Retro Read-Aloud

By now, y'all probably know what I tend to like: I like handicraft/DIY, I like a dirt-cheap good deal, I like thrifting/garage sales/dumpster-diving, and I loooooooove learnin' with my babies. I make my own panties (sometimes). When something goes on Manager's Special at Kroger, I buy ALL of it and throw it in the chest freezer. I will wake up earlier on a Saturday than I will on a weekday, just to sneak out of the house and hit a couple of 8 am garage sales (today I bought two skeins of yarn for the littles, and although I REALLY wanted the spinning wheel, which was 250 dollars, I did not buy it). I consider it the height of a good time to make Spanish-language flash cards for the girls, or to read to them from the encyclopedia.

I'm a dork, yes, but a happy one.

When two, or even three, of my passions come together into a sort of holy combination, I achieve super-dorkdom, a joy and enthusiasm that my daughters will, one day, put into the memoirs that they will write about their strange childhoods and their crazy Momma. Thus imagine my joy, imagine my enthusiasm, when I learned that the children's department at our public library was selling off its entire collection of VHS and cassette tapes.

VHS tapes? I don't have a VCR. But cassette tapes? I have that player.

We're talking children's music. We're talking audiobooks, both fiction and non-fiction. And because it's the children's department, most of all we're talking picture books and read-aloud cassettes. They're used, so I'm thrifting. They're hella educational. And at 25 cents per item yesterday and 10 cents per item today, they are way dirt-cheap.

It's super-dork heaven.

On Friday, I bought 44 picture books with read-aloud cassettes, 18 audiobooks, and 4 music cassettes. For 35 dollars. Today I went back (of course), and I didn't count my haul, but since Matt was with us and so I could concentrate on shopping (not mediating fights and picking up knocked-down merchandise and shouting across the room for little people to stop running, etc.), I was able to look more at the fiddly fine-printed music cassettes, and I spent 11 dollars.

And look what I got!I'm putting aside all the audiobooks of more than two tapes to bring out for long car trips, stuff like The Mouse and the Motorcycle(and all its sequels), The Secret Garden, The Boxcar Children, Alice in Wonderland, and other awesome stuff. I also might bring these out when the girls are a little older to listen to independently here at home.

But in their collection that they can choose from independently right now are other audiobooks of two hours or less, stuff like Little Bear and Frances and Winnie-the-Pooh collections, and Henry and Mudge, and what seems like eight thousand Hank the Cowdog titles. I hesitated for a second when Willow picked all those out, because she's never read them and I sure don't like Westerns, but then I thought, "Heck, they're 20 cents each," and let her get all of them, and yes, she has proven me wrong by spending two hours this afternoon sitting at the living room table and listening to an entire hard-boiled Hank the Cowdog mystery book, figuring out how to change the sides of the tape and then change to the next tape without my instruction.

I am the happiest, however, or rather I should say THRILLED, about the picture books with accompanying read-aloud cassettes:I'm not sure, but over the two days I think I bought at least sixty of these. And imagine, it was the children's department's ENTIRE collection, so other than the few that the girls chose before they got restless and left me to it, I had my own entire pick of some really premiere titles. And all the cassettes work (a couple that we've tried haven't been of perfect quality, but most have), and all of the picture books are, though well-used, lovingly repaired. Among the titles that I bought are several Dr. Seuss, Where the Wild Things Are, Runaway Bunny, Babar, The Little Red Hen, several fairy tales, and a few books of poems. Considering that nearly all of these, except for a couple that the girls snuck through, are titles that we didn't already have in our print library, it was quite a haul.

The best part, though, has been the girls' reaction to our new wealth of listening opportunities. Sure, I know a lot of it is the novelty of learning how to work my cassette player (now theirs) and choosing from nothing but a billion new books and tapes, but I think this collection really will become an important part of their lifestyle. We encourage reading books and listening to stories and enjoying music, and we sure as hell encourage doing all of this independently, and every now and then for the past two days, when I've walked through the living room and had the chance to witness this:It does make me feel very enthusiastic and joyful, indeed.

I Made Myself Some Soap

It probably wasn't that hard to guess what handicraft I was trying for the first time in my previous post. Seriously, how many craft projects involve a pot on the stove?

I bought my very first cold-process soap-making kit at a soap-making class at Barefoot Herbs + Barefoot Kids, run by The Kitchen Girls. This was way back in the winter, but with lye and all, I wanted to wait until I had a good bit of time without the girls with me to make it.

Y'all, it took me nine months to achieve that block of time.

