Stegosaurus Weekend (Whew!)

I generally have more free time on the weekends, because my working-outside-the-house partner is, on weekends, perfectly willing to take on the less rewarding, more drudge-inducing aspects of parenting--the milk pouring, butt wiping, same book for the eighteenth time reading, nap administering, naughtiness punishing aspects of parenting. This means that, in addition to such family activities as shopping at garage sales, working out at the YMCA, goofing around in the wading pool shaped like a whale, watching "Kung Fu Panda" at the drive-in, and attending Matt's softball game, I had just enough time to work in my little one-woman stuffed stegosaurus sweat shoppe in preparation for the farmer's market craft fair on Saturday.

The shaggy red fur one with the white hearts is surplus fabric from my order at Distinctive Fabrics--it's so soft and comfy and I swear it feels like the fur of our foster kittens. The stripey one is felted wool from a thick sweater I bought one summer in Iceland, that never did suit me--horizontal stripes, perhaps, or maybe I just didn't need the extra bulk? Anyway, it's better as a stuffie. The blue vinyl is the completed project of what I was working on last week. And the blue denim one in the back is from a pair of my mother-in-law's pants. Now I need to find a sunny late afternoon between the storms to take some photos of the dinos outside, and I'll have them all set for etsy and my craft fair.

While I was sewing up the denim dino and Matt was putting Sydney down for a nap, I was, after a while, made suspicious by the silence in the house and went to find Willow. She was doing this:

She poured white milk for the kitties, and chocolate milk for herself.

Friday Blogs

Every now and then, on the rarest of occasions, Willow and Sydney will forget to fight for a while. I'll be loading the dishwasher or folding clothes or whatever, and a silence will suddenly descend upon the house. My ears might ring for a moment, unused to the lack of "Mine!" "No, it's mine!" "I win!" "No, I win!" "Top it!" "No, you stop it!" I will, obviously, fear that the children have suddenly died. I'll tiptoe around the corner and sneak a peek, and see the girls not wrestling, not playing tug-of-war with a coveted toy, but reading books together, or playing with their toy cars, or having a dinosaur puppet show. When this happens, I consider it a holiday, and I immediately stop whatever drudgery I'm doing and go do something fun for myself for 15 minutes. Often I'll sit down and eat something (my favorite activity), or work on an art project for myself or the girls or a craft fair, or read a little, or mend some things, or check out some things on the world wide interweb.



Some of my favorite things to check out on the interweb are craft-related blogs--they're updated often, so there's usually something new, entries are short enough that I can get through them in the fifteen minutes before the books or cars or dinosaurs start flying, and I like seeing new stuff and techniques and ideas that other people come up with.



So here are a few of my favorite blogs at the moment (I might have mentioned a couple of these before):

• Crafting the Web: This blog focuses on handmade cards--lots of embellishments, sophisticated colors (I like myself some brown), and techniques.


• CraftStylish: This is more of a company effort--craft fair reviews, a variety of tutorials in a number of disciplines (teeny hat! wedding band pendant!), and references.


• Craftypod: This author is knowlegeable about art and local art happenings, is interested in gardening, and regularly shows off her project ideas and projects (I realllly want her to give me some of her Lily Pulitzer quilt pieces), sometimes with tutorials.


• Craftzine: There are a lot of really sophisticated objects and advanced tutorials here (Crafty Baby Mobile? Mabye not. Felt Doughnut? Awesome!), with looks at some really exceptional crafted products.


• Elsie Marley: The author writes about a number of her sewing (we both heart Built by Wendy) and home dec projects, many of them for children. She also creates some really fabulous stuffed animals for her etsy shop.


• Fluffy Flowers: I might have written about this blog before, but I can't pass up those cute stuffed animal close-ups.


• Hello! My Name is Heather: This author is living the dream as a professional crafter. Check out her tutorials, handily located on a sidebar.


• Little Birds: This author has great craft finds, inspirational personal projects, and fun photos of her kiddos.

Know more? Share!

Vinyl, Vinyl Everywhere

It's weird, because I am all about the natural materials, but for some reason this week has been all about vinyl. Well, it's also been about this:

and this:

but it's also been about vinyl.

I received some awesome advice from I don't even remember who that if you have a bunch of stuff to post on etsy, it's better to post one thing every day for however long than to post everything all the same day. That's because the default search listing is by list date--most recent postings show up first. So, posting more often keeps you more relevant in the searches, which leads to more links to your web shop, which leads to... well, nothing substantial yet, in my case, but I do have a ton more hearts than I did before I started this. So instead of posting all my record bowls over the weekend, on Monday I posted this:

On Tuesday I posted this:

And on Wednesday I posted this:

I also received my very excessive yet happy online fabric order this week, so I took some time out from the craft fair sweat shop I usually run while the little kid naps to turn this:

into this:

It's blue glitter vinyl, y'all! I love, love, love it! And in my most attuned decorating sense, it's okay to put in the living room because the living room walls are blue--the living room is the blue room. While I took a break from the vinyl to sit on the couch and eat something (my favorite activity), the big kid created this with the backside of the vinyl:

Happy face.

