Clay-ke It to the Limit

MLC’s Craft Club had its sixth meeting in February. We tested MLC’s polymer clay kit and let out our inner sculptors. Attendees had the option to create earrings or design their own sculptures. The earrings didn’t work quite as planned: MLC’s main meeting room was in the middle of a technology makeover and we couldn't use the projection equipment. It is much easier to have people create something with an example, so most of the attendees chose to make their own sculptures. They turned out great!

Walking In A Creative Wonderland

Alex Brower

Information Services Director

The holidays are here! It is a time for eating, spending time with family, and more eating. MLC's patrons have access to the CreativeBug database from home any time they want, and it is one of my favorite places to go to find fun art, craft, and food ideas. I was inspired by a program at the Carthage-Leake County Library where the Mississippi State Extension Service showed library patrons how to make charcuterie boards, so I wanted to share some Creativebug classes that have delicious recipes and holiday ideas to make you the host with the most! 

Splish, Splash! It’s Soap-Making Class!

 Alex Brower

Information Services Director

The MLC Craft Club met for the fourth time on September 8th, 2023. We gathered in our staff lounge kitchen to make soap. This is a very quick and easy craft, suitable for groups of all ages.

I bought all of my ingredients at my nearby craft store. They are common ingredients that should be available at yours. Here is your soap-making list:

• Soap base
• Colorants
• Essential oils
• Soap molds
• Lavender
• Eucalyptus
• Lemon balm

The instructions for melting the soap base should be included on the package. I pre-sliced the soap and put it in individual plastic cups. This allowed attendees to each grab their own and head to the microwave after a brief overview of how the process would work. If you want your program to be more contained, you could heat up the soap ahead of time in a large batch and then pour it into individual cups or bowls for your patrons. The soap base heats and cools relatively quickly, so this may not be feasible unless you are able to bring the soap to the program space in a short amount of time. Attendees at MLC first heated the base in the microwave for 30 seconds and then in short 10 second bursts until it was melted.

From there, we added in drops of essential oils--I provided lavender, tangerine lychee, and green tea/cucumber--and colorant to get the smell and color that we wanted. Some participants added in lavender or lemon balm pieces to their soap. This didn’t always have the desired effect, because the pieces tended to settle to the bottom. I think this could be fixed by waiting for the soap to cool and thicken slightly before adding in the blooms. I highly recommend starting light with both the color and the essential oils--just add a few drops--and then slowly adding more so you don’t overwhelm your soap with scent or super dark colors.

Once the color and scent are to the person’s preference, pour the melted soap into a mold. Create a layered effect by pouring a small amount of soap into the mold, waiting for it to cool slightly in the mold, and then adding a few drops of color to the next pour. The graphic above shows the soap that I made this way. Create a marbled effect by adding a few drops of colorant, pouring the soap in the mold, and then adding more colorant and pouring the soap in immediately instead of layering. MLC has acquired large loaf soap molds, round molds, geometric molds, and rectangular molds. The rectangular molds set the fastest and most consistently. The round and geometric molds stay warm in the center longer, so they need more time before popping the soap out of the mold.
 
We didn’t watch a Creativebug video this time, but there are several classes on the platform that you can use in conjunction with MLC's new soapmaking kits. A series on bath and body products would be a fun idea; it has the potential to have good attendance around the holidays when patrons might want to create homemade gifts for their friends and family. MLC staff participating in our test program suggested letting patrons create their own blends of essential oils before creating their soap or other craft. This way they would get a better grasp of which scents worked well together before adding them into their soap, thus avoiding potential disappointment.

Overall, this Craft Club was a big success! Our soap may have turned out a little different than we expected, but it smells good and works great. Make sure to share your soap creations with MLC once you check out our kit!

CreativeBug classes:

• Make Soap Three Ways taught by Arina from BellaCreme
• Handmade Soap taught by Lindsey Stone    
• Bath Bombs from CBTV Live
• Make Natural Perfume taught by Arina from BellaCrema

We’re All in Knits Together

Alex Brower

Information Services Director

MLC’s Craft Club had its third meeting on June 16th, 2023. We used the video "How to Knit" by Carla Scott on Creativebug to learn some basic stitches and, in some cases, make the beginnings of very small scarves!