Yeah, it's been a while since my one workshop, but my kit has instructions in it, plus all the ingredients I needed except for the distilled water (remember that part--that's important), plus I did quite a bit of reading about soap-making last winter, so all in all, IF the soap turns out in six weeks, I did pretty well for a first-timer.

I got everything to the right temperature eventually:
And I wore my goggles like a good girl:
Because, of course, I've seen Fight Club many times (I used to teach it in my freshmen comp classes), I was TERRIFIED of the lye, and it didn't help when, as I stirred it with my rubber spatula to cool it down, it turned slushy and started to hiss and fizzle, and then turned brittle-hard and began to make really loud cracking noises.

Noises that definitely didn't happen during my soap-making workshop.

So obviously, I throw off my gloves and run to the internet, searching Google for "soap lye troubleshoot*". I think my problem was thusly (but those of you who ACTUALLY know how to make soap, please correct me if I'm wrong): the oils and lye used in soapmaking are measured by weight, which is why a kitchen scale was on my list of supplies. The water, however, is measured by volume? So when I saw that my recipe called for 16 ounces of water, I measured 16 ounces in my kitchen scale, and that was about half a cup. But 16 ounces of water by volume is more like 2 cups.

And so I added in another cup-and-a-half of water and stirred and stirred, and eventually the lye uncracked and dissolved and I had to reheat the oil to get it back to the right temperature, and stir and stir to get the lye down to the right temperature, but eventually they were happy together.

My other worry is that, after I finished my soapmaking, I was reading about it some more (never do this--it's like looking in your book to see all the questions you missed after finishing a test), and one author was talking about this think called false trace, in which your immersion blender beats so much air into your mixture that it lowers the temperature of your mixture enough that the oils begin to solidify again, and you think you get a trace even when saponification hasn't finished, and so you pour prematurely. You're supposed to turn off the immersion blender frequently and hand-stir for a few seconds, which I did not do, and thus the freaking out.

But after a day to harden, don't my soaps look okay? I've got some cut into blocks: Some poured into Lego molds with a little Lego inside as a treat (see the poorly hidden Lego?):

And some poured into heart-shaped molds with a vintage heart bead inside each, although you can't see it this time:

That's about how they're supposed to look, right?

Now...anyone know a good place to buy soapmaking supplies? My kit was a one-time-only deal, but now I'm hooked, and greatly desire a lifetime of hand-crafted hippie-dippy essential oil-and-herb soaps.

And At Least a Million Buttons

I sort of have a thing for the newspaper Classifieds. Maybe it's because it comes last, and so by the time I get there I've already slogged my way through world news and the political cartoon and the crackpot letters to the editor and all the awful things that happened the previous day to children or nice animals that the paper always seems to need to run. By the time I get to the Classifieds, too, I've been awake for at least twenty minutes, and I'm likely just about finishing my nice big mug of coffee that Matt always hands me on his way out the door (the man does not even drink coffee himself, but he makes a big cup for me every morning. He loves me, and he wants a sane caregiver for his children while he's away).

Really, though? It's because the Classifieds has weird stuff to buy. And do I want to buy it?

Oh, boy, I do. Currently, I'm coveting the $25 log cabin dollhouse kit, and the 30+ pounds of golf balls for $20 (no, I don't play golf). I've also seen a lathe advertised, and a workbench that I'm sure would have been just perfect in the basement workshop, and a bunny costume for a five-year-old, and enough prom and bridesmaid's dresses to have me sewing satin fancy-dress outfits for the girls until their own proms.

So every morning, coffee in hand, when I get to the Classifieds I call out to one girl or another, "Oooh, quick, run get Momma a marker!" And I know in my head that I'm acting, perhaps, the kind of crazy that the girls will write about so evocatively in their memoirs about how bizarre their childhoods were and how nuts their mom is, but I can't help myself, and the girls get just as stoked as I am as I try to describe to them, my TV commercial-deprived babies, exactly what a PowerWheel is and does and why they totally want one. And then I circle all the awesome ads. And then I call Matt at work and spend a couple of minutes attempting to make him, too, understand why we need a model train set-up, or fifty pounds of pea gravel, and I generally can get him to copy down a phone number or two, admitting that yes, he guesses we could perhaps use a trampoline, or 100+ sci-fi and fantasy mags from the 1980s, but he never, NEVER actually calls and purchases any of the awesome stuff that I totally wish he would.

Until yesterday, when Matt came home with a gallon of vintage buttons under his arm for me.

