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A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see. ..... in solidarity with SouleMama
This little climber of mine. Everytime I turn my back, I turn around to find her scaling some new height. This is (partly) why I've been away from here for a few more days than I would like. The littles are keeping me busy.
See that dark spot on the screen that she is looking at? A big mother-of-a-wasp inside our screened porch. Once I realized that, I put down my camera and did some bug hunting (gotta protect the babes, especially since my eldest has a horribly long history of getting stung by wasps - just really bad luck).
Isn't that crazy looking? Doesn't it look like something you would buy at the store, maybe Hulk Hands or something? Well, it's not.
It's just homemade slime. Who knew it could be so much fun?
I've seen recipes for this but never tried it (because it has Borax as one of the ingredients). Now that my girls are older, we just play by the rule that you have to wash your hands after playing with it - no hands in the mouth.
I was surprised at how many inventive games they came up with to explore the possibilities of slime. Above is the "typewriter" game... typing on the slime to make a Morse-code like message.
There was the "cover the hand with slime" game.
There was the "make a bubble" game.
My middle child liked pretending the slime was raw chicken (I don't think she has ever touched raw chicken before - but I imagine it feels a bit like it, especially when the slime has just come out of the refrigerator). She would rip off pieces and place it on a plate and watch how all the pieces would "melt" together.
Hours of fun. Literally.
There are so many places on the web with the recipe, I'll just redirect you here to find one. We used white Elmer's glue (I don't have any of the clear - I'll have to find some)... we'd like to try clear with glitter!
I'm so excited about the project I am knitting up.
It's the Katrina Ballerina Layering Cardigan... sleeveless, so I think it'll be nice for Spring and Fall.
I'm using some of the yarn that I got while at the NH Sheep & Wool Festival. I don't have a name of the yarn as it was being sold by a friend of the person whose sheep it was made of - I only know it was sent away to be spun and she then hand-dyed it with natural plant dyes. The color was called Japanese Indigo.
It's turning out to be such a quick knit. And I am in love with the color. It is such a pale, almost silvery blue.
I'll be sure to share again once the sweater is finished and blocked.
A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see. ..... in solidarity with SouleMama
My family has a membership to the Boston Museum of Science. We went for the first time a few months ago (after moving to the area) and I was just awed by it. I love science, and love how interactive and hands-on the museum is. Their young children area has some amazing people working in it that draw in the young ones.
The other day we received our monthly newsletter in the mail and in it was a whole list of water experiments to do with your children. This one I picked to share with you was SO EASY it stood out to me.
First, you take 5 clear classes and fill three of them with food coloring: red, yellow and blue. Then fill those with food coloring with water, not to the top, but over halfway full. To give an extra bit to talk about, try to make the level on all the glasses uneven.
Now line them up with red on one end, an empty next, then yellow, then empty, then blue. This will create an impressive rainbow (which I knew my girls would appreciate, given how much they love rainbows). The newsletter suggested placing blue next to red and red next to yellow, but then you miss out on that rainbow effect.
Next, take two paper towels, cut them each in half, and fold those halves over to create "wicks", placing them in the glasses as you see in the photo below.
And that is it. You just wait and observe. Have your kids ponder what they think will happen and discuss what they actually see.
As you can see, the colored water fairly quickly starts to pass up and over the wicks and starts collecting in the bottoms of the empty glasses. For some reason, our red was slower to wick. But it only took about 15 minutes to get to where we were in the picture above.
And after only a few hours, the levels on all the glasses had evened out and the colors had mixed just beautifully.
What a great opportunity this gave us to talk a bit about gravity, water finding a level, and how colors mix.
I recently had the inspiration to try my hand at making a zippered pencil case... I'm a sucker for these things, and there are always pencils/pens around that need a nice home.
After a bit of surfing on the web, I found this tutorial for making a gusseted pencil case that looked totally amazing. Reading through the (detailed) instructions, I was excited by the prospect of learning a few new techniques, in particular the construction of a lined and zippered bag.
