The kit ccomes with a pom pom maker, and my son had a ball with it. We made the little presents out of covered match boxes and the basket we found in Spotlight.
Here is a photo of two types of wool strands. The top one is felting wool and the lower one is stuffing wool. The difference is that the felting wool is much finer and more silky. The lower one is courser and has more space between the fibres. If you stuff dolls with finer, felting type wool, you will end up with more of a lumpy look, you will use a lot more, and it will be much harder work. Also, it is vital that the wool used for stuffing is completely dry of any Lanolin. Even a small amount of "grease" will eventually seep through the doll's tricot skin and create a "greasy" look!
What do you do if you drool over The Knitted Farmyard pics, yet you can't knit very well? Easy: just create a farmyard out of leftover fabrics and old sweaters, and sew them together like a quilt. This is as far as I got, since I had to work this week; there are still houses to make, but we're having fun with it already. 
Something interesting about this famous Da Vinci painting from my Foundations in Anthroposophy course a few years ago; our lecturer showed us the "wave" pattern created by the hands. Check out the pink line I've drawn on the painting below. I tried very hard to bend the little dolls hands (above) into the same "wave" pattern!
Here is St Patrick ready for St Patrick's day in 2 weeks. He is made with those incredibly versatile wood and wire dolls you can get at most Waldorf craft outlets. He is holding the famous "shamrock". Saints make great role models in extraordinary and "superhuman" courage and virtue. Kids love the story of St Patrick, especially the part where he bangs his staff on the ground and all the snakes go into the sea!
pattern in the book; "Trudy's Tiere"which is in German or Dutch, not English, and can be purchased from Witte Engel. It doesn't matter if you don't speak German or Dutch as the patterns are fairly straight forward. Just one thing - the patterns are without hems added, so be sure to add your hems all the way around the pattern.
This is Lucy; a 16" Radiance Child doll. You can adopt her from my ETSY store.
He even steered the boat out of the harbour and in again, hauled sails and furled them again. He loved it and can't wait to go back on again.
One more quote; "The memories we collect, and give, brighten our lives as long as we live," (author unknown).
I didn't use any sort of pattern for this; I simply crocheted a cap, like a doll's wig, starting off with the cream color wool "brandy sauce", then adding the brown speckled wool until I had almost a sphere. I added wool stuffing and a stone at the bottom, then sealed it by completing the crochet stitch. As for the holly, I just crocheted and knotted the wool until it resembled holly.
The best children's party in Perth, if you have any Dutch heritage, is the annual Dutch Club's "St Nicholas Party". My husband's parents are Dutch, so I restarted this tradition in their family, and it's so much fun. St Nick is accompanied by "Black Peter", but at this party he has at least 4 of them. First St Nick goes around and greets everyone and asks if you've been good, while the Black Peters give out lollies and ginger bread biscuits to all the kids. Then he gets out this huge red book with a gold cross on it to check to see if any naughty children's names are written in there, and he then announces: "No children have been written in my book, so you will all get a present." The kids are called one by one to receive their present. Some kids have to have a further test to see if they've been good; Black Peter puts a sack over their heads and my husband thinks that the tradition with that is to see if a piece of black coal falls out. If it doesn't then the child gets a present. I had to have a quick word in Black Peter's ear not to put the sack over my son's head, or he would have probably freaked out! They usually have a magician but this one seemed to have vanished before we even saw him. But we had a good time anyway.
Mary is wearing a red silk dress with a blue cloak and Joseph has a felt tunic and blue felt cloak. Baby Jesus is lying on a manger made from cinnamon sticks. The donkey and ox are made from felt. I put the LED lights inside the stable and around the scene. My son keeps switching it to flashing effects so itlooks like a disco! The "hay" is made from some silver-gold stuff I got from a Christmas shop that is supposed to go on the Christmas tree, but I thought it looked pretty cosmic in the stable (especially with disco lights!):
The shepherds' clothes are made from wool felt and I have knitted small waistcoats for two of them, and a crocheted cap for two of them.
The angel has a dress made from silk and her hair is made from silk tops. She has wings also made from silk:
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He is made from the 15cm wood and wire doll and dressed in felt clothing. The ears are made from tiny pieces of tricot cut out and stuck to the side of his head.
