Eighteen Eclipse Buntings in Thirty Days

Because it's very important to teenagers that you stay humble, my own teenager was quick to inform me that, despite the unexpected and fleeting popularity of my handmade eclipse buntings in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop, I was not, and likely never would be, "viral."

Whatever. I still enjoyed my brief moment in the #girlboss sun!

I also finally finished The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel while I sewed, ending up with exactly 8 minutes left in the series finale at the moment that I cut the last thread on my last bunting, so that's yet another big accomplishment.

Now I'm watching that Duggar documentary series while I sew marble maze fidgets, and hoo-boy is THAT a wild ride! I did watch that show back in the day, when I was more entertained by secondhand cringe than I am now, although my REAL secondhand cringe favorite was Jon and Kate + 8. I could still happily endlessly chew over every single one of those episodes, snarking away about all the horrible adults. Remember the time that the family got a free trip to Disney World and then they got free ice cream and Kate wouldn't let the kids eat it? Or when they got the free trip to the Crayola Crayon hands-on place and she wouldn't let them do most of the activities? I'm STILL made on the kids' behalf!

I definitely didn't do any of the things that I probably should have done when blessed with a suddenly popular (not viral! Never say viral, at least not to a teenager!) listing. I'm pretty sure I should have done... something to further market or build on or... something. So maybe I didn't exactly #girlboss after all, lol. Oh, well! I mostly gave up my #handmade #girlboss dreams back when I gave up craft fairs.

Sewing all those bunting orders was really fun while it lasted, though! 

P.S. I actually wrote a tutorial for this bunting, so you can make your own!

P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

There Was an Eclipse Over My Backyard

Seven years ago this August, I wrote the following in my blog post about driving to Carbondale, Illinois, with my family to watch the 2017 eclipse:

I don't know what mood I'd be in if I didn't know that there's another total solar eclipse coming in seven years, but there is one coming, and I am buoyant. Better yet, Friends, my town is in the path of totality. 

Lemme just repeat that: MY TOWN IS IN THE PATH OF TOTALITY. MY HOUSE WILL SEE AN ECLIPSE!!!

You can come stay in a tent in my backyard, and I'll haul out the lounge chairs. The little kid, who will be graduating from high school the next month, will decorate us eclipse-themed doughnuts. The big kid, home from college for the weekend, will read and ignore us. And we'll have another powerful encounter that's beyond belief, in just seven years.

The little kid, one month from graduating high school, scored her homemade sourdough loaves with sun shapes for us. The big kid, home from college for the weekend, worked on her Environmental Science essay instead of a novel. All the out-of-town guests stayed in hotels instead of tents, but we did have the lounge chairs, sidewalk chalk, basketball and cornhole, and jump ropes out.

And my house, and all who stood on the driveway outside it, did see a total eclipse!

I played around with both my camera's phone and my Canon DSLR with this sun filter that I impulse-bought a couple of weeks prior. They both worked pretty well, but I was so worried about spending all my time fooling with photos instead of being in the moment that I didn't really use either to their full potential, and somehow, even with a sun filter and the sky going dark, I managed to over-expose every single photo.

Ah, well. The eclipse is happening somewhere in the middle of that white light and lens flare!

Here's the altar to Zeus we'd been working on all the previous week. Everyone in the family contributed nice things from their personal collections, and we lit the candle and incense daily while telling each other how much we appreciate the wonders of the universe and wouldn't it be nice to see the majesty of Zeus in an eclipse.

Trusting in the power of Zeus hadn't been enough to quell my fervent and rabid anxiety about the weather, however, and my regular eclipse anxiety dreams ratcheted up to a fever pitch during the full week of regular downpours we got prior to the eclipse. I dreamed the weather was overcast, I dreamed I got the day wrong, I dreamed it was raining and I couldn't go somewhere else because the car didn't work. One night I even dreamed that I saw the eclipse and then forgot what I'd seen the second it was over--I mean, what on earth?!?

One last downpour the night before the eclipse might have finished me off if I hadn't been distracted by the Trashion/Refashion Show, but thankfully, the day of the eclipse couldn't have been a more perfect day. Praise be to Zeus! 

