Play food and the Ravelympics

Lately I have been facinated by play food. I think play food is a great way to develop healthy eating habits for children and can also be used in creative play. Of course, etsy has A LOT of options for play food - felt, knit and crochet; fruit, veggies, turkeys with stuffing, sweets and much more. There are also a lot of plastic and wooden options out there. I think that I would shy away from handing my child a hamburger and french fry set to play with, but I might give a sweet cupcake or donut on special occasions.

My favourite etsy felt vendor can be found is Bug Bites Play Food. She also has a fun blog about what she is doing here.

There are even great PDF patterns available to purchase, if you are a do-it-yourself'er like me. Lots are available on etsy, but be sure to search blogs and webpages first. I've seen a lot of free patterns for food items out there.

My Eco-Fi Felt just came in (refer back to this post), I'll post a photo of all my fun colours soon. It also means I can finish up my pointed kitty and do some felt food of my own.

For the next 14 days however, my primary focus will be on my Ravelympics project (which brings me back to the purpose of this post) - Knit veggies!

For those of you who don't know, the Ravelympics is a knitting challenge which takes place during the Olympic Games.

For those of you reading this blog that are knitters, you are undoubtably a member of Ravelry, an online knitting community.  If you are a member of Ravelry, you probably know all about the upcoming "Ravelympics".

The Ravelympics take place during the Olympic games.  Knitters choose a project or set of projects that will challenge themselves and Cast on during the opening Ceremony.  The idea is that you will challenge yourself to support the challenges facing Olympic athletes.  All projects are to be finished by the closing ceremony.

This is my first Ravelympics and it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do.  Of course, I want to choose something that I can manage.  I don't mind a little hard work, but I want to be able to be successful.  I wanted something that would entertain me too.  Preferably, I wanted to use my stash so I don't have to sneak more yarn into the house.

I looked through all my favourite items in Ravelry (over 2000 items!) and through my Queue (49 items).  I noticed some trends.  I have been wanting to make a bunch of knit veggies since before I could knit, there are MANY in my Queue.  For some reason though, it just hasn't happened yet.

I received Amigurumi Knits by Hansi Singh for Christmas.  There are a lot of great patterns for knit veggies in this book.  This is also a project that I can dip into my stash for.

Knit Veggies fall into what I consider, educational toys.  I think I will be blogging about this topic A LOT more in the coming months. I'll keep you posted as I work though this project for the Ravelympics.  Until then....

Eat your Veggies!

Check out my Ravelympics 2010 project page (ravelry members only)

PS.  I have no idea where the above image came from, it's not my intention to steal an image... I've had it on my computer forever.  If you know where it is from, contact me and I will give credit!