Here's what a gallon of vintage buttons looks like, if you're curious:
There are a lot of buttons that make up a gallon. And they're really cool ones, too. You know how sometimes you get someone's old button collection or see someone selling their old buttons at a garage sale, and all the buttons are brown or white and boring and just really lame? These aren't those buttons:

These buttons are all AWESOME! I do already own quite a number of vintage buttons from ebay, so many that I'm toying with the idea of separating out some that are awesome but that I probably won't use--the shank buttons, for instance--and re-selling them again, but I actually do incorporate a lot of buttons into my work. I'm still hugely fond of my button and upholstery remnant monograms, for instance, and I'm thinking of doing a set of numbers for my pumpkinbear etsy shop, as well, or perhaps an entire name in script (which I have seen done somewhere--Susan Beal, perhaps?).

And when I'm not using my buttons, I set them up on my shelf in the study and look at them with love when I'm thinking about something. Something like how awesome my husband is, for instance, for surprising me with a gallon of buttons.

Talk about knowing someone well enough to know what they'd like for a present.

In other news, I was THRILLED today to practice, for the very first time, a brand-new handicraft. No cheating if you're a Facebook friend or a regular blog friend and saw me going on about it earlier, but if you're not a Facebook friend (although you should be), can you guess?

I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

A Million Kinds of Crayon Rolls

I am taking a break tomorrow to use my precious and rare (Can I still call it rare? Still novel, certainly) child-free time to learn how to make cold-process soap without having to worry about burning anyone but myself and possibly the cat with lye, but otherwise, I am on a serious crayon roll kick.

I have always been of the mindset that if you want to learn to make something very well, then you have to make a lot of it--this is obvious, of course, but it's also one of the propelling forces behind my pumpkinbear etsy shop. Otherwise, what to do with two children and twelve crayon rolls? And then, a month later, when the idea materializes for a slightly different method that might solve a small problem on said crayon rolls, what to with another twelve? I can't say that my pumpkinbear etsy shop has been especially lucrative, but it has given me a way to divulge myself of excess products while honing my craft and earning more supplies money.

And that is why I am revisiting the rainbow patchwork art roll. The ones that I made were lovely, and they were all sold or gifted away, but still, I had quibbles--the bottom pockets, the method of construction borrowed from , was too thick, really just overengineered, I think, and after several trials I decided I wasn't in love with the method of quilting/creating the pockets that the book recommends. I also wanted a slightly roomier crayon pocket, to ease the work of less-nimble little fingers, and I really wanted a top pocket to get rid of any small chance of the crayons falling out when turned upside down. Oh, and the cutting and piecing of the rainbow patchwork took freaking FOREVER.

A lot of improvements to make to a perfectly good crayon roll.

To quicken the cutting and piecing, I tried strip piecing this time--worked brilliantly. I also modeled the construction of these rainbow patchwork crayon rolls more closely on the upholstery remnant crayon rolls that I also enjoy making. Because I wanted to make the crayon roll fit the upholstery sample that I already had when making those, I got into the habit of sewing a generous crayon pocket, and because the upholstery fabric is too thick and stiff to fold over and sew, I learned to face it with a nice, unbleached linen, and to make the pockets from that fabric, and I liked the look of it.

I loosely applied those ideas to these rolls, and I like the look of them, too: Although in my upholstery remnant crayon rolls the facing and top and bottom pockets are made from the same length of fabric folded at top and bottom, these top and bottom pockets are two separate strips cut from the fabric that I strip pieced--I'd worried that it would be too tricky to get them lined up accurately with that gap in the middle, but it seems I'm not quite the novice sewer that I used to be.

My sewing machine was kicking up a fuss, however, and being just generally unhappy and unwilling to encase the pocket seams with a satin stitch as I usually do, so I just sewed a straight stitch and then pinked the raw edge: I really didn't like the look of it at first, but now I'm quite smitten, and I'm not at all worried about it raveling--it's really unlikely.

I made a few denim rainbow crayon rolls, but I'm happy, too, with the corduroy pants that I cut up to make some corduroy rainbow crayon rolls, especially this yummy corduroy:Next time, however, I'm thinking of putting the rainbow fabric on the outside of the roll, and the bottomweight fabric on the inside. And then I can fold over the top and bottom pockets in the bottomweight fabric, because it won't matter if their back sides show behind the pockets, and I could stitch in the ditch all the way up each rainbow piece, sewing the bottom pockets at the same time, and then fold over the top pocket and stitch it down...

See? I'm sensing the sewing of another twelve or so rolls after the soap is set, and I haven't even started constructing the marker rolls or colored pencil rolls that I have in mind, either.

Happy Birthday to Me

My calendar birthday was August 3, but because the celebrations that I require for my birthday are many and varied (and specific), the family and I traditionally wait to celebrate it until after we're home from our California vacation. So Saturday may have been more accurately entitled my Un-Birthday, but it bravely stood in for my official birthday in all reasonable capacities.

