WIP Wednesday: The Eucalyptus, Vapo-Rub, and Honey Edition

So the actual culling down of this week's WIPs was seriously marred by a certain little sickie, who spent a small part of the day snuggled up in her sleeping bag on the couch with tons of stuffies, listening to Winnie the Pooh on CD--
--and a vastly greater majority of the day and evening snuggled up in a blanket on my lap, glassy-eyed and flushed, dripping popsicles and juice all down my front. I'm a sucker for this kid when she's a sickie, on account of she's the one who's spent her life trying harder to break my heart than the other little bruiser has, but still...when I look with longing across the room and fantasize about getting up to clean off the table and give it a good scrubbing? Momma could use a break.

If I had managed to get anything done today (which I didn't), here is what I would have chosen from:

Current Works-in-Progress

1. book proposal revision: heavily edit, redo one tutorial using a different fabric, redesign, solicit proofreaders, possibly solicit expert contributions
2. Craftster Read to Me Mommy swap: finish travel felt board scene (with monogrammed carrying bag?), think up and create one more small craft to go with it
3. sock monkey baby bag: sew it up and send it off to Barefoot Kids
4. Montessori Parents' Library: prep for my meeting tomorrow (at 7:45 in the freakin' morning!), make signage
5. school Valentines: crayon hearts this year?
6. thank-you note to Aunt Peggy: dear god, she sent the girls a generous present for Christmas, and what have I sent her in return? Bupkiss!
7. Valentine's gifties to little cousins (on account of I ran out of time to send them Christmas gifties): stuffed cousin dolls and something else...hmm, hmm, hmmm...
8. Valentine's giftie to aunt and uncle (same reason): red wine jelly?
9. Valentine's giftie to Matt's brother (crap, this is getting bad): decorated picture frames a la little girls
10. Fair of the Arts application: three pics and some rhetoric

Perhaps the baby will feel well enough tomorrow to lie in bed and watch Land Before Time all day.

Little Painted Dollhouses

There are certain items out there in the world so awesome that probably any crafty parent, happening upon them, would say, "A-ha! I know just what to do with THAT!"

Such it is with a certain mass-marketed unfinished-wood CD holder shaped like a house. It cries out for, it LONGS, to be painted and decorated and turned into a child's little dollhouse. And oh, it has been. Witness the following bloggers, to name just a few:

• Chasing Cheerios
• Angry Chicken
• The Snail's Trail

There's even been some blog-sniping about who had the idea first, which is always fun (not).

However, I win, because everybody else paid around five bucks for their CD holder houses, and I found mine on clearance at Michael's for $2.49 each. So nyah.

Sometimes when I buy some art materials or a kit for the kids I'll just hold onto it for a while--perhaps they're really into some other thing at the moment so I know they can't concentrate on it, or they've gotten some other presents recently so I know they won't appreciate it, or I just feel like the timing's not right. We have several colors of polymer clay, for instance, that the kids even picked out, that I've just haven't offered them yet, and a couple of wood kits from our local history center's museum store, and even some Christmas presents (gasp!). 

These houses, however...as soon as we got home I got out our hard-core set of artist's acrylics--

--and excitedly to work they did go! The big kid left and came back to painting all evening, but the little kid sat in her chair for over two hours straight and painted:

She didn't even leave to go to the bathroom. Even I left to go to the bathroom. But her hard work really did pay off. What with the large spectrum of color in the acrylic set, and the kid's strategy of leaving one area to dry and then coming back to paint it in a different color (she basically painted the entire dollhouse three times), her entire dollhouse has a lot of depth and an interesting variety of color--it's pretty amazing, and we haven't even whipped out the book of wallpaper samples yet.

I watered down the acrylics a bit so they would flow better, and put each color in the compartment of a plastic tray that had once held miniature quiches (Matt has a weakness for you, you little egg-and-cheese confections!). And while the kids painted away, I worked on my book proposal revision.