I did miss, a little bit, the 2017 camaraderie of hanging out together in a parking lot, but spending a beautiful eclipse day in and out of our own house was objectively a lot more convenient. We had everything from Sun Chips and Cosmic Brownies to Oberon Eclipse beer on offer, and the yard toys got more love than they'd seen in the past five years or more. I even found the Spotify playlist I'd made for the 2017 eclipse and yep. It still rocks!

How magical to have one more beautiful day to play with yard toys and draw with chalk pastels with my daughters!

And imperceptibly, the sky darkened:

Did I get a sunburn right smack full on my face on this day?

Why, yes. Yes, I did.

My camera looks like it's set up to do a way better job than it did. Oh, well...

Proper exposure is for calmer people than I!

Just like seven years ago, our shadows became delightfully sharp as the light source grew smaller. You can't tell from the photo (SIGH!!!), but you can see every strand of the kid's hair in that shadow, and when she turned her eclipse glasses sideways, you could see the paper-thin shadow, deep black, of the cardboard frames.

At one point my college kid was reading the inside of the eclipse glasses and said to me, "You're looking away every three minutes, right?"

ME: "Um... Wut."

Because here is literally me for four entire hours:

Notice the cones at the bottom of my driveway to keep random people from pulling in and running us all over. Traffic wasn't crazy busy, but it was busy enough!

My kid literally had to Google it right then and be all, "Okay, our glasses are certified so you don't *really* have to look away every three minutes, but I think you should anyway." It's been a week, though, and I don't seem to have a blind spot in the center of my vision (...yet), so I think I'm good!

Look at the light around 3:00!

Check out the lens flare at 4:00 to see what the eclipse ACTUALLY looked like, grr. Even upside-down, the lens flare did a better job of photographing my eclipse than I did!

Here's the light at 3:04, including the neighbor's automatic outdoor lights. Check out that horizon!

And here's what we're all looking at!

It wasn't quite the same experience as in 2017. In 2017, when the Moon eclipsed the Sun, I was SHOCKED. I don't think anything can prepare you for that visceral feeling the first time you see a total eclipse. This time wasn't *as* shocking--although I think it always will be somewhat shocking, because the human mind, at least MY human mind, can barely comprehend it--but it was still beyond anything I've ever seen, wondrous and awe-inspiring, and beholding it remains, again, one of the best moments of my life. 

And again, just like in 2017 although it was nearly twice as long, it was over far too soon:

The waning of the eclipse was a great time to fool around with various pinhole projectors and lenses and my colander:

I was a little disappointed that the chickens hadn't seemed to react at all--they always put themselves into their coop at night, and I'd been looking forward to seeing them march themselves inside when the light reached some threshold known only to them--but I think the whole thing just happened too fast. 

The shadows were still predictably delightful, however:

Luna didn't do anything weird, either, but she also hadn't during the 2017 eclipse. She just hung out with us and wore her eclipse glasses like a good citizen scientist:

I watched through my own glasses (still not taking a break every three minutes, oops) until the Moon had completely finished its transit and every speck of the Sun was back in place, and then I made myself an enormous sandwich, tossed it, the rest of a bag of Sun Chips, a Cosmic Brownie, and an Oberon Eclipse beer into a bag, grabbed the rolly suitcase that I hadn't unpacked yet, hollered for the college kid, and by 5:00 we were in bumper-to-bumper--smooth but bumper-to-bumper!--traffic back to her college, where she had a science lab the next day that mustn't be missed. 

Squeezing in four more hours of kid-time, listening to Gastropod episodes and debating the deliciousness of every fruit we've ever tried, was the BEST way to continue this perfect day, and the ending was also the best possible ending: me in my jammies in a hotel room, face massively sunburned, noshing a giant sandwich (on homemade sourdough bread, no less), chips, brownie, and beer, casually starting the first chapter of a fantasy novel I'd been eager to try, and you'll never guess what I found on the hotel TV:

And just like that we circle back around to my Titanic Special Interest right in time for its 112th anniversary!