We had 15 attendees for our meeting, and a few people brought their own knitting needles and yarn. Our knitting kit for public libraries will have 10 sets of needles; if your library expects a large crowd, I suggest advertising that people can bring their own supplies. (Sometimes people do some well-intentioned crafts shopping but never quite make it to the learning-how-to-knit part!) We also received an extremely generous donation from Benton County Library of many, many skeins of yarn, which our participants eagerly took home to keep practicing!

Set-up for this craft club only took a few minutes, as did tear-down. I brought a box with the knitting needles and yarn, and had participants pick up supplies on their way in. If you're looking for a program that doesn’t require lots of supplies and clean-up, this is it. Plus, if you've gone the route of asking people to bring their own supplies, you get another added bonus: you'll have less to clean up, and they'll be able to continue their work at home. (Our participants had to return their needles and thread, so I would probably do a smaller craft next time so that they can take their projects home once the class was done.) Once the club ended, attendees undid their work and returned their knitting needles. 

We went through each step as a group and tried to get everyone on the same page before we moved on: good for those who needed a bit more help and less useful for those who picked up the steps more quickly. I’m not sure what the fix would be for this: watching the video all the way through at the beginning, having each participant at a computer/tablet so they can follow along at their own pace, or some hybrid of the two. One of our attendees looked up a diagram of the steps, which she found more helpful than the video or instruction from a classmate.

I practiced the skills in the video before the class, so I was able to walk around and assist. It's more difficult to explain a skill when you aren’t super familiar with it, so having more experienced knitters in the class was incredibly helpful. It went very quickly from one large group to several smaller groups with an experienced person in each. 

Our program was great for getting the basics down and would be a good beginning for a series of knitting classes where participants learned new skills each time. The class could work their way up to making bigger projects like scarves, blankets, or any number of things! Creativebug also has a knitting pattern library; your library could host a knitting circle where patrons work on their own projects or start new ones, alone or in groups. 

MLC’s knitting kit will be available soon, with knitting needles, yarn, and a darning needle set your patrons can use to create their own beautiful projects!

Video: https://www.creativebug.com/classseries/single/how-to-knit-part-1/1/0
Supplies:
Needles: https://www.michaels.com/product/10-anodized-aluminum-knitting-needles-by-loops-threads-10154295
Yarn: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085FS14Z7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Life-long Learning at the Library!



 Barbara Price, Library Consultant at MLC, won a blue ribbon at the Mississippi State Fair. The ribbon was awarded for her Tunisian Crochet Sampler afghan. Many people have never heard of Tunisian Crochet, which is why Barbara decided to create the afghan to display the versatility of Tunisian crochet. The afghan demonstrates the 10 Tunisian stitches, as well a two panels of basic which demonstrate patterns created by changing colors and cross-stitch on basic Tunisian crochet.



 When asked how she learned about Tunisian crochet, Barbara’s answer is always “In books!”. She first became interested because of her cross-stitching. She wanted to know about how to cross-stitch on crochet, and learned this from McCall’s Big Book of Cross Stitch (ISBN 0-8019-7363-5). This book included instructions for basic Tunisian crochet. Barbara recently completed an afghan of basic crochet with an eagle cross-stitched in the center.
 When she wanted to know more about Tunisian crochet, she turned to another book, the Reader’s Digest Complete Guide to Needlework (ISBN 0-89577-059-8). This book taught her the 10 Tunisian stitches, which are Basic, Knit, Purl, Cross-stitch, Lace, Popcorn, Honeycomb, Bias, Cable, and Shell. There are variations on these stitches also.





If you want to know more about Tunisian crochet, check your library catalog. I found the above older books still owned by some libraries, plus a 2009 book by Sharon Silverman titled Tunisian Crochet: the look of knitting with the ease of crocheting.

Post written by Barbara Price, guest blogger