And as a first try at doing something like this, I think the results are pretty good. I particularly love the pattern I chose to use when quilting the fabric... utilizing the pattern already present in the design. And that hidden gusset is so awesome.
But, oh, there is so much I will do differently the next time I make one of these (which I really think I should do so I can be sure that I've gotten down the techniques). Let me list the ways:
I'll say that the instructions are wonderful. Joanne is obviously a perfectionist (in a good way). She includes lots of details that are easy to follow. The hardest part was wrapping my brain around how the bag is constructed, but her step-by-step instructions guide you through that process. If I didn't have that, I'm sure I would have found myself totally frustrated. And now that I know the general construction techniques, I can try to create a pattern myself.
I can't wait to try another one of these to see if I can correct the mistakes I made before.
My husband is no longer a Renaissance Faire virgin (how have I been married to him this long and not know that he's never been to a Ren Faire?!)! Same with my kids.
Just yesterday, we went to the New Hampshire Renaissance Faire in Kingston, NH. We had the perfect day to explore. And with three small kids, this fair was just the right size for us.
I'm not one of those people that would travel around to attend various Renaissance fairs, but prior to this one, I had been to at least two of them (in my high school years). One of these was a huge professional one in the Kansas City area. I say this only to give context to some of my comments about this fair.
And this fair was just perfect for our family. As I said, it wasn't huge, which made it very manageable with younger kids. They also did something neat for the kids... when you paid for your tickets, the woman at the entrance engaged the kids in a conversation and explained that the Queen was looking for her lost sister, and could they help find her? So the kids spent the majority of the time trying to solve clues for a scavenger hunt... This had the great effect of keeping them so occupied that not once did I hear complaints about being ready to go home. On the contrary, we had to pull them away (sadly, before they had finished the quest).
Like most Ren Faires, there was music, jousting, pirates, plays, fairies (my girls loved these in particular - too bad I didn't get a photo of some of the more realistic ones)... so much to see.
We had arrived too late to participate in the May Pole dance, but did watch for a while.
And then there were the costumes of people attending the event (not the professionals working at the event). I had to share the two I was most impressed with.
First up... Pan. I stopped short when I saw him walking toward us. Both the girls are very interested in Greek Mythology and the various Rick Riordan books, so actually seeing a satyr impressed them... and his costume was so realistic! I mean, look at those cute curly horns! And the hooves!! I can't stop gushing about the costume.
And then there was this gentleman, who had a very realistic looking dragon on his shoulder, complete with remote-controlled animatronics. I don't think the girls noticed the subtle black cables that the man used to control his dragon. They just stared at it... it had such a wonderful Jim Henson feel to it.
How do I know it was a success? My kids are still talking about it AND my husband says he would even go back next year.
I've never lived at a place that had an asparagus garden during a time when I liked eating asparagus.
Where I grew up, my grandparents had an asparagus garden growing, but at the time I would never have eaten any of it (such a shame, those picky tastes that kids have).
Where we live now, there is asparagus poking its head out of the ground. I made my first harvest the other day, and just had to take a shot of the shavings from the asparagus. I've always loved looking at these and never taken a picture of them. They have such a nice, shimmery look...
A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see. ..... in solidarity with SouleMama
In this past post, I introduced you all to a quilt my grandmother sent me... a quilt that she herself had sewn a block on, as a child. A quilt connected to my family history.
Just the other day, I received another wonderful package in the mail, this time with two more family quilts in it.
I feel so honored to now be the keeper of these quilts, which both have a direct connection to me, though I never saw them until a year ago when I visited my Grandparents.
The first quilt, it turns out, was sewn by my great grandmother Janet. My Grandma says that most all of the fabric in the patchwork part of the quilt she remembers from various pieces of clothing that she or her siblings wore. Janet was quite an artist, says my Grandma. I guess she was the one who did the drawing in the quilt book from the other quilt I posted about. You can see on this quilt how she drew various animals at the center of her blocks and then embroidered them. I have a particular fondness for her piglet!
