May the Force Snuggle You Up and Keep You Cozy Warm

It seems like I've been doing nothing but this all day-- but there's also been a lot of time spent on this--
--and this--
--and, fortunately, a little time, just enough, spent on this:
Fangeek quilts make me so awesomely happy. I made this one just for fun for my etsy shop, but Matt eyed it so longingly that I think I may have a holiday gift idea for the hardest person to give a present to EVER.

What do you want on your fangeek quilt?

Library Findings

More trips to the library=more happiness.

The past two weeks, after a morning spent at the public library (storytime, craft project, gossiping with my BFF mom friend, picnic lunch), Matt has come by to pick the girls up and take Willow to school, and I've had a leisurely 45 or so minutes to thoughtfully choose materials for the girls, check them out, and then bike home to meet Matt on his way out again after putting Syd down for a little nap. It won't always happen like that, because there's too much pleasure for the girls in gleefully throwing everything they can reach into our library basket, but it's nice for now.

My most favorite choices this week:

• It's your typical "find the animal" type of picture book, except that the illustrations are made from stitched and embellished fabric--usually felt, but other materials for emphasis. It's absolutely terrific, with sequin eyes on the parrotfish and bead suckers on the octopus and embroidered lines on the clams. I'm absolutely inspired now to make the felt board I've been promising the girls for their basement playroom, and to furnish it with plenty of felt sea life.
• Aliki claims that this book is an amalgamation of several actual aquariums, but the Monterey Bay Aquarium directly inspires at least half of it. The girls recognized the outside walkway with the tidepool and the view of the bay, the cylindrical anchovies habitat in which they "swim and swim and swim in a circle circle circle," quoth Willow, the giant kelp forest, and the touch tanks. It was pretty fun to read the girls this book and they both keep interrupting--"I was there!" "I there!"
• How to Talk to Children About Art There are all kinds of interesting questions and discussions to bring up here, inspired by artwork from various periods, dealing with what's depicted, the physical environment of its creation, authorial intention as well as viewer response, and metaphors and symbols. A little advanced for my lot, but still.
• 52 Projects: Random Acts of Everyday Creativity (Perigee Book) These are more guerilla than crafty, asking you to do things like hang your own work of art someplace where people will think it's supposed to be, like a motel room or museum bathroom or apartment foyer, but the projects are inspirational and deal tenderly with one's memories. I totally should, for instance, photocopy all my college best friend's letters and mail them back to him, annotated.

Also, some non-library Web findings, because I love to waste myself some time--I mean, gather ideas from the work of others:

• Okay, is it weird that I still haven't picked up my to learn to embroidery, and yet I am THIS CLOSE to ordering two more of these embroidery sets, EVEN THOUGH I just spent 30 bucks on , also unused? But they're so awesome!!! Willow, I think because her little preschool girlfriend loves ponies like she loves dinosaurs, really wants ponies on her panties (??), and I'm torn between putting freezer paper stencil ponies on, or buying this Unicorn Believer embroidery pattern set and embroidering them without the horns. Which do you think is more awesome? Also awesome--realistic organs. I REALLY need to embroider the ovaries and uterus onto something. Anything.
• I am currently all about SewLiberated, the crafty blog of a Montessori preschool teacher, of all things. She recently left her position in Mexico, and I've been such a freak looking at her photos, going "Look, honey! They have the pink tower in Mexico, too!" Willow is pretty over it, but she gets to go to Montessori every day--I only get to peer in through the two-way mirror (Is that the right word? Wouldn't a two-way mirror be a window? Is it a one-way mirror? Or is that just a mirror?)

What have you found this week?

Scheduled

Where am I going to be on the weekends in the fall, when I sneak away from my evening freshman comp classes and masquerade as a non-teacher real person (Didn't you always sort of feel that your teachers weren't really real people--I mean, how could someone who got THAT into English GRAMMAR really be a real person?)? Here's where:

Saturday, August 23, 4:00-6:30: Cloth Diapering Workshop, Barefoot Herbs Barefoot Kids, Bloomington, IN. This is the funnest of workshops, because there's something about a big group of pregnant people and people with newborns that is just awesome fun. I give everyone a page of lecture notes, printed front and back in tiny print, and then I tell them every single thing there is to know about cloth diapers. I demo with dolls (the part where I hold the Cabbage Patch Doll upside down and shake her to show how well fitted diapers stay put just KILLS, I tell you), I show off my old ratty four-year-old diapers, I describe, in detail, the two different kinds of poop using a peanut butter metaphor--good times, people. Good times.

Do the joyful dance of vending at my first big craft fair along with me! Strange Folk is located just outside St. Louis, Missouri, one of my family's favorite places to play, and thus fits into my craft fair criteria of being indie, about a four-hour drive or close to family members, and including awesome stuff for the family to do around town and at the venue while I vend. I'm super-excited, but also weirdly jealous that although I'll be doing exactly what I've been wanting to do for a while, I'll have to miss out on the St. Louis Zoo and the St. Louis Science Center. Thank goodness The Container Store, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Torrid will still be open when I'm done for the day.

