My Pumpkinbear Etsy Shop is Presentable Again!

What with, you know, parenting and teaching freshman comp and cooking food and starting seeds and sewing presents for little-kid birthday parties and cleaning and writing my book proposal and making patterns for my book proposal and creating some Artist Trading Cards for my Craftster ATC WXY swap and blah blah blah, my pumpkinbear etsy shop was growing sadly neglected, and it was starting to make me feel antsy.

So off and on this weekend, in between the sewing and seed starting and stuff, I found some time to update. It didn't help that the weather turned (AGAIN!) and so all my photos are weirdly lit, but perfect lighting or not, they're up, and that's better than perfect lighting.

The fun thing is that I managed to update with a lot of really different stuff, some of which I've been sitting on for too long due to just doing other stuff. So I've got some vintage crafting stuff, like this crazy-awesome lap loom, with all its parts AND an instruction book, that I happened upon fortuitously one day:

Matt made his first digital collage sheet for me, just a simple one-inch set of the international breastfeeding symbol images that we use to make pinbacks, so that other crafty people with button machines can make their own fundraisers for their own natural birthing advocacy organizations: I sold off all my other comic book pinbacks and doily pinbacks, so I FINALLY relisted a set of each: I have to make some more of the black doily pinbacks before I can relist those, but I'm still on this random rainbow kick, and so I'm also absurdly stoked by my rainbow doily pinbacks.

And finally, now that I've gotten my T-shirt smock pattern all worked out to my satisfaction I'm thinking of changing it into a T-shirt apron for my book proposal (more gender neutral, don't you think maybe?), which pattern I'd also need to work out (pushing the proposal mailing back just a few more days, squidge squidge), but anyway, now that it's all worked out and happy I can enjoy sewing up some crazy-awesome fangeek T-shirt dresses out of my crazy-awesome fangeek T-shirt stash:

Captain America--such a nice guy. Too bad about Bucky.

P.S. Check out my expose on a big company that ripped off an indie crafter over at Crafting a Green World.

Because Everyone Needs a Dinosaur Dress

I've been working out this new pattern idea for making dresses/tops out T-shirts, sort of like the pillowcase dresses I make. Of course, figuring out a new pattern requires making up that pattern several times, and hence:

Velociraptor Dress

I think I'm actually liking this idea a lot more than the pillowcase dresses, because, duh, it's way more fangeek. It's tricky with the bias straps, though, because they ought to be all mitchy-matchy, but I hate to buy new fabric.

Fortunately, Mr. Velociraptor also has some pale green accents to complement the pale green fabric I used here:I'm making this pattern to include in my book proposal, but I'll also likely have a few of these dresses up on my pumpkinbear etsy shop this weekend after I'm satisfied with the way it's working, because it's a good way to use up my stash of awesome T-shirts.

Don't worry, though--I made the girl put on pants before I sent her to school:

Good Game Morning

With the rainy weather, the children didn't take to being booted outside first thing in the morning the way we'd been doing it earlier this week, so it was yet another indoor morning for us.


Prescription? Games, games, games.


I'm not at all into games--board games, card games, sports, about the only thing I will do is sit down for a good session of D&D if you've got a rockin' DungeonMaster--so the benefit when I do chill out with the girls and play a bunch of games with them is that, not only am I bored to tears inside my head, but I also get to feel like a REALLY good mother, you know, sacrificing my mental capacity and emotional well-being for my girls.


The girls are especially fond of Uncle Wiggily, a Goodwill score of a few months ago. Admittedly, it's a terrific game for their age range--you can use it to reinforce counting, number identification, basic arithmetic, as well as the usual turn-taking and sportsmanship and stuff:
When Sydney gets bored and wanders off to pretend that the toy dinosaurs are having conversations with each other, I liven the game up a little (and make it go a LOT faster) by playing Abacus Uncle Wiggily.

Do you guys have an abacus? They rock. Will can do all kind of crazy math using an abacus, and that's just the basic stuff that I know to teach her--if you really know, you can do all kinds of CRAZY stuff with an abacus.

Anyway, in Abacus Uncle Wiggily, you pull TWO cards (maybe even three, if you're brave) and add them together using the abacus: You get to hop forward your answer, of course. But if you're wrong...well, let's just say the consequences are dire.