I'm glad that we all had that really happy, creative time, since I've been off my game the past couple of days, tearing my way through a recent Steven King novel instead of writing or crafting or parenting or cleaning so much (I finished it tonight, thank god, and life can now continue as normal).

But with two dollhouses like this to play with, the kids have somehow managed to keep themselves entertained while their mama has been indulging in the Victorian sin of novel-reading.

For me, I swear, a good book is like a bad addiction.

Our Version of Alone Time

At least for the near future, this is what it looks like from nine to eleven o'clock most nights, our girls soundly tucked away, the living room table cleared of dinner and evening family activities:
I work on my book proposal revision, and Matt works on his homework.

And believe me, it is work. I need to change the entire perspective through which I'd planned to write my book, keeping my authorial voice undamaged while revising according to the constructive criticism that I received ("Talk less about Willow and Sydney" ?!?). Matt, used to years of art done almost entirely on the computer, is having to get used now to the intensive hand-work of his drawing class, and not just the drawing itself, but the tedious and tiresome process of prepping his work surface according to the various requirements of the professor ("Mark your grid with tape cut to 1/8" width" ?!?).

We're working in the mines, my friends, but for a bigger purpose: one of us wants an MFA degree, and the other one of us wants a book deal.

Neither of these, apparently, simply fall out of the sky into one's laps. So be it.

Tutorial: A Volcano in, I Mean on, Your Pants

I'm really clumsy, and I think I also may be getting old. Before I had kiddos, when Matt and I played adult co-rec softball together (Go, Ballantine Tool and Die!!!), we used to joke that adult recreational sports are so interesting to watch primarily because of the very real possibility of seeing an adult seriously injure themselves. I saw people blow out knees and backs and break feet and ankles, and those were just the non-contact injuries.

I had my own non-softball, non-contact injury last week when, while racing the girls to their school building, I tripped and fell and skinned my knee something fierce. Oh, what did I trip on? Um...nothing.

I'll save you the descriptions of the blood and gore and scabs and general grossness--let's just say it was AWESOME--and turn, now, to the damage done to my third-favorite pair of pants, a comfy pair of cargos bought for two dollars at Goodwill. They were, of course, ripped to all get-out. It was tragic. Heartbreaking. It called, clearly, for a jaunty applique patch. Here's how to make one:

First, you have to seam together the rip in your pants:
See, isn't it huge? Hearbreaking, I tell ya.

Next, you have to cut yourself out a jaunty applique. Use a pre-washed fabric that's the same weight as, or heavier than, your pants fabric. I'm using pre-washed upholstery sample fabric, and I used my Cricut to cut a pattern template from
out of cardstock: my patch is going to be a volcano.

Pin your applique exactly where you want it on your pants. I don't use fusible webbing or any of that heat-set crap for clothing anymore, so use as many pins as you need to feel confident that your patch won't shift. Feel free to add on whatever you want to make your repair job not just functional but super-awesome:
The plume of fire coming out of the volcano? Just there for show.

Now that wide-legged pants are in style, you can satin stitch your applique without having to open up a side seam, although it does require a little fiddling:See, here I've got the fabric fiddled in such a way that I can sew all those roughly parallel spots pretty easily, and when I've done those I'll shift and futz the fabric around to get a new angle and sew the perpendicular spots. If you're getting skipped stiches, it probably means that you need to move to a heavier needle--you're already using a jeans needle, right?

When you're done, you'll have an awesome, sturdy applique that makes your pants look even better than they did originally:
And you'll discover how hard it is to get a good photograph of your own knee.

Tablet Non-Rasa

In our house, we write. The girls have their stories and letters to grandmas and I have my lists and my blogs and the book proposal revision that I am currently freaking out about, and even Matt has his on-again, off-again secret blog.

