felt ornaments (and kites)

This is a nice little ornament (or you could use it to decorate a present instead of a bow or tag): a little felt pom pom. Tutorial at the purl bee. This was made by niece, 6.

She also made this kite out of felt, washi tape, a scrap of pink cloth and linen thread.

November: Windy days and early presents

Here's another nice thing about November: we are giving away a copy of Windy. If you find it a little too cold to make a real kite, make a mini-one and fly it in your living room.

The Children of Fogo Island

The Children of Fogo Island by Colin Low, 1967. Watch this beautiful film by Colin Low at nfb.ca.

How to make a real kite, too

One of our most popular posts is How to make a mini kite, but it looks like some of you are looking to make a general sort of kite (the kind you fly in sky).

We have directions for a real kite, too, here. The original directions for making a kite are on the dust jacket of our first book, Windy.

How to make a mini kite

This post has moved.

How to make a kite

It's time to think about an activity for the weekend...how can we not have done kites yet! We have a link to Windy's original instructions for making a real kite below. If you are the type who prefers to play indoors (or it's rainy where you are), we'll add a little set of directions for making a little paper kite for your favourite toy, or for your own diorama, on Sunday morning.

Let's start with a proper kite (PDF). There are 2 pages to this PDF.

The original directions for making a kite are on the dust jacket of our first book, Windy.

Easter Bunny origami

Do you remember the meadow bunnies in Windy? Here they are flying their kites.

You can make your own bunny with origami. You just need a square piece of paper, a pair of scissors and a pencil or crayon. You can check that your paper is perfectly square by folding it in half, the same as the first steps in our directions below (1 and 2) below. If there is no overlap, then your paper is square. Here are directions for folding up your bunny:


So it will look like this as you fold:


You can use some scraps of coloured paper to make the insides of the ears pink (or you might colour it in).


If you like, your bunny can have a kite, too (tutorial here). We used small sticks, glue and paper to make our bunny kites, but you could simply use plain folded paper. We used florist wire for the string, which is cloth-covered wire (so it holds the kite in the air). It is tricky for bunnies to hold their kites. Usually they use their mouths, front feet or tails. Use your imagination to make the perfect kite for an Easter bunny. We would love to see pictures of your bunnies. Mail your pictures to windyandfriends{at}gmail {dot}com.