First on the birthday schedule was early-bird garage sales. This wasn't our usual leisurely waking, cup of coffee, read the paper, bully the girls into clothing pace, but instead consists of one parent (me) waking up sneakily early, and sneakily getting dressed and sneaking out the door. I found Syd playing quietly in the living room of the otherwise sleeping house as I went for my shoes, and so I invited her along, but the sleepers stayed sleeping and the little girl and I hit the sales as soon as they opened.

The best part of hitting the garage sales early is the excellent selection--if you're in the market for anything that might be at all popular, like tools, nice wooden toys, or any kind of professional-level supplies, early is the way to go. The downside is that you can't haggle nearly as well at 8 am as you can at 1 pm, say. So if I see something that I really like early on, but it's way overpriced, I actually might swing by the sale again later that day to see if it's still there and ready to be haggled over.

Syd and I were only out for an hour, but we bought several fat quarters at 25 cents each, a wooden ballot box that used to be in an Ellettsville Kentucky Fried Chicken owned by the guy running the sale for 30 years, now to be the all-new Pretend Mailbox (the cardboard version that the girls worked on for weeks is already trashed--Pretend Mailboxes get a lot of wear and tear), yet another map of the United States puzzle, and a still-packaged calendar math kit (I bet homeschoolers, especially, LOVE garage sales). I passed on a really nice mat-cutting kit because it was 20 bucks, and some boxes of Fiesta Ware because they were 40 bucks each.

The map of the United States puzzle, oddly, didn't have the pieces actually in the shape of the states, it turned out, but was still, apparently, quite a bit of fun: Matt and Willow were awake when Syd and I got home, and coffee and newspaper and breakfast commenced. Then Matt left me home alone to do some sewing while he took the girls out to get my cookie cake (everyone gets the cake of their choice on their birthday, and the main pleasure of my cake is that I don't have to bake it). Matt actually found the garage sale that had the Fiesta Ware--I'd admitted that 40 for a box of it really wasn't unreasonable, especially since I could sell the pieces I didn't want on ebay, and so he was going to surprise me with it. When he got there, though, and asked about it, guy running the sale was all, "No way, buddy. It's not 40 bucks for a box. It's 40 bucks for a five-piece set." Um, five pieces? For forty dollars? At a garage sale, to boot? What kind of fantasy world do they live in? This little old lady who was shopping at the sale even snuck up to Matt a minute later, thinking he was a guy, you know, and therefore probably a garage sale rube, and said, "Do NOT buy that Fiesta Ware at that price." Matt's, all, "Don't worry, lady. I fully understand the problems with that scenario."

Perhaps searching for the mat cutter, or perhaps just enjoying themselves, Matt and the girls hit enough other garage sales to provide him with some Xbox games and them with stuffed unicorns, and then they drove home just long enough to pick me up, and we went to a matinee of Ponyo. It was an awesome movie, fully in the vein of Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, and, just for my birthday, perhaps, it included a shout-out to breastfeeding. Not to spoil the movie or anything, but at one point Ponyo tries to give a baby a sandwich, and its mother says something like, "The baby drinks milk from me, but I can eat the sandwich to help make milk for him," and Ponyo looks confused (she's a fish-girl, remember), and her friend says, "Yeah, my mom made milk for me, too, when I was a baby." Hells, yeah!

After the matinee was the cookie caking:Every year Matt takes it as his personal challenge to trick the bakers into putting as much icing as possible on my cookie cake. Last year, he did pretty well with "Happy 32nd Birthday Julie" and a couple of flowers. I think he topped himself this year, however--"Happy Birthday Congratulations Julie." Nice, huh? Matt even tried for "Happy Birthday AND Congratulations Julie", but the baker insisted that the "and" just wouldn't fit. So maybe next year, the same wording and a flower or two, and Matt might have reached the absolute limit of possibility.

Now, one of the most crucial parts of the birthday--I wanted to finish The Watchmen comic so that Matt and I could watch the movie that night. Therefore, for the next two hours, while the girls played, I hung out and read, munching on the odd piece of cookie cake, and Matt cleaned the house. For two hours. And I had a good vantage point for observation from my place on the couch, as well, so insert happy sigh.

Matt fed the girls a quick dinner, then we went to:

The Roller Derby! It was Bleeding Heartland home team versus home team, the Slaughter Scouts versus the Farm Fatales, and it was crazy-close, with the Slaughter Scouts coming from behind to win by several points, ALL IN THE FINAL JAM!!!