And don't worry, because now that the eclipse is over, my anxiety dreams have made a smooth transition to the next big thing on my list. Last night, I dreamed that I was traveling with my kid and lost her and couldn't find her and she was in danger. Sending her off to college is going to be SO FUN FOR ME!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Sew a Solar Eclipse Bunting from Stash Fabric

 

I originally published this tutorial on Crafting a Green World.

This solar eclipse bunting ensures clear skies for April 8!

Hey, who’s got a sewing machine and a total solar eclipse happening in her literal backyard this Spring?

I mean, maybe you, but DEFINITELY me!

Y’all, I am REVVED UP for this solar eclipse. I have been excited about it for nearly a decade by now, and ESPECIALLY excited about it for the last seven years! I’m going to have a yard full of people, I’ve got enough eclipse glasses for everybody, there will be four different kinds of lemonade on offer, and there will be solar eclipse decorations if I have to sew every single stitch myself.

Which, considering that Party City doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo, I probably will!

My first official decoration is this solar eclipse bunting sewn from upcycled blue jeans and stash fabric. Y’all know how much I love buntings, so this choice shouldn’t surprise you. And thanks to the easy templates I used and my sewing machine’s superpower that is the zigzag stitch, I was able to take this bunting from concept to completion in half an afternoon. Here’s how!

Here’s what I used to make this bunting, but remember that I sewed entirely from my stash. So if you’ve got something different in YOUR stash, go ahead and use what you’ve got!

• bunting templates. I folded an 8.5″x11″ piece of paper into an isosceles triangle for the pennants, and a wide-mouthed Mason jar lid ring for the suns and moons. For the total eclipse flare, I traced a sun onto the fabric, then drew the flares by hand around it.
• fabric. I used denim (specifically all-cotton old blue jeans) for the pennants, stash flannel for the suns, and stash Kona cotton for the moons. The eclipse flare is upcycled from an old canvas tote bag.
• bias tape. Double-fold bias tape is my favorite shortcut for sewing buntings! I buy all my bias tape from Laceking on etsy, but you can DIY this, as well.
• sewing, cutting, and marking tools. I used my Singer Heavy Duty 4411 and a universal needle for this project, but any sewing machine should be able to handle denim plus a couple of layers of cotton-weight fabric. Sharp fabric scissors are handy for cutting out details in the appliques, and I like my Frixion pens for marking, as they erase with the heat from an iron.

Step 1: Create the templates and cut out all the fabric.

I cut seven pennants out of old blue jeans using the isosceles triangle template that I cut from a piece of 8.5″x11″ paper. Because this piece is decorative, you can even use parts of the jeans with too much wear to reuse otherwise. In the photo above, check out the pennant at the top of the photo–can you see the worn-out knee there? You won’t even notice it in the completed bunting!

To make the suns and moons, I cut six yellow circles and seven black circles using a wide-mouth Mason jar lid ring as my template.

To make that eclipse flare that will be part of the center pennant, I upcycled an old striped canvas tote. I traced the sun template where I wanted the flare to be centered, then traced the pennant around it so that I could hand-draw the flare to fit the pennant.

Step 2: Applique all the Sun pieces.

I put yellow thread in my sewing machine, and set it to a zigzag stitch with a length of 2 and a width of 3. I eyeballed the placement of the suns, laying out all the pennants in a row so I could make sure that they matched, then appliqued them to the pennants.

Appliqueing the flare to the pennant required a bit more finesse, but a confident beginner should be able to do it. Just go slowly and don’t forget to make sure the needle is down when you rotate the fabric.

Step 3: Applique the Moons to the pennants.

I switched out the thread in the sewing machine to black, and went ahead and stitched the moon to the center of the flare, since I knew exactly where it was supposed to be.

To place the rest of the moons, I laid out the entire bunting on the floor so I could eyeball the whole thing at once.

If you’re in the Northern hemisphere for the 2024 eclipse, you’ll be facing South, and the Moon will be coming from the West, so we read this bunting from right to left. The Moon passes across the Sun on a diagonal from top right to bottom left. I placed the Moon pieces on each pennant to mimic the process of the eclipse, roughly trying to make them symmetrical without getting too pedantic about it.