When you write, you need a lot of paper. Bookmaking is DEF on the collective to-do list (Matt has for years been on the verge of signing the two of us up for a bookmaking class at Pygmalion's, but has always been thwarted by family nights at the girls' school or classes that I'm teaching or classes that he's taking, etc.), as is a beater laptop for the girls (not exactly PAPER paper, but you know what I mean). And, of course, there's an ample supply of notebooks and blank paper and dry-erase boards and chalkboards and scrapbook paper and whatever. But we always seem to be out of that nice, wide-ruled, newsprint tablet paper that little children have learned to write on since god knows when.

So I bought us a buttload from Lakeshore Learning (I could have gotten a reasonable amount for free from Amazon with my swagbucks, but what's the point of a reasonable amount when you can buy a year's worth?). And how fun! Did you know there's kindergarten-ruled tablet paper AND first-grade ruled tablet paper (it's narrower) AND really big story tablet paper with a blank area at the top for illustration? Of course I bought it all. We're homeschooling next academic year, ya know.

So often, as I drink a big mug of coffee and read the newspaper every morning, the girls join me for some time of quiet industry (I don't know where they get that impulse--most of my own life is spent avoiding quiet industry at all costs). Sometimes they have workbooks, sometimes they have coloring pages, and sometimes they have tablet paper for the writing of stories or the catching-up of their correspondence.

Sydney dictates to me, and then I leave a space below each line for her to play at copying. I love the look of concentration on her face here:
Willow will dictate her entire piece to me, and then re-copy it onto her own paper:

I've been pointing out to her the spaces between words, but it hasn't caught on yet, so I'm sure that receiving one of her letters is like having your own little mental puzzle to work through--good for the mind, keeps you from getting Alzheimer's.

My favorite thing, however, is when a girl draws a picture, then dictates a story about it. Here's part of Sydney's writings (the illustration tablet paper is BIG, and won't all fit on my scanner) about various creatures that have crowns and thus are royalty:

If you like what you can see of her story about Ladybug Crowny, you should hear some of the adventures of Princess Kitty.

I Love Myself Some Soysage

Soysage meatballs with bread crumbs and parmesan (but not fresh basil--too expensive in the winter) from Vegetarian Times:

Delicious.

Did you know that I don't eat meat? Because I don't (unless we're on a long car trip and I'm feeling vulnerable and there are chicken strips at the Dairy Queen that we've stopped at, but really, how often does that happen?). I also try not to craft with or wear animal products unless they're recycled (I use wool roving, but I know its source, and glue? Ugh, don't get me started on glue).

Even though I loooooong to dye silk scarves with Kool-aid. Does anyone know if there's an animal-friendly fabric equivalent to silk?

You Can't Catch Bupkiss with Your Eyes Closed

The girls LOVE their new bean bags. Very importantly, Sydney loves the new bean bags, and she loves the game that we've been playing on and off again all day: I throw her a bean bag and she catches it. If she can name the number stenciled on the bean bag, then she keeps it; if she can't, then she throws it back (and I tell her what the number is and then throw it to her again later). When she has all the bean bags, she "wins."

It's a good game. We've gone in the course of one day from nearly every digit from 0 to 9 being identified as an eight to only half of them being called an eight. Of course, before you can identify the number at all, you have to catch the bean bag. And to catch the bean bag, it would really help if you opened your eyes.

Which Sydney won't:
Oh, jeez:

Seriously, I probably snapped 50 shots of the baby catching bean bags, and in every picture her eyes are closed.

See?Until...

Success!!!

Will also loves the bean bags, and here are some of the games we play:

• ordering the numbers from smallest to largest and largest to smallest
• mental addition and subtraction
• odds and evens
• two- and three-digit number building
• trying to hit stuff

I made an extra set of numbered bean bags, which is currently living in my pumpkinbear etsy shop. A third set is waiting for the next child's birthday party to which I'm allowed to bring a child's present (nope, not allowed to bring a present to the next party the girls are attending), and I'm hoping to make an alphabet set of bean bags and write a tutorial soon (yet these, I vow, will not be manipulated into serving as distractions for my book proposal revision. I VOW!!!).

And then...umm, would bean bags made for the memorization of dinosaurs, or Dremel bits, or types of legumes be out of order?