And then there is this quilt... quilted by my father's mother, or so my maternal grandmother explains. It's a long story, but I didn't know my father that well and he died when I was a teenager. Both his parents passed away before I was born. So it was an amazing discovery when I found out that this quilt that my Grandma was keeping was actually from my father's side of the family. I just love the background color!!
At the moment, I don't have any place I can show these off - and for me, they are too precious to use... So, for now, they are safely tucked away on the top shelf of my closet.
As my Mother's Day gift from my husband, I got the afternoon to myself at the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool Festival!
With a bit of cash from my local ATM and a charged battery in my camera, I went off to the festival.
I tried my hardest, before leaving, to look through my Ravelry favorites to find one or two projects I want to work on but need yarn for. And I ended up getting yarn without any specific pattern in mind. So we'll have to see what comes of it.
I wasn't able to get any good photos of the sheep - the natural lighting was too low and they were moving, so all my photos turned out fuzzy. But there was a sweet alpaca with long lashes that I got some nice shots of.
And am I mistaken in thinking that neon is making a comeback in yarn?!?
I can't wait to get some of the yarn on my needles so I can share a project with you.
Call me crazy, but I love rainy days. I've never lived in Seattle, but I'd like to think that I would fit in there without a problem. If that would be true or not, I'll never know. Perhaps living there would only prove to me that I do actually crave the sun... perhaps my fondness for rainy days comes in part because they don't happen all that frequently.
I was inspired by the rain to get outside and capture what I see in my garden... to share here.
A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see. ..... in solidarity with SouleMama
Whew! That was a close one. The Baby Surprise Jacket I started a few days ago is finished, and I can't believe it ended so successfully.
My intention was to use only yarn I have in my stash. I knew I would need to combine yarns to get the color combos I wanted and have enough to get me through the entire sweater. I didn't swatch (who needs to swatch for a baby sweater, really?!? This pattern is so stretchy, I knew it would be forgiving)... I dove in and started with my favorite green. I mentioned here that when I switched from green to white that I had only 12 inches of green left over - so I somehow made the switch perfectly.
I had thought the ball of white yarn looked to be enough for the rest of the sweater, but I was mistaken... and needed to find another yarn to finish the sweater with. I picked up what was left over from my bandana cowl, a nice golden wheat color, and started with that, which miraculously got me through to almost the very end. As I was binding off and rounding the last corner of the bottom of the jacket for the end stretch along the front placket by the buttonholes, I ran out ... luckily I had some of the white left over and it was a similar enough color to my variegated golden wheat that I felted it onto the end and finished off. It is barely noticeable.
That left me to sewing the arm seams... whoops - with no green left over!!! Well, luckily, the tail ends of the green from casting on, and that 12 inches of extra, were put to good use. I used practically all of them, along with some white, to sew the seams... you can see in the picture how much yarn I had left over from the project.
I then had to pick buttons. I have a ton of green buttons and thought for sure that is what I was going to pick. But had my middle child not been there to help, and had she not made the amazingly inspired suggestion of using some red buttons she saw, I wouldn't have found the perfect buttons for this sweater!
If I had it to do again... and knew it would end up taking these three colors of yarn to finish the project, I would have started with the yellow and ended with the green... there is something about having a dark, heavy color at the bottom of a work rather than the top. But hey, I still think it looks great.
Yesterday, it was just me and the girls at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH.
Aside from May 5th being Cinco de Mayo, it is also Children's Day in Japan. I've never been to Japan while it is being celebrated, but we learned while at the museum that children fly Cod Kites on this day, and our art project there was to make some of these kites. The girls had a great time coloring, cutting out, pasting their kites. My youngest even stayed still and calm long enough for me to make one for myself her!
I wish I had taken more photos than I did... and I actually wasn't certain of the photography policy of the museum, so was uncomfortable taking out my camera to shoot some of the exhibits. And, with three kids in tow (especially my inquisitive youngest who has properly found her walking legs) and no extra adult hands to help out, I didn't really have the space to photograph anyway.