Saturday, October 11, 9-1: A Fair of the Arts, Showers Plaza, Bloomington, IN. This is the last farmer's market craft fair of the year! My computer crashed and we went to California at around the same time, so I unhappily can't remember if I was on top of life enough to apply to the Holiday Market here, but I sadly think that maybe I didn't. Oh, well...I'm not really that into Christmas, anyway.

Saturday, October 18, 4:00-6:30: Babywearing Workshop, Barefoot Herbs Barefoot Kids, Bloomington, IN. This is the other of the classes I teach just to be near cutie little baby patooties, with the added bonus of occasionally being permitted to hold a really live itty baby while talking a parent through putting on a carrier, or maybe even wearing said baby myself for a minute, just to demo, you know. We work our way through all the attachment parenting standards--pouches, ring slings, wraps, mei tais, and the ergo. No Baby Bjorns need apply.

Whew! What are you up to this fall?

Why Christmas Isn't Really in July

I may possibly have been bailed upon by my partner in Craftster's Christmas in July Stashbuster Swap--either that, or something bad happened to her. Online buddies are probably beyond the last to know when tragedy strikes. I'm very bummed, because my partner was a knitter, and she had a stash of HARRY POTTER HOUSE COLOR YARN!!! Oh, some things are just not fair. I did possibly bring it upon myself, however, due to my intense desire to always be right. You see, I got into a little tiff with the organizer of the swap on account of this rule that when you're involved in a swap, you have to post in the swap forum at least once a week. I suppose it's so the organizer knows you're still alive and crafting, but I think it's a pain to have to have one more weekly chore to remember related to what is supposed to be a fun activity, and, since nobody wants to actually talk in the forum about what they're making, because they want it to be a surprise, the forum conversation tends to be non-crafty, and I really just don't want to be required to post weekly. My counter-argument is that since posting and crafting are two different animals entirely, weekly posting is no sign that you're actually doing your swap work and will send on time. Case in point: I posted maybe once, after I was basically forced to, and I sent early. My partner posted weekly just like she was supposed to, and she's apparently dead in the water. So there.

Anyway, here's what I made for my partner. Her family has six, count 'em six, holiday trees, and I made a set of ornaments for each tree. The littlest kiddo loves to color, so his set is made from crayons melted into heart molds, with an ornament hanger melted into the back of each one:

The little girl's favorite colors are blue, pink, and purple, so I hand-sewed her set out of blue denim, and added pink and purple beads:

I forgot to photograph the other little girl's set, but her favorite color is red, so I made her ornaments all from different red fabrics--faux fur, silk, plaid flannel, felted wool, etc.

The eldest kiddo likes red with black, so his set is made from felted wool:

The main tree in the house is decorated in blue, silver, and white, so I also made a set of ornaments out of my blue glitter vinyl. I really liked how these turned out, although vinyl doesn't photograph well:

I also really, really like the fangeek set of ornaments I made for the "handmade ornaments" tree. They're all sewn from black denim with black beaded hangers, but each person in the family has a front and back T-shirt transfer of their own, personal fangeek obesssion on their own ornament.

The littlest kid loves Pokemon: Pikachu is on the other side of his ornament, of course.

The little girl likes the Junie B. Jones book series: A cover from another of the books is on the other side of her ornament.

The other girl loves Green Day (awesome kid):

A photo of the entire band is on the other side of her ornament.

The eldest kids loves Magic, the Gathering:

Another player's card is on the other side.

My partner's husband loves Aqua Teen Hunger Force:

Master Shake is on the other side of his:

And my partner loves Harry Potter, especially Slytherin House:

The other half of this battle scene, depicting the good guys, is on the other half of her ornament.

Eh, it was fun to make stuff for other people, even if I don't hear back from my partner's family to see if they liked it. It is good practice for Christmas, anyway, you know--sending lovingly handmade gifts to family members who don't send thank-you notes, or watching them open presents you spent hours on and not totally fawn over them--not that I make gifts for other people in order to be fawned over. Ahem. Yep, happy Handmade Holiday!

I'm a Wench

So I managed to convince my partner to drop me off at the eastside Goodwill last night while he took the girls to the post office to mail off an etsy package and to ask, again, about half our mail that we're sure went missing while it was being held for us there (Netflix sent me Yoga for Indie Rockers on July 31! And have it I do not!). I don't usually go to Goodwill this late in the week because, since I usually only buy from the 50%-off color of the week, it gets picked over, and for a while I was feeling pretty grumpy and uninspired--I found a red tie-dyed T-shirt but it wasn't particularly awesome, I found the Unofficial Guide to Buffy but I thought I already had something similar at home, I found an awesome purple velour blanket but it wasn't on sale, etc.--but then, THEN, you will not believe what I found. A FREAKIN' REN FAIRE DRESS!!! A Ren Faire Dress!!! Velvet and silk, corset tie in the back, push-up bosomness in the front, long skirt for prancing around the maypole and swinging while acting saucy.