After Uncle Wiggily, we played this ocean life card game that I bought the girls for Christmas. I don't know how you actually play, but sometimes we play a game using the front sides of the cards as flashcards--

And sometimes we use the trivia questions on the back. Okay, there is a game I do like: I LIKE trivia.

So a kid picks a card and brings it to me, and there are various permutations of which one or how many of the trivia questions on the back that I ask. If she answers the question(s) correctly, she adds the card to her collection. If she answers incorrectly, I add the card to my collection.

Because I was such a good mom, I gave myself permission to serve frozen pizza for lunch. With frozen spinach on top, though, so it's almost like a healthy lunch.

Sort of.

Meet My New Micron Pen Roll

Isn't it fabulous?Sydney put the colors in order for me, so you know they're in perfect logical order and aesthetically pleasing, to boot:Again, like my marker roll, this one is loosely based on the colored pencil roll in . I have a couple hundred other things I'm going to try out from that book, too. And now, a fancy shot:In other news--you guys, I cannot get the City Museum out of my head! How often do you start the day taking the girls to yet another hands-on museum and end up doing the funnest thing you've ever done in your entire life? Oh, and I was so sore yesterday that I could barely move.

So Matt and I were doing some research on the City Museum and the story behind it is also really interesting. Bob Cassilly is the artist/"serial entrepreneur" who's behind it, who also, probably not coincidentally, created our other favorite thing in St. Louis, Turtle Park. Anyway, he and his former wife bought the old St. Louis Shoe Factory for 69 cents a square foot and created the City Museum in it. Matt tells me that originally, it was a non-profit, and the wife was president of the board. Later, however, Cassilly insisted on buying the building back from the board to make it a for-profit enterprise, and his wife was forced out of the business and they divorced and all kinds of scandal.

You know, though, this might be a little Green Party of me, but I think the idea of a for-profit museum, as long as it doesn't go all McDonald's/Disney World, is fine. Cassilly is clearly, after seeing the City Museum, a creative genius, and not only might a board of directors stifle some of his artistic decisions ("You want to stick an old plane where?!!! And let people climb on it?!!!"), but the museum seems to have an ethical system that's both eco-friendly and local, it's not crazy expensive to visit (although it is sort of non-crazy expensive), and hell, brilliant artists deserve to make good money.

Check out this great article on Terrain about the City Museum--Through the Dragon's Mouth. I found it really insightful, both in the philosophies behind the museum that the author uncovered and in her observations about how adults and children interact there. I wonder if I'm so drawn to the place because it's perhaps the first public place I've visited that seems to share my own guiding beliefs.
Oh my gawd, y'all--the City Museum is my church!

Citified (and Sore)

As much as we love the St. Louis Science Center and the St. Louis Zoo (and their free-ness), I felt like doing something different during our day in St. Louis yesterday, a day that we usually spend every time we come home from visiting my folks in Arkansas, on account of St. Louis is so awesome.

At 12 bucks a person (excluding the baby), the City Museum was a pricey adventure, but oh my freakin' gawd, that place is better than Disney World for a recycling crafter and her two climbing monkeys!

Everything in the place is constructed primarily from stuff found within the city--steel pieces making up climbing structures, a couple of abandoned airplanes mounted way up high that you can climb all around, cranes and slides and big springs and even old shells and printing blocks and glass bottles making up mosaics on all the inside walls:
But most of what you do in the City Museum is climb:There are just all these cool steel pieces welded together to make gangways and ladders and tunnels and bridges and slides and just any awesome thing you can think of. And it's real, you know? I mean, you're not going to fall to your death or anything, but it's not all molded plastic and hand sanitizer, either. Syd busted her lip falling off a rope swing, and I ripped the pocket off my pants scrambling through a tunnel made of a big steel spring. You pick yourself up, nurse a little if you're two, then run off to do something else: There's also the same element of perceived danger that you'd get at an amusement park, but much more DIY: pretty much every single thing in that place challenged either my claustrophobia or Matt's fear of heights. Good to have a two-parent household, then, because Matt took this photo of me and Will--he was already on the second story himself:Notice here that even though Sydney is perfectly capable of doing this herself, I'm having to pack her across this bridge on my back while she squeezes my trachea and makes me feel a little light-headed: She liked the huge ball pit better:And that's just the outdoor jungle gym--there's also a huge indoor jungle gym that connects to it, a skate park area for running up and down and sliding and rolling on (who would have thought a skate park would be so much fun without a skateboard?), a circus area complete with circus classes, a huge DIY art area (that we didn't even visit, I was THAT revved up about climbing stuff), displays of artifacts found during archeological digs in St. Louis (lots of green glass bottles and awesome big marbles), a small shoelace factory (the girls and I are sporting new shoelaces today), a huge artificial caving system (oh-my-god-it's-so-small-and-dark-in-this-tunnel-I-think-I'm-going-to-die!), a gift shop featuring crafting stuff and local artists who create with recycled materials (meaning that I basically died in that caving system and found myself in heaven), and other huge climbing areas centered around eco-systems like the arctic, a swamp, and a big tree in a forest.

I think there was some other stuff that we missed.

I'M BAAAA-AAAACK!

I'm back, I'm here, I'm madly recording grades and alphabetizing papers and planning lessons and unpacking and wondering what's for dinner and replying to emails and scheduling cloth diapering classes and picking my A Fair of the Arts booth site and downloading photos and petting the cat and writing my book proposal and crafting for Luna Fest and washing dishes and...

...and maybe sitting down in a minute with a Shiner and some Netflix.

Tomorrow, I'm going to show you the most awesomest thing that we did today. You will not freakin' believe it.

It's that awesome.

One CAN Have Enough Stickers

Only a child's grandmother would buy her this ridiculous amount of stickers:

Add to that an unlimited number of Netflix-ed Land Before Time videos, a storytime at a different Ft. Smith public library branch every day, and a pizza supper with the cousins, and you have yourself QUITE the Spring Break.

Four the four-and-under set, at least...

P.S. Check out my ode to sketchbooks on Crafting a Green World and my shrinking #6 plastic tutorial over at Eco Child's Play.

The Rainbow Cake Bandwagon

In my family's Arkansas kitchen, with its big dishwasher and pantry chock-full of things we don't have at home and a 60-year collection of Tupperware and butter tubs and plastic bowls and such, the girls and I have been indulging in a wider variety of kitchen crafts than we usually do on a daily basis.

No surprise, then, that we jumped on the rainbow cake bandwagon.

I've seen rainbow cake mentioned in several blogs, most recently at Craft Magazine (my Matt has an unsavory name, of sexual connotation, for one blog posting an item, which is then picked up by another blog and posted, which is then picked up by another blog...), but our version, of course, changes some basic and crucial rules and thus doesn't end up looking like the other pictures on the other blogs. It's pretty much another shark cupcake incident.

So for instructions for a perfect-looking cake, try elsewhere.

The basic concept behind a rainbow cake is to divide a cake batter, independently color each scoop or so a different color----and then dump each scoop of cake batter into the cake pan smack on top of the scoop that came before it without stirring or mixing it up AT ALL: And then you end up with rainbow-y goodness ready to bake: My mistake, in rummaging through my family's kitchen, was that I used a white angel food cake mix, which I was able to find in a cupboard, but not an angel food cake pan, because I wasn't able to find one, although I'm sure of its existence somewhere in this house...somewhere.

Mind you, I've never made nor seen made angel food cake before, so I'm reading the back of the box and I'm all, "Hmm, no eggs? I accept that. But balance the cake upside down on a glass bottle? That's weird, and I can't do that with these cake pans, anyway," and therefore my rainbow cake layers, instead of being all light and fluffy and wide and all, are instead dense and narrow and small: But is the cake still delicious?

Why yes, yes it is.

P.S. Interested in more messy cooking with kids? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Can Tell We're Back in Arkansas

Within 24 hours of re-entering the state, we were at Wal-mart (yes, they have organic milk, no, they do not have veggie chili mix).

Here, the trees are in boisterous bloom: As we walked into storytime at the public library this morning, my girls were greeted by the SAME little old lady who was the little old lady who held storytimes when I was their age. I adored her then, and adore her now--she remembered my children's names after I introduced her, held the children rapt with a book about a duck who tried, to no avail, to avoid a spanking (she's a little old-school), sat with Sydney on her lap while a group of daycare children sang a St. Patrick's Day song for the local news (5 at 5!), and took my hand as we walked over to the crafts area so that she could ask all about my life ("Why, I'm a teacher, Ms. Louise, and I have a library science degree").

Ah, homecomings.

Matt, who drove us down here for the week but then went back to Indy to work (How I am going to survive here without him, I do not know), did not have the pleasure, thusly, of meeting Ms. Louise, but he did get to hear me blather on all about her on the phone, and all about the horrible papers I'm grading and what exactly are my students doing all class while I'm teaching the material, oh and by the way how was the drive back.

He also, because he thinks of me even when I'm not around, sent me a link to this awesome artist who embroiders female merit badges.

They are awesome.

While I never earned the Applied Mascara or even the Pantyhose badges, really, I am all about the Fertility badges. Not only do I get the ones for the Pill and Pregnancy Scare and Inserting a Tampon, but I also get nicer ones like Bride, Pregnancy-- --and Breastfeeding: But now, of course, I totally want to add to the list. How about Tandem Breastfeeding? Working with Baby in Lap?

Hosting Child's Birthday Party? Taking Child to Emergency Room? Finding the Perfect Sports Bra?

Telling Former Teachers that You're Now a Teacher Yourself?

We all deserve an entire vest full of these.

I Want to Eat My Marker Roll

Because it looks so yummy.

I first saw the gorgeous patchwork colored pencil rolls in back around Christmas time, I think...

How long it can take something to stew in one's head before it comes to fruition: This doesn't follow the book's instructions step-by-step, but back when I read it I studied it until I figured out how the most striking construction elements worked, and so I imagine that my own marker roll has some very close similarities.

In particular, I copied the idea of the matching color patchwork-- --and the up-and-down, back-and-forth quilting: I like this, in particular, a LOT better than the other ways I've seen discussed of constructing crayon rolls, which is to sew up only to the edge of the pocket and then backstitch to hold the stitch, and then move over to the next place the pocket needs to be sewn and sew up to the edge there, etc. When I made my own crayon rolls with that method, I was bored by the constant stop and start, and I disliked the look of the obvious backstitch.

This quilting method is quicker and cleaner looking.

I figured out the width of each pocket by measuring the length it took for a fabric tape measure to go from the tabletop, over the marker, and then back to the tabletop, adding a half-inch seam allowance. I measured the length of each piece as twice the length of my marker, then folded the whole thing up at the bottom to form the pocket, leaving space between the top of the marker and the top edge of the marker roll.

The marker roll's only flaw, as it pertains to my personal method of crafting, is that it requires some pretty specific color choices. Crafting primarily with recycled materials, I'm very used to working with what I already have or can cheaply obtain second-hand or from the recycling center. I'm NOT used to buying new fabric, and frankly, I was a little uncomfortable with it--consumerism isn't really the goal of my work, you know, although maybe you wouldn't know it if you saw all this fabric I bought just for these rolls:
I am going to look for some cotton button-down shirts at Goodwill tomorrow (50%-off storewide sale!) to use for this type of sewing, but I did make my peace with the new purchases a little by choosing that my outside fabric for these rolls be recycled blue jean denim. Makes it extra sturdy, I think.

Next up--a Micron pen roll, just for me!

Spring is Nigh

How do I know?

Well, the windows occasionally get opened now, so that the dinosaurs can look out:The first flower was photographed.

The girls, unsupervised, raided the neighbor's yard to gather a huge bucket--
--of beautiful green and rich and earthy moss:We are apparently not the good kind of neighbors...ahem. Mental note: teach the girls to use a trowel, and then we could make terrariums!

The Wylie House heirloom seed sale has come and gone, although their antique quilt exhibition remains, I believe:

And yes, I do think that there are little critters down there in the creek, once again:

Happy of happies, I got some sewing done today! I swear, there is nothing like blissfully ironing and measuring and sewing while watching streaming videos online--it's like a tiny piece of heaven trapped in the middle of my cracker-crumb day.

I'll show off my babies' new marker roll tomorrow, and yep, you'll love it, too.

Shrink Plastic Buttons You Need a Microscope to See

I've been really really REALLY wanting to get my hands on , but it's not yet my turn in the library queue, and anyway my vintage button stash is dismal (it's a dream of mine to someday go to a garage sale and find a gallon jar of vintage buttons marked at something like 50 cents...someday), but I heard that there's a shrink plastic button project somewhere in the book, and I did have an old empty container of Kroger's pumpkin chocolate chip cookies languishing in the #6 Plastics crate on the kitchen counter (yep--we have a storage container in the kitchen just for #6 plastic. That stuff is useful!), so...