Which is a bummer, because there was an installation exhibit there that totally floored me. Abigail Anne Newbold did an installation piece called Crafting Settlement which stopped me in my tracks and made me ponder and consider so much of what I'm passionate about. The museum's explanation of the show does a great job of explaining it at a high level, so rather than translating it, I'll quote it directly here:
Abigail Anne Newbold melds a mastery of traditional craft techniques with a modern design aesthetic to create thought-provoking installations centered on themes of domesticity, self-sufficiency, and artisanal production.
Given my own personal interest in self-sufficiency, unusual fascination with escaping from modern society, and my tendencies towards DIY, I appreciated so much about this installation piece. I was floored by some of the work she did... it may be easiest for me to list the items that stuck out to me (and this is given I was spending most of my time chasing a 15 month old and preventing her from walking into the tents that are part of the exhibit!):
Not only do I feel this speaks to people striving for a crafty and self-sufficient life-style - it also crossing that boundary between artwork and crafting that some feel are divided.
I hope I get myself back to the museum, sans children, for a closer look at the exhibit. Maybe on June 6th when the artist herself will be there!
I'm sure that at some point, most long-time knitters take chances with their knitting projects. We figure that we've been knitting long enough to earn it. Perhaps we decide not to knit a gauge swatch (which, btw, normally works out as long as you know that you knit close to gauge and you aren't knitting a project like a fitted sweater that absolutely must be perfectly to gauge). Or perhaps we decide to buy just enough of that expensive yarn to make the project rather than an extra ball so we're sure to have enough.
Or, like me, we decide to start a project with what we know won't be enough yarn and decide to change yarns as a design element.
It's all good, especially when you're knitting up another Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman (here's the first one I knit for my babe). That garment is so forgiving and even begs for various yarns to be used. So perhaps the "chance" I was taking wasn't that huge of a chance.
But then I threw in a curve ball.
I knew I wanted to make the sweater from yarn in my stash, and in particular wanted to use some leftover yarn from my cowl project (I just love green). But in looking through the stash, the only other yarn in the correct size that had a complementary color was a big ball of white. Perfect, except that it seemed boring to have just the two colors and to have it change dramatically from one to another without any fanfare.
At first, I thought I'd start in on the white yarn and knit two rows of garter, then switch back to green and knit two rows of garter, then continue on in white. But that seemed boring - however - at that point, I had already committed to where I was going to start the transition and how much green I had left.
Tell me you know what I'm talking about? I gave my ball of green a good eyeballing to see if I could pull off what I wanted to do and decided to go for it:
Two rows garter in white, six rows garter in green, four rows garter in white, four rows garter in green, six rows garter in white, two rows garter in green, then onto straight white. It would be close, I knew it would be. As I flipped my sweater to work that last row of green garter, I wasn't sure if I would make it... stitch by stitch I approached the end... and miraculously had a whole 12 inches left of green yarn! The knitting fairies were on my side this time, and I love how the transition looks.
Given that we dipped below freezing last night, my littlest will surely get a bit of wear from this Spring sweater (once I finish it).
A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see. ..... in solidarity with SouleMama
The weather this week in New Hampshire has been absolutely amazing. None of us have been able to get enough of being outside (though those dreaded May flies have arrived, so that isn't so pleasant).
Knowing that the weather this entire week was going to be wonderful, we had a look at the tide charts for Rye, NH, to schedule a visit during low tide to Odiore Point State Park. The girls have never been "tide-pooling" (is that a verb, even?). I have never been tide-pooling either! And this will be the first time we've been to the beach since moving to New Hampshire.
Well, we couldn't tide-pool until we could figure out how to read the tide charts. We called the park only to be told that low tide was at an entirely different time than we had read on one of the online charts. We went back online and looked around to discover several different times. After we had finally found three places that gave approximately the same time, we figured we go with it and set our travels to arrive at the park yesterday around 9:30ish... The tide would still be going out for another half an hour and we'd then have a bit of time before it came in.