But I'm a curvy girl, you say. Does it fit?
IT LOOKS AWESOME!!! Matt was a sport and took this photo of me at 9:00 last night--I'm not fun to take photos of, on account of I tend to critique people's photography techniques while they're photographing, and then I have to preview all the images and delete the ones I don't like, and then we pretty much have to start all over again, don't we? But I love this shot of my new awesome dress. My two favorite parts of it are how you can see the hole in the side of the dress that I need to mend, and the Goodwill tag sticking up out of the neckline. And, of course, I love how I look in my awesome new dress that I am now going to wear absolutely every single place I go for the rest of my entire life.

Friends, this dress cost me $3.99. Sometimes, life can be so good.

Back in the Saddle

It feels good to be back in the swing of things, still home recently enough that daily life doesn't yet seem like drudgery. After all, I've been able to CRAFT again! I put aside schlogging away at my Ravenclaw house scarf until booth-sitting at my next craft fair, and made some real recycled crafts in the last couple of days. I finally thought of a use for some little panels my mother cross-stitched on recycled denim:

And since it's nearly the end of summer (sigh), I'm running low on my wool sweater collection, so I sewed up a few of these babies out of pretty much my last big pieces of felted wool: Do you recognize this doll as the handknit Ecuadorian sweater I scored at my Goodwill Outlet expedition?

The girls seem to have settled back into the routine here pretty well, too, which is nice, since they were starting to get pretty crazy those last couple of days in California. We went to the library for Say it in Spanish with Miss Nancy, a superstar who can breastfeed baby Mateo while singing and playing her folk guitar, and we checked out the following items:

• Eyewitness: OceanDVD
• Born to AddCD
• Echoes of Nature: Ocean Waves CD (I think it has an actual recording of the waves at Pebble Beach!)
• Reading Rainbow Seashore Surprises computer program
• Zoe's Hats: A Book of Colors and Patterns
• Lemons Are Not Red (Ala Notable Book(Awards)) (Neal Porter Books)
• Fish Clip Art CD-Rom
• Colors in Nature: Yellow
• Triceratops Gets Lost book and CD
• A Busy Day for Stegosaurus book and CD
• Velociraptor: Small and Speedy book and CD
• An Alphabet Of Dinosaurs
• Orange by Sarah L. Schuette
• Seashells by Adele Richardson

Can you tell what the girls are interested in this week?

After school I wanted to engage the girls in an art project so I could clean, but nothing I suggested (decorating paper bags to use at my craft fairs, painting on butcher paper, drawing pictures on cardstock for thank-you notes, etc.) struck their fancies, so I ended up printing out dinosaur coloring pages from Geoparent. Filling in coloring pages is a really lousy art activity, but it can be a pretty good activity for other learning objectives--map work, absorbing how different dinosaurs look, associating words with letters, etc.

And then I cleaned, and then we went to the post office to mail an etsy package, and then we went to Goodwill, and then we got pizza, and then we watched our ocean documentary, and now Matt is putting the girls to bed while I gear myself up for putting my textbook order in at the IU Bookstore. I really should get on it, because school starts in, you know, two weeks. But it is a loathesome activity, and now I think I will put it off until tomorrow.

What activities do you find loathesome?

...Jiggety Jig

Ah, the joy of being home! We couldn't find the housekey when we arrived home last night around 10:00 pm, but I managed to break in the back door all by myself (hmmm...mental note to FIX said back door this week), and there was only one weird smell in the whole house, from a bag of garbage Matt had put on top of the stove to take out before we left. Ew.

Our collective favorite activity upon homecoming is to collect all the gathered mail, and although neither my order from Dharma Trading Co. nor my swap package for the Christmas in July Stashbuster swap has arrived, my entire order from Dick Blick has made its happy way to our house--and I do mean happy.

We're a family pretty well dedicated to creativity and lifelong learning, so art supplies are dead important to us. Now that we have some serious storage in the basement (as soon as we, um, build the shelves), I chose to invest in some serious art supplies--class packs of markers, crayons, and tempera paint, as well as a few novelties, such as sun printing paper and blank puzzles, and, of course, a gallon jug of Mod Podge for me.

Class packs are actually pretty sweet. The markers and the crayons each contain numerous sets of 16 colors--with two kiddos, I bring out a set for each of them, labelled by kiddo, store the rest, and replenish when necessary. The paint set has a gallon jug for each color, with a lockable pump and a billion little paper cups:
Obviously, though, the box they came in is the funnest toy:Willow had this idea of drawing the entire map of the United States, so I dutifully pulled up a map online for her to copy:Her California looked pretty good actually, perhaps since we've been studying it so much lately; as for the rest of the fifty states--well, she is only four.

In other education news, Montessori starts tomorrow for Will. Our other home projects this week will likely include more map study, identifying some rocks and shells collected in California, helping me create things for a super-big craft fair I'm doing in September, and a trip to the library to check out every color book they have for Syd--I think it's weird that she doesn't have her colors down yet, but Matt thinks I tend to work with both of the girls mostly at Willow's level, and thus I haven't been doing enough color labelling for Sydney. We'll see...