Using the same sewing machine settings, I appliqued all the Moons to the pennants. Notice that the Moon goes off the pennant a few times. I trimmed all that away.

Step 4: Staystitch around the pennants, then add bias tape.

I switched back to yellow thread, then staystitched the perimeter of each pennant flag with a straight stitch at a length of 3. This will keep the denim from fraying beyond where I want it to, as well as stitching down the edges of the moons that I trimmed.

I measured and stitched shut approximately 12″ of bias tape, then started adding the pennants and stitching them into the fold of the bias tape. At the end of the pennants, I continued stitching the bias tape to itself for another 12″, then cut it.

I tied both ends of the bias tape into an overhand knot, and my bunting was finished!

My bunting is already installed over my nicest window. After April 8, there won’t be another total solar eclipse that hits the United States until 2033 (anyone want to meet me in Alaska to watch it?), but instead of putting this bunting into storage until then, I’m kind of thinking that I’ll find another place to install it permanently–perhaps on my porch? It’s too pretty not to look at every day!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Total Eclipse of the Sun

Are you guys still getting over the total eclipse, too? Is it just me?

Y'all, I had been so pent up with excitement over the eclipse that by Sunday afternoon, I'm surprised that my partner didn't just drug me like a dog about to go on a plane trip. Studying the eclipse intensely with the kids for a month just got me even more worked up--I've been revved up about this eclipse for a year. My partner got us our hotel room 50 minutes from Carbondale, Illinois, Eclipse Capital, almost a year ago. Heck, I have had our eclipse glasses since MARCH!

Plan A was to leave our house on Sunday, stay the night at our hotel 50 minutes from Carbondale, then drive the next morning to Crab Orchard National Wildlife Preserve, just outside Carbondale's city limits, and watch the eclipse there. Plan B, if Crab Orchard was too busy or the traffic on the highway into Carbondale was too heavy, was to head a little further away and watch the eclipse from Cedar Lake, a reservoir more to the east. Plans C and D, if Carbondale was overcast, were to drive either towards Nashville or St. Joseph, Missouri, until we were free of cloud cover, and then find a suitable spot to watch.

To that end, we left the house on Sunday morning, just in case the traffic was already heavy. Since it wasn't, though, we ended up with plenty of time to spend the afternoon in Evansville, Indiana. We played at a local playground, found a Krispy Kreme so that the little kid can continue to live her dreams of eating ALL THE DOUGHNUTS, and then tag-teamed the kids around Angel Mounds, on account of I'm not used to planning vacations that include dogs and I didn't notice that dogs weren't allowed in the archaeological area until after we'd paid our admission:

Three Sisters Garden, with the addition of sunflowers

Here's a partial reconstruction of the wattle and daub stockade that surrounded the community.

This is what the inside of the stockade would have looked like, absent kids trying to look up the Native American's skirt.

This is Mound A, the Central Mound. The chief probably lived on the highest point, with some other community members living on the lower platform.

Even the lower platform is high, especially considering that it was built using basket-fulls of dirt, probably carried by hand.

Here's what the village might have looked like:





I'm always the most fascinated by the artifacts that are uncovered in a particular place. The architecture or other physical features are one thing, but these are items that regular people used as part of their everyday lives.



And look! The perfect complement to the weeks that the little kid and I spent studying prehistoric fashion as part of her History of Fashion study!

See the holes drilled into those teeth? It's like the holes that we drilled into shells!

We had an early night at our hotel (why does my quest to order from independent pizza places wherever we stay mostly result in us eating a lot of highly mediocre pizza?), with me checking the radar hourly and fretting over all the traffic reports, and an even earlier morning. The good news is we passed the north-south biscuit and gravy line in our travels, so there was a crock pot of sausage gravy waiting for me, along with cold biscuits, microwaveable cheese "omelets," and bad coffee down in the hotel's breakfast buffet. Every single other person on the planet was also shoving breakfast into their faces and bolting out the door, too--we'd booked our hotel so early that it was a normal price, but the night before, on our way down to the pool, I'd heard the check-in clerk telling some guys that they were full, but she'd heard there were still a couple of rooms at the Fairfield Inn down the road that were going for 900 bucks apiece.