We arrived closer to 10am but still had time before official low-tide. We had heard that we should visit the drowned or sunken forest... and that is where we ended up for the tide-pooling part of our adventure (and ended up seeing some of the petrified wood, though the photos I took of them were uninspiring):
After tide-pooling, we figured it would be nice (particularly for our littlest one who isn't stable enough to navigate the rocks on her own) to run around on a bit of sandy beach, so we headed South just a bit to Wallis Sands State Park - a very small, but perfectly manageable sandy beach with a HUGE expanse of sand because it was low tide. This place would have been packed if it was the weekend. One of the biggest positives of homeschooling is that you can make excursions and field-trips like this during "off" times, when the crowds will be far less.
My dear hubby had insisted on packing every type of shoe available to us. At the time, I thought it was silly and that I'd do just fine with my Keen sandals, but boy am I glad to have had my waterproof boots to keep my toes warm and dry! You have more good ideas than I give you credit for, Dear Rabbit!
I have a friend... a dear friend I have known since grade school.
We went to the same junior high together. We went to the same high school together. When I headed East to attend the university, she followed a year later and attended the same university as me. After we graduated, when she moved to New York City, I followed her a year later. She was a bridesmaid at my wedding. My girls were flower girls at her wedding.
We didn't literally follow each other... but our paths have certainly kept us in very close proximity to each other over the course of our lives.
Eons ago, she had asked me to teach her to knit. She wanted to knit something for a friend of hers. And I was very happy to oblige. I love thinking that I was passing along a skill that I was taught by my great grandmother... there is something so special in that. And I'm sure "Little Gram" would smile if she knew.
So when she asked me to help her refresh her memory of her knitting skills (unused for about a decade), I was all on board. Did it matter that we aren't in the same town anymore? Nah! No need for me to fly to my hometown where she lives now and sit down with her... we have Skype, and YouTube, and the internet now.
I had knit a baby blanket for this friend of mine - and it was this same blanket (that she and her daughter love so much) that she wanted to knit for her friend who is having her first baby.
What I so love about this friend of mine is her total faith in her ability to do something that may, at first sight, seem too daunting. I mean, look at that blanket? Doesn't it look complicated? All those holes! All those twists! And she hasn't knit for over a decade!
But I knew she could do it. I mean, knitting is basically about two stitches - knit and purl. You just put them together in different combinations and can get amazingly complicated things. And she had a full two months until the baby was set to arrive, which was plenty of time.
After our initial conversation, and my assurances that this was an entirely do-able project, I sent off an email which had a complete list of supplies she needed for the project along with links to sites she could order the supplies from. Though I had knit the blanket with size 13 needles, we decided to have her do size 15 because she has that typical "new knitter tightness" to her stitches which would make her gauge different from mine. I also sent along a link to a YouTube video for how to wind a center-pull ball of yarn, and said, "Wind 2 or 3 hanks into balls as soon as you get your order."
Within a few days, her stuff arrived and she had three balls made, so we were ready for Skype. Skype is such a wonderful creation. Though I couldn't ever get a really good shot of my hands knitting for a beginner to follow (and had to rely mostly on showing her YouTube videos of the various stitches), it was good enough for me to see what she was doing and help to correct her and give her guidance.
I got her started with a long-tail cast-on and the seed stitch first few rows and we left it at that. A few days later, I sent another mail with more links to videos for how to yarn over and do various decrease stitches needed for the pattern. And we had another Skype session.
Maybe a week after that, I just had to send a link for doing a cable, then Skype to explain how this particular cable differs from the video and have her work it in front of me.
That was enough for her to be able to knit to the very end... which she did. We connected just a few days ago to go over how to bind off and weave in the ends... and now she is done with the blanket. AND (most importantly) the baby hasn't arrived yet. So she finished in perfect time!
Simon Schama: Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
Jay Winik: The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800
Jared Diamond: The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee: Knitting Rules!: The Yarn Harlot's Bag of Knitting Tricks