I watched the roller derby on TV as a child, so it was quite nice to be sitting there knowing what was going on, and have Matt sitting next to me all confused for a change, and I got to whisper the rules to him and explain the action. Very simply, you have two teams racing around an elliptical track, with one point scorer for each team--she's the Jammer, and she'll have a star on her helmet. The rest of the team is the pack, with a pivot person for each team to set the pace of the pack. The pack skates together, and they serve as helpers for their own Jammer, and blockers for the other team's Jammer. A race is a Jam, and it lasts for two minutes, tops, although the Lead Jammer, the one who breaks out from the pack and races ahead first, can end the Jam anytime for strategical purposes. The race starts with the Jammers a little behind the pack, and they have to race through the pack, break ahead of them, and circle around the track to lap them. Every person on the opposite team that the Jammer laps scores her team a point. There are a few other rules and some penalties and a penalty box and stuff, but that's basically it, and it's very awesome and exciting. Oh, and there are costumes, which is almost the best part, and stage names, and at the end of half-time there's a raffle for some sock monkeys made by Hell-No Kitty, and if I had won that raffle, I can't even tell you what the world would have become after that, because all of my lifetime goals would have been achieved.

The roller derby ends kind of late, and the girls always end up all roller derby riled, if you can imagine, so it was crazy getting them to sleep, involving a little screaming and more than one episode of MythBusters, but eventually Matt and I were left alone with our birthday feast of Pizza Express, cookie cake, and The Watchmen movie.

I dare you to have a better birthday than that.

It's Mostly about Piecing, not Stripping

The last time I made patchwork rainbow art rolls, I miserably cut a billion little 1.75"x 4.5" pieces, and then miserably sewed them all together piece by little piece. It really wasn't all that fun.

This time? I'm strip piecing, Baby.

To strip piece, you measure all your pieces at the right width, but make them all super-long. Then, after you sew the widths together, you just have to cut each block at its correct length, and there you go. If you consider that most of your time spent piecing is actually spent carefully measuring and then cutting, not actually piecing, you'll realize that this actually saves a TON of time.

So, to strip piece my crayon rolls, I cut out eight colors of quilting cotton, each 1.75" wide. I didn't measure the length at all, just cut a 1.75" slice down the entire length of each fabric I used (another time-saver in strip piecing). And then I sewed them together, right sides facing, in the order in which I want them to be:
I usually iron all my seams to the same side, usually towards the side that has the gradation to darker fabrics.

I'm experimenting with some different construction methods for these crayon rolls, so another benefit to strip piecing is that I was able to cut a separate top and bottom, each short enough that it would have KILLED to have had to piece all these little pieces individually:
And then I had to go pick up the girls from school, and then, lord help us, we went to Joann's, so we'll have to revisit these crayon rolls already in progress at a different point in time.

In other news, the Bryan Park Neighborhood Block Party was tonight, and it's always pretty darn fun. I enjoyed sending Will out with the camera to take some photos:
Photos taken by a five-year-old are nearly always unposed, because no one expects a camera to be coming at them from just that darn low:
You get your fair share of butt-shots, too, as you might imagine:
I was reading my friend Cake's blog last night, some posts when she's just in the process of moving here to Bloomington, and I was getting a huge kick out of how she was describing parts of our town as she was experiencing them for the first time, and LOVING them, of course--the bike lanes, the farmer's market, the recycling program, Bryan Park itself. I had this weird mental vertigo of wanting to suggest to her other things that she'd probably like, while at the same time recognizing that she's lived here for years now, and she's definitely found them by now--hey, Cake, you should check out the children's playroom at the public library. Hey, Cake, have you seen the Sidewalk Exchange at the Recycling Center?

Dude, Cake, you will totally love the block party our neighborhood association throws each year.

School Girls

Yesterday's big event:

Will gloried in the status of kindergartner, but I have to say that for me, at least, the major milestone was my big girl Sydney's first day of school ever. Montessori starts at three, and so yesterday Sydney officially earned the status of youngest grouper in the girls' classroom.

With Will, Matt and I were two stressed-out parents worried about how our three-year-old would react in a new environment without us, and among a peer group that included children over two years older than her and with teachers with whom our own personalities did not mesh. Will, herself, had a difficult transition and was almost expelled because she spent two-thirds of each three-hour day for that first week throwing a two-hour unholy tantrum.

With Syd, we just get to enjoy the experience. Sydney is thrilled to go to school, thrilled to get picked up and see me again, and thrilled, in general, to be on the ride that she's on. I don't know if it's the second kid or this kid that changes the experience so much for everyone, but for the most part, this kid?

It's just a joy to be in her world.