We were on the road by 6:30 am for a 50-minute drive, with little traffic to speak of, and were pulling into an only quarter-filled parking lot at the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Preserve an hour later. There was an air-conditioned visitor center across the lot, with working bathrooms and flushing toilets, and a lovely wooded hike that led to a lovely lake, but honestly, we spent most of the morning like this--



--and like this--

--yep, hanging out in the shade right off of the parking lot. The dog was content, we had plenty of books, and the car was right there whenever we wanted a snack or a drink--it was perfect! The parking lot filled within the hour, and then we were also treated to the sight of cars coming in and circling hopelessly before driving on--ahh, the satisfaction of sitting snugly in our spots in the face of the desperation of others!

Around mid-morning, rangers even came out and closed off the entrance to our lot entirely, so we could move our lawn chairs out of the shade and onto the asphalt, to better watch the show:



Even before you could really tell a difference in the day without your eclipse glasses on, things started to get weird. Just as we'd been told, the dappled light under our tree began showing us the crescent images of the sun:

Just as we'd been told, our shadows on the sidewalk had crisper, sharper edges:

This is because the light is coming from a smaller and smaller point, not diffused as it is when it comes from the entire body of the sun.

The crickets began to sing. The ambient light began to seem oddly dim, but not like sunset, when the light is leaving from the side; this was dimness like a room with the light bulb on low. It grew noticeably colder, as 99% of the photons normally striking us through sunlight were now being deflected. A breeze blew, as the air pressure became affected. We could see that it was visibly darker to our west. And still we watched:

And then there was this:



I was peeping at the sky when the last light left, so I saw the diamond ring with my naked eyes. I turned to make sure the children were watching, and saw the little kid still with her eclipse glasses on, so I ripped them off her face--I wasn't even thinking about damaged eyesight; I just wanted her to see that spectacular beam of light for the second that it was visible.

I'm not even going to try to describe the total eclipse, itself, to you. My photo doesn't really look like it, but I haven't seen any photos that do. I can't think of the words to say that would make it clear to you what it was like, if you didn't see it for yourself. Just... it was beautiful. It was the best thing that I've ever seen in my entire life, and yes, I know that I'm supposed to say that my first look at my children is the best thing that I've ever seen, but I was half out of my mind both times I gave birth, completely terrified both times, both times in pain. This was nothing like that. This was just beautiful, just this ephemeral, beautiful thing that you had to experience right that second for all that you could, because you couldn't rewind the experience to play it again, couldn't watch it on TV later and get the same effect, couldn't come out the next weekend and see it again. It lasted 2 minutes and 40 seconds, all of which are impressed on my memory, and yet when the diamond ring appeared again on the other side of the sun, it felt like surely it hadn't been that long. Surely it had just been a couple of seconds.

As the totality passed, someone began to play The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" from their car stereo, and people were already packing their cars back up. The kids were beaming. My hands were shaking so hard that I had trouble taking a drink of water. We hit ALL the eclipse traffic on the way back that we missed on the way there--we only saw one car crash happen right in front of us, but the drive that had taken 3.5 hours the day before took more like 7+ on the way home, bumper-to-bumper traffic the whole way.

I don't know what mood I'd be in if I didn't know that there's another total solar eclipse coming in seven years, but there is one coming, and I am buoyant. Better yet, Friends, my town is in the path of totality. 

Lemme just repeat that: MY TOWN IS IN THE PATH OF TOTALITY. MY HOUSE WILL SEE AN ECLIPSE!!!

You can come stay in a tent in my backyard, and I'll haul out the lounge chairs. The little kid, who will be graduating from high school the next month, will decorate us eclipse-themed doughnuts. The big kid, home from college for the weekend, will read and ignore us. And we'll have another powerful encounter that's beyond belief, in just seven years.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!