Contact page and let me know if you’d like one made-to-order for someone special. Hope to see you soon!

Real paint and paper

For her 18th birthday this year, my daughter received a Koh-i-noor watercolour set of a very clever design. It has four round discs, each with six colours and a depression in the middle for mixing. The discs screw together, one on top of the other, so that the whole set is about the size of a can of tuna when closed.

The gift was a surprise from her Dad, who got it in London on the advice of an artist friend. When she opened it I think I was even more thrilled than she was, because it was just like a paint set I had at her age! Mine was green rather than black, but otherwise it was exactly the same. I loved that set and used it for years, and until now I had never seen another one like it.

In senior school I loved working with watercolours, and the art teacher was happy to let me get on with painting what I wanted to with my own stackable watercolour set. I had a special Chinese paintbrush too, dark red with soft bristles that came to a perfect point.

These Chinese brushes are designed for calligraphy, and the bristles are made from weasel tails or goat hair. The top brush in this photo has soft goat hair, and the bottom one is a mixture of goat and the coarser weasel hair. I think my brush was a mixture too, though it was a long time ago and the brush is long lost. When I was 17 I used a photograph from the National Geographic magazine to paint this Inuit child:

The rich colours of my special paint set made it possible to get those warm skin tones and deep black of the shadows. My Chinese brush with its fine point allowed me to capture the loose hair on the child’s forehead.

There is nothing like working with real paint on real paper. But more and more these days, artists are turning to computers to produce very similar results that can be shared electronically and reproduced countless times. Many children’s books that were once illustrated the “old fashioned” way with pen and ink or other traditional media are now being brought to life digitally instead.

A good example of this trend is the work of my friend and illustrator Margaret Chamberlain. She has been illustrating children’s books for over 20 years, and when she first illustrated one of my books (Pink! in 2008) it was a departure for her into a new technique and simpler style. Her earlier books had always been done with richly detailed ink and watercolour artwork. An excellent example of this is The Enchanted Flute by Angela McAllister:

©Margaret Chamberlain 1990

The central character of this story is an impossibly demanding monarch, Queen Pernickity, who wants only the very best of everything. You can see from the illustration above that Margaret has created texture and lots of detail with a fine ink outline and rich colour using watercolours.

In her later work, Margaret used computer programmes and a tablet to create effects that look just like watercolours and ink. She says it takes much less time working on a computer, and it’s easy to correct mistakes. The finished illustration is very similar to real paint on paper, and it can be sent directly to publishers and printers to produce a finished book.

So is there any future for real paint and paper?

Another recent invention, the WaterColorBot, has reversed this relationship between art and computers. Instead of computer art replacing paint and paper, this machine translates art drawn on a computer into “real” art through a mechanised process similar to an Etch-a-Sketch:

©Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories 2013

The paintbrush moves around an x and y axis (two metal rods) powered by pulleys and wire cables. In this way a drawing made on a computer can be reproduced multiple times, and the WaterColorBot becomes a type of printer. The idea began with a 12-year-old girl called Sylvia who wanted to make a robot for a science fair. She has her own website, Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show, where she demonstrates fun creative projects. When she took her idea of a painting robot to the people at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories they were happy to help out!

My daughter is still keen to experiment with real ink and watercolours, and has done a few sketches with her new paint set:

©Anna Rickards 2014

©Anna Rickards 2014

Even though technology seems to have made real paint and paper somewhat obsolete, I’m quite tempted to buy myself a little Koh-i-noor paint set too…

©Lynne Rickards 2002

Minibeasts and beautiful bugs

©2005 Lynne Rickards

Spring has returned at last, and all sorts of weird and wonderful minibeasts are waking up. Not everyone likes playing with bugs, but if you look closely they can be very interesting. When I was nine I had a little plastic cylinder with a magnifying glass at one end and a removable cap at the other. If I was quick enough I could catch beetles and grasshoppers in the cylinder, pop the lid back on and then look through the glass at the amazing creature I had captured. Of course I would always set them free again!

When my son was little he loved worms and snails. Anything slimy had great appeal, and he would forget all about racing if he found a worm on Sports Day! For some reason, insects and other creatures tend to sneak into my books now and again. In Jacob O’Reilly Wants a Pet, the little boy gets a pet snail which suits him perfectly.

©Shelledy Elementary School, Colorado.

In another story I have a little housefly who is unhappy because he wants to be a more colourful and impressive bug. He looks at the beautiful butterfly and the bouncy grasshopper and the shiny ladybird and wishes he was like them. The story is written like a poem, and it’s called Buster the Fly:

In the end, Buster’s mum convinces him that he has his own special talents and that he should be proud of who he is. Buster the fly is OK!

If you’re studying minibeasts at school, I’ve found a fun BBC Minibeast video you can watch. It shows all sorts of amazing creatures, including beetles that look like an old leaf, and others that can squirt hot liquid or horrible tasting goo to keep from being eaten! Very clever.

©2002 Lynne Rickards

I think some beetles are very beautiful. A while back I did some paintings of beetles, including the one above which was shiny and golden. It is similar to the scarab beetle which was seen by the ancient Egyptians as a symbol of their sun god Ra. In the early morning these dung beetles could be seen rolling balls of dung along the ground, just as Khepri, the morning sun god, was believed to roll the sun across the sky. Because these beetles were sacred, the ancient Egyptians made beads, amulets and small carvings of them for good luck.

This ancient Egyptian carving shows a sacred scarab beetle.

Beetles take all sorts of interesting shapes. There are some with triangular bodies that make me think of Art Deco brooches. There are others with great horns like a deer. They come in a huge range of colours, too!

©Christopher Marley

It’s amazing how beautiful minibeasts can be. Take a look at these fantastic stamps:

©2007 Royal Mail

If you’d like to try some free minibeast activities (like crafts, puzzles and colouring) you can visit Activity Village which has lots of ideas. Get thinking about your favourite bug, and see what you can create!