No? Well, then it probably wasn't as hell of a morning for you as it was for my babies, cause it was a hell of a morning for the babies this morning. Of course, we ride the bus something like every other day, so it's often a hell of a morning for them. Kids, you know?And last night, my first night teaching for the semester, Matt made this for dinner:
It's going to be a hell of a semester, I can tell.When I haven't been pre-screening Gone with the Wind or answering stupid questions ("Do we really need to buy ALL of the required textbooks for this class?"), I've been happily crafting away to a Valentine theme. After having monopolized our big living room table for nearly a week (carpet picnic, anyone?), I've finally finished the papercrafting portion of my Valentine's Classroom Card Exhange swap over at Craftster. Here are a couple of little peekies:
Next comes the beadwork and the adding of Christmas clearance tinsel, and after that comes the making of envelopes from old magazine pages. And then I send them. And then, in return, I get 23 lovingly crafted handmade Valentines from all my swap buddies--squeal!One of the fun things I've been anticipating about this project is trying out some beadwork with some of the absolutely terrific vintage beads I scored at a garage sale last summer. I bought most of them intending to sell them on etsy, but really they need a more positive identification of provenance and material, so while I'm waiting for the library to buy me , I'm setting aside a few that I'd like to try crafting with myself, primarily ones with less traditional bead shapes that I can dangle as pendants from my soldering work, like these hearts:
Resin? Lucite? Beats me. They rock, though, right?This afternoon while the girls carefully picked out every single dried blueberry from the peanut butter and dried blueberry sandwiches I'd made them (you see why I need a creative outlet?) I finished cutting out the pieces for the two denim quilts with heart appliques that I'm planning--I was doing this a couple of weeks ago, but had to set it aside when I ran out of denim, and last week at the Recycling Center I actually had a pair of denim overalls in my hands, when some guy, I swear to god, walked up to me, took them out of my hands, walked back to his truck, threw them in the back, then got in himself and drove away. I called Matt right there on the sidewalk, totally incoherent with fury, and like a man he's all, "What are you talking about? Why do you want overalls?" Barf.
Anyway, here are some of the heart appliques we're decorating for our lap quilt for the living room:
And seriously, that's not even all of the heart-y goodness! The scrappy heart pinbacks that I put up in my etsy shop made some people happy (and therefore me, as well), so I've been making more. These use some old songbook pages, and I take unmitigated pleasure in putting a definitive sequence of notes on each pin:
I've been so addicted that I inadvertently passed on my addiction to my girls, and they have spent so long painstakingly choosing the exact one-inch circle punched from scrapbook paper and the exact tiny heart punched from a different scrapbook paper for each of a thousand pins each and then "helping" me make their buttons-- 
--that I've been spending much of that time patiently assisting them and also kind of screaming inside my head. But it is through these kinds of sacrifices that a future generation of crafty divas is trained.
P.S. Check out my post about how much I heart Craftster over at Crafting a Green World.
cosmo rode the bus today, and it was probably his favorite thing about the day.
ReplyDeletei adore that valentine with the music on it. that classroom valentine exchange sounds so beautiful. i hope you post photos of all of it (yours, and the ones you get).
i want to guess that those heart beads are made of amber. but maybe that is just because i want them to be made of amber.
i know what this feels like:
"...spending much of that time patiently assisting them and also kind of screaming inside my head."
the way you put it, it's not like bitching. it is acknowledging that it is not always easy, but that these are choices we happily make, because there is something we believe in, about parenting...thanks.
i recently linked to your etsy site (from my blog) for buttons.
Yes, I need to try that "screaming in my head" strategy - instead of the bitching from my mouth technique that I often resort to.
ReplyDeleteDo you do "screaming in head" workshops? I'd sign up.
Speaking of workshops. Wanna schedule some for spring? We've had some inquiries.
Those beads do, indeed, rock! I'm going to go out on a limb and confess here, but beads/jewelry makings, yarn, and fabric induce orgasmic happiness in me. It's a sickness that feels good unless I give in to buying too much (the stuff on Freecycle goes faster than gerbils on drugs, but I've gotten some good finds at yard sales).
ReplyDeleteI think the only times my kids have ridden buses are when we're in different cities (the Sky Train in Vancouver had them pretty psyched).
And WTF is with the guy who took the overalls out of your hands??
ReplyDeleteOh, don't worry, I still manage to do my fair share of bitching from my mouth. My big worrisome problem, though, is that when the kids drive me too nuts, I'll just sort of turn off emotionally. Total blank--I'm sure it's some kind of sociopathic break.
ReplyDeleteMy kids are going to have a ball in therapy when they're adults.
Hell, yeah, workshops! I have a pregnant friend I'm going to force to tag along this year. She told me that she was not going to cloth diaper; I told her that is unacceptable.