The blue glitter vinyl is inspirational, people. The blue glitter vinyl makes me dream. So when my partner told me his idea that I should make some stegosaurus stuffies from materials other than felted wool sweaters, my thoughts ran to BLUE GLITTER VINYL! Off and on all day, in between chasing kids and cats and cleaning up after kids and cats and speaking patiently to kids and cats while screaming my head off at kids and cats only inside my head, I cut out and sewed together this utter masterpiece of blue glitter vinyl fatty stegosaurus-ness:

This is rough, of course--I still need to trim it and stuff it and sew the ends up, etc., but still--awesome? Awesome.

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

A Day That Needed Kittens

It was a day that turned out to need kittens, yet it started out well enough. After breakfast and before our weekly playdate at the library, the girls played with modeling clay together for nearly an hour--they stuck the colors on fondue forks and made caterpillars, smashed them on the table and added birthday candles and Willow sang the tall tree song to Sydney, used them as props for a dinosaur puppet show--long enough for me to sew and turn and topstitch and quilt these babies:

They're hand towels for the downstairs bathroom, the one with a dinosaur theme. The backside is a recycled pool towel from a Marriott that somehow found its way into our luggage, but never made a home for itself in our linen closet, due to its pukey green color, until now. The fronts are remnants from the dino quilt I'm making the girls. The hand towels aren't standard size, of course, but they don't need to be, and I like that the dino fabric gives them a soft side to contrast with the rough terry side. Kiddos tend to have tender skin, don't you know.

The library was terrific, obviously, except for the tornado warning that had us all herded into the Program Room for half an hour, but while we were at the library all morning, two people in a red pickup truck (says an eyewitness) stole my girls' tricycle, ride-in car, and wheelbarrow right out of the middle of our yard. When the police came they tolerantly took our statements, but obviously objects that are precious only to their little girls are unlikely to be recovered. The ride-in car was a hand-me-down from a friend, the wheelbarrow was a yard sale purchase just from Saturday, but the tricycle...the tricycle was Willow's present for toilet-training, and it was beloved by all of us:

Willow is such a sweet and gentle kid that her first idea was that people had wandered into the wrong yard in the rain and would return her toys in a minute, but I couldn't stand to see her standing at the window, waiting, and so I explained that I thought the people had done it on purpose, even though it was very wrong, and that maybe they'd return the toys, but probably they wouldn't. So Willow looked at me, tears running down her face, and asked, "Will the people give my tricycle to their own little girl?"

Fortunately, when the mail came, Willow's world began to look up, because our package from the Craft for My Kids swap arrived! Our partner made a lot of really terrific things for the girls, including a crayon roll, a painted wooden dinosaur, charm necklaces, matching aprons, matching scarves, washcloths, and felt pastry, but my favorite is these matching rompers:

Cute!

An added bonus to the day--I declared myself too emotionally depleted to cook dinner, so Matt ordered our absolute favorite dinner: Pizza Express. Matt always gets pineapple (yuck!) on his half of our multi-grain crust, but I waver between sun-dried tomatoes or broccoli, both of which are delicious. However, when we opened our pizza box, we discovered the wrong pizza! Half cheese and half pepperoni, with nacho cheese dipping sauce! Do you know what that means? Free pizza! Score.

The girls still seemed down, though--I think you have to be a little older to appreciate a free pizza--so Matt and I put into action a plan we've had for a while, and we took a family trip to the Humane Society. We're a foster family, so we sometimes take an animal to come visit us for a few weeks--lots of animals benefit from fostering, including moms with babies, very young animals, animals undergong medical treatment, or animals who are depressed by the Humane Society environment. We had our choice there between two little one-pounder kittens who need to be 2.5 pounds each before they can be spayed and adopted out, or three puppies from a litter of nine border collie mixes. Willow was leaning towards the puppies, of course, but I told her that even though it's her choice, the kittens did need us more, because they were smaller and younger and don't really do well in a Humane Society environment. Willow said, "The kittens need us more?" I said yes. She said, "I want kittens." And so, a day that needed kittens turned into a day that got kittens:

And there will be pizza for breakfast in the morning.

Little Ones Learning at Home

Although my older kid does attend a fabulous (and too-expensive) Montessori during the school year, I've come to believe that at heart we're a homeschooling family. We believe in the foundational tenets of homeschooling--that education should be fun, engaging, and its own reward; that children should be permitted to follow their own interests to their own ends; that children should spend little time on crowd control, testing, and busywork and more time on creativity, deep concentration, and relevant learning--and put this into practice daily, regardless of whether or not my kid attends an official school that day.

With kiddos this young, we're obviously not reading Greek algebraic textbooks or building our own computers; what I do, instead, is keep a checklist in my head and make sure that every day, the kids create art, play actively, read at least a dozen books, are exposed to music, visit nature, and do some math/science enrichment play. For art, for instance, the kids fingerpaint, paint with brushes, paint with acrylics, color with crayons and markers and pencils, sculpt with play dough, collage, stamp, cut paper, photograph, and I help them with more elaborate projects like creating puzzles, greeting cards, quilts, beaded necklaces, illustrated books, etc.

