A Fair of the Arts in June

An early thunderstorm made sure that Saturday's craft fair won't go down in history as one of the all-time greatest craft fairs EVAH, but it still beat the hell out of the May fair, when it was inexplicably FREEZING.

And thus, a good-ish time was had by all:

Earlier in the day, this disaffected teen homeschool kid that I've chatted with at craft fairs for years slouched over with her disaffected teen homeschool buddies and bought up all my 1" comic book pinbacks that speak to the disaffected teen--"NO!" and "I hate you," and "You are nothing in my eyes," etc. So LATER in the day, this other bookish little teen homeschool kid that I have occasional bookish conversations with at the craft fair comes by and asks me if I can help her find any comic book pinbacks that have comebacks on them.

"Well," I say, "your buddies were by earlier and bought up just about anything that might help reflect their negative worldview."

"I know!" she said. "They were buying them about me!"

So I said, "Don't worry, kiddo. I always have a plan." The kiddo paid for five buttons, and then I gave her some Strathmore paper, a pen, and the one-inch hole punch, and instructed her to write her own comebacks and we'd make them into buttons for her.

While we were working, this other woman came up to get the 411 about being in the craft fair, on account of her group sells calendars. I told her that it's a juried fair, and apps for the season go out the previous winter, and the emphasis is on handicraft, prob not Kinko's calendars. So then, and this is a TOTAL pet peeve  since it happens all the time, most recently with a woman who wanted to rent half my booth from me to sell bellydancing swag, she goes ahead and gives me her entire spiel about why her group should totally be able to sell its calendars in the fair, like next month, and it's totally a handicraft. Fine by me, only I'm not, you know, actually in charge of anything, and when people get that frenzied look in their eyes while they're trying to make their case, it really creeps me out. Thank gawd Matt was there and smoothly segued a convo hand-off to himself, so I could devote all my attention to my VIP client there.

My kiddo made herself some AWESOME comeback buttons. Among the comebacks were "You went to LIE school," "I don't care," and "The feeling is mutual." She told me that she was especially proud of that latter button because when you say it, people don't know what it means and so they don't know if you're complimenting them or insulting them. So true, right?

So, low sales but high drama:

Good day, overall.

Candles, Soap, Gem Mining, and a Cave

Another homeschool field trip! This time we drove down to Squire Boone Caverns waaaaaay down south in Indiana.

How far south?

Well, we had about half an hour before we had to meet our group, so we popped over to Kentucky for lunch.

That far south.

And talk about fun. Squire Boone is a whole working pioneer industry-type center, and since we were on the group tour, we got to try it all. The girls hand-dipped candles--

--and we learned that the bump on the bottom is how you know that they're hand-dipped.

We played with the ground corn at the grist mill, and learned that it's the size of the sifter that separates the cornmeal from the corn grits from the cracked corn.

The girls mined for gems--

--and Willow, in particular, learned that the reason that she only found, like, two gems in her sifting while Sydney found something like fifteen is that the California Gold Rush, like life, was not fair.

I missed the soap demonstration since I had to perp-walk the screaming four-year-old out and stand with her by the car while she got her tantrum out of her system, but Willow tells me that it was very good.

And of COURSE there was the cave tour:

Growing up so near the Ozarks, I've done my fair share of amateur cave exploring, so I thought that I'd find it lame to be walked through a cave, but an experienced guide capable of answering all sorts of nerdy questions, and lighting well-chosen to show off the best features of the cave, were well worth the herding. It made all the difference, of course, that Squire Boone Caverns isn't hugely on the tourist scene, and that clearly a very careful job was done to build walkways and bridges that minimized damage to the cave.

At the end of the trip, I let myself be suckered (it didn't take much, let me tell you) into the purchase of two slingshots, two Squire Boone Caverns activity books, two gemstones, one fossilized shark tooth, two gemstone necklaces, and two sticks of rock candy.

And now, when you ask Sydney what her favorite part of the whole trip was, she says immediately, "Candy."

The Plaster of Paris Volcano Erupts!

This week seems to have been filled with craft fair prep and swimming lessons, but in the midst of that chaos (Last-minute shopping trips! Swimsuits still in the wash and we have to go! Do I have enough record bowls?) we made time for our latest and greatest obsesssion...

Volcanoes, baby!

Willow's desperate desire to create the plaster of Paris volcano (from a kit purchased at Goodwill for two dollars) using the plaster of Paris that we scored free at the Monroe County History Center garage sale one year was the premise behind my plaster of Paris tute over at Crafting a Green World last weekend. The numerous little plaster tchotchkes that Sydney and I created  during that tutorial went over far better than I anticipated (HINT: They make GREAT gifts), and the plaster of Paris volcano?

Clearly, it's awesome.

When the plaster was set the volcano was painted--

--it was nearly disaster time in Pompeii (We listened to Vacation Under the Volcano during our road trip).

We're not afraid of vinegar, so Sydney and I poured four teaspoons of baking soda into the volcano, put some food coloring into a quarter-cup of vinegar (I've also seen recipes that cut the vinegar with water or dishwashing soap, but like I said, we love ourselves some vinegar in this house), and, Sydney's choice of color notwithstanding (she chose purple), had ourselves a hell of an eruption:

Surprisingly, Will wasn't interested in participating in our morning eruption, but when we got home after swim class (flutter kicks and ice cream scoop arms for everyone!) she played out alone in the backyard for over an hour with the volcano, an entire gallon of vinegar, an entire box of baking soda, and a few assorted sundries.

Needless to say, cleaning up her activity entailed, in part, putting the completely empty bottle of vinegar and the completely empty box of baking soda in the recycling bins. Such is the low cost of awesomeness in science.

How's Our Homeschool This Week?

Let's see...

In the past week or so, we've:

visited the Wonderlab; read books about dinosaurs and animals and outer space and volcanoes; built and erupted a plaster of Paris volcano--

--watched a David Attenborough Wildlife Special and a dinosaur documentary that has convinced Willow that the T-Rex was primarily a scavenger; did a lot of gardening; and played a lot of Zoo Tycoon:

played guitar and took guitar lessons; listened to lots of kids' songs and lots of the Old 97's; and went to a frankly mediocre concert in the park

listened to a lot of Magic Tree House and read a lot of The Scrambled States of America

made plaster of Paris figurines; played with clay-

--painted with a lot of acrylics--

--and drew lots of pictures and stuck on lots of stickers and made one excellent collaged United States flag

had family time with far-flung relatives, as well as other miscellaneous field trips:

put together puzzles; played computer games about physics and computer games about shape identification; cooked a lot of meals; and completed the odd workbook page

read a lot of picture books; read a lot of chapter books; listened to The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Paddle-to-the-Sea, Hank the Cowdog, and the first three Bunnicula books; and had a lot of bedtime stories

wrote some letters--

--copied the partial lyrics to "Somewhere over the Rainbow"; kept up with summer reading program book lists; solved a code or two; and played a Dr. Seuss computer game

walked downtown a lot; rode bikes a lot; went to the playground a lot--

--and went swimming a lot, including each child's very first swim lesson EVER:

And that's how we homeschooled this week.

P.S. Check out my weekend posts over at Crafting a Green World--a review of Found, my favorite store in Ann Arbor; and a tutorial for making that plaster of Paris that we did so much of this week. That plaster of Paris tute also got picked up by CraftGossip--yay!

Matboard Stencil Tutorial, IF You Have a Cricut (Sorry)

You betcha stencils are important in Montessori education. Stencils allow for the precise reproduction of shapes whose forms should be internalized--not so much letters or numbers, which children must learn to recognize in a variety of scripts, but geometric figures, for instance, whose degrees and angles remain consistent. The premise lends itself well to my idea to make stencils of each of the fifty states: precise reproductions of consistent forms that the girls would do well to memorize.

Montessori stencils are generally made of metal, and are expensive. Metal, of course, is a logical material for a Montessori stencil. Montessori philosophy avoids the use of plastics, but a paper or cardboard stencil not only wouldn't be nearly capable of withstanding average wear, but it also wouldn't have the kind of high, very stiff edge that gives support to the child's pencil without becoming worn down over time.

Expensive, though...yeah. I'm saving up for a microscope for the girls, and I wouldn't dream of buying stencils. Good thing that I own a Cricut! I've used my Cricut to make everything from paper dolls to patches on my pants to felt board figures--pretty much everything EXCEPT scrapbooking.

Even on the Cricut, cutting matboard is a stretch. But with a little more effort you can make a perfect stencil, and matboard is the perfect material. It's very stiff and very sturdy, yet inexpensive, recyclable, and doesn't require so much fussing that if you wreck a stencil you feel angst about tossing it and trying again.

To make a matboard stencil, you will need:

• Cricut with the cartridge that you want. I'm using the 50 States cartridge to gradually make the girls an entire set of 50 states stencils. Any kind of geometric shape would also be very fun and useful.
• Cricut deep cut blade and deep cut blade housing. It's VERY easy to switch these out on your Cricut.
• matboard pre-cut to the appropriate size. I cut my matboards to approximately 8"x10", with the stencil being at least an inch smaller on all sides than the matboard that contains it.
• X-acto knife and self-healing cutting mat.

1. Install your deep cut blade and deep cut blade housing, and set it to its deepest cut. Then, set the Cricut's pressure dial to almost its highest point, and the speed dial to around the midpoint, if not a little slower.

2. Press the matboard face-up on the sticky mat, and load it into the Cricut. Manually set the paper size as a little smaller than the real size of your matboard, to prevent the Cricut from cutting the stencil too close to the edge of the matboard. Remember this exact paper size, however.

3. Set the size of your shape so that it is at least an inch smaller on its widest side than the size of your matboard.

4. Turn on the multi-cut