I punched a bunch of one-inch circles out of #6 plastic, punched a couple of buttonholes in the center, and the girls and I got out the Sharpies and worked--

--and worked----and worked. I had a plan to make some buttons around the alphabet for my VWX Alphabet ATC Swap over at Craftster (you'll see in a moment why this is no longer part of the plan), and Sydney seemed to greatly enjoy making entirely black button after entirely black button, but Willow did this funny thing where she made faces out of the buttons, using the buttonholes as eyes:

Ahhhh, negative space.

With more forethought, I would have cut out circles of varying sizes and thereby avoided the below phenomenon in which all of our shrink plastic buttons are now nearly microscopic--But, eh. It's crafting!

What fun is forethought?

P.S. Check out my shout-out in the Weekly Craft Round-up over at The Long Thread. Woot!

P.P.S. I think it's really funny when people rename my posts when they link to them--they're all, "I'm sorry, but I am not putting the word "RAWK" on my blog!" Justifiable, I think.

The Flight of Europa, Re-Imagined

The other day on a school holiday, I took both the girls up to Indianapolis to visit the Indianapolis Museum of Art. You might remember that the idea of this trip filled me with trepidation, on account of the huge, screaming fit that a certain 4-year-old threw within eight minutes of entering (after standing in line for over an hour) the San Francisco Modern Art Museum. This trip was certainly better, in that we got the chance, you know, to see some actual art this time-- --but it did end, of course, in me tersely escorting the girls from the museum an hour after entering, and I wasn't quite successful in convincing Willow, at least, that a museum without anything to climb on is still super-fun, but after spending 5 seconds looking intently at The Flight of Europa--

Willow did sit down with her sketchbook and colored pencils and create this:

When Willow asked me why the lady was riding the bull, I told her that it was a big, friendly bull named Zeus and it was taking the Europa lady off on a special ride across the ocean. For anyone else who knows the myth of Europa, you can join me with a quiet "ahem" inside your heads, as well.

Next time (probably the IU Art Museum), we'll spend ten minutes looking at art, twenty minutes hanging out with sketchbooks (the girls were inspired to draw in the museum for quite a while after looking at the art, even if they weren't necessarily impressed by that art, so I'm calling the enterprise a success)--

--and then we'll move on immediately to some very different activity that requires a lot of climbing upon things.

If only art museums had a playroom.

Teeny Tiny Little Quilt Blocks

I'm taking a little mental health break from query letters this week (my worst rejection so far--"pass but god bless") and re-charging my creative batteries, so to speak. There's been a lot of list-making in the sketchbook (birthday ideas for my cousin Katie, projects I want to make and modify from ), lots of planning of crazy-elaborate projects I may or may not make (Will wanted a pretend birthday cake, so I was thinking some high-density foam, denim, piping, and Eco-fi felt applique decorations?), and hopefully some sewing to come soon (rainbow birthday buntings, help me make time for you!), but today, during Sydney's all-too-short nap, I had an extremely happy time watching the first four episodes of Dollhouse on hulu while cutting out blocks for my postage stamp quilt squares swap over at Craftster:For those of you not CRAZY like I am, postage stamp quilt blocks are 1.5" square; when pieced, these blocks will appear to be 1" square. I do already have a ton cut out from a previous swap, but I've been afraid of touching them for a really long time after I somehow messed up piecing them, I do not know how, and ended up with a bunch of quilt blocks whose finished size when pieced was 1"x1.25". I'm still scared by the fact that I DO NOT KNOW what I was doing wrong.

The fun thing about cutting out postage stamp quilt squares is making fussy cuts, so that you preserve the image of a flower, or a kittycat face, or whatever, in your tiny little block. The challenging thing is cutting extremely accurately. A gridded self-healing mat and a gridded clear plastic rule make this much easier:See how, at the left edge of the picture there, you can line up the clear ruler on the gridded mat at the appropriate lines so that the fabric to the right of the ruler is cut accurately?

Good times.

In other news, Willow took a photo of the first flower of springtime in our yard:Since she's just started using my camera this winter, I think this is her very first photo of a growing flower. Ever.

How cool is that?

P.S. Check out my list of art museum web sites that offer interactive children's activities--it's over at Eco Child's Play.