Today, for instance, my kids fingerpainted this morning while I hung laundry on the line in the backyard, colored with chalk on the front sidewalk, the baby painted with a travel set while the preschooler attended dance class, and then the preschooler colored a letter to a friend while Matt and the baby cooked dinner.

Math/science is usually a trip to the local hands-on science museum, cooking, block play, counting, a computer game, playing with coins, gardening, or reading. The kids are absolutely in love with the Smithsonian Handbook series. Here are the ones we constantly have checked out from the library:

• Smithsonian Handbooks: Birds of North America -- Eastern Region (Smithsonian Handbooks)
• Smithsonian Handbooks: Trees (Smithsonian Handbooks)
• Butterflies & Moths (Smithsonian Handbooks)
• Smithsonian Handbooks: Insects (Smithsonian Handbooks)
• Smithsonian Handbooks: Mammals (Smithsonian Handbooks)
• Cats (Smithsonian Handbooks)
• Horses (Smithsonian Handbooks)
• Dogs (Smithsonian Handbooks)

Okay, jeez, that's kind of a lot. 

Today, let's see, the kids played with water toys at the local public pool, read about a billion books about animals, my preschooler and I played "silly counting" in the car, and Dinosaur Bingo while the baby napped. Wednesdays are when we visit the science museum:

  

Active play and nature are certainly not a problem, either. Today the kids played outside while I did yardwork, then we walked to the pool (the preschooler rode her trainer scooter, and the lesson was again reinforced that the path is uphill all the way to the pool and downhill all the way home), walked home, played outside, napped, went to dance class, went to the YMCA, came home and gardened, ate and they fell into bed. 

Tomorrow will be about the same, with the library in the morning and the pool in the afternoon, and a little dinosaur bath towel recycling project I'm going to get my preschooler to help me with.

Whew, how was your 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!

Yay, Record Bowls! Tutorial Included

I cooked up a batch of craft fair record bowls this weekend, so I thought I'd write up a tutorial, perhaps for the every single person who comes by my craft fair booth, looks at and lavishly praises my record bowls, holds them up to the light and admires them and talks about what they'd put in them, then says, "How did you make these?" When I give the very vaguest of replies as to how to make record bowls, these people invariably say, "Okay, thanks," put down the record bowl they're holding, and leave. Now I can say, "I have a tutorial on my blog," and hand them a moo business card with my etsy shop and blog addresses. Then, not only will people come to my etsy shop and my blog, but if they read the tutorial, they'll see how much work goes into making a record bowl, and they'll way rather buy one from me for five bucks than go to all the trouble of making one themselves. Score.

How to Make a Record Bowl (or Ten)

1. Take out at least one of the racks from your oven, put a metal bowl upside-down on the remaining rack, and preheat. Depending on your oven, you're looking for the magic temperature somewhere between 200 degrees and 250 degrees--you want the temperature hot enough to soften your vinyl record enough to make it really pliable and you want it to do this in a reasonable amount of time, say five or so minutes, but you want the temperature cool enough that it does not cause the vinyl to noticeably release toxic fumes into your house. The vinyl will always release some fumes when you heat it, but if you can smell it, or you get a headache or burning nose, or your pet bird dies, your oven is too hot. I always use lots of ventilation when I do this, and I never work for more than half an hour at a time--less, if I let the kids help. And seriously, vinyl fumes will kill pet birds.


2. Gather your materials:

You'll need oven mitts to handle the record when it's hot, and a selection of pots, pans, mixing bowls, plates, and cups with which to mold your record bowls. I like to gather a large assortment and then experiment with different combinations for different shapes.

3. Put a record in the oven on top of the upside-down metal bowl. Keep an eye on it, and when it droops down like the record in the photo--

--take it out with your oven mitt and...

4. Plop it quickly in a bowl or pot to mold it into a bowl shape:

If you make a little mark with a Sharpie at the dead center of the pot you're using, you can find that mark in the hole in the middle of your record, and have a perfectly symmetrical bowl. You can also experiment with forming the sides of your record by nesting another bowl, cup, or plate on top of the record in the pot. A nesting bowl slightly smaller than the one you're using, for instance, will form the sides really smooth and flat, and a plate placed on top of a record bowl that you're molding inside a large casserole dish will make a sort of record platter with a nice, flat bottom. Here I used a cup for this somewhat narrow record bowl to keep the sides of the bowl from coming in too much: Remember that you've maybe only got a minute, tops, before the vinyl stiffens back up and you can no longer work with it, but you can always reheat it for another go.

5. When the vinyl is cool to the touch, pop it out of the pot and admire:

Here's the entire collection that I started making yesterday evening while Matt and the girls cleaned out the car in preparation for going to the drive-in and that I finished this morning before breakfast while they watched a little PBS: Man, I wish I owned a record player.

At Last, a Tie-Dyed Quilt!

Finally, I managed to photograph my newest tie-dyed quilt, and as soon as I measure it, it'll be online on etsy. I took the photos just a little later in the afternoon than I'd prefer (magic hour isn't perfect for product shots), but I'm pleased with all of them, really, except the whole-quilt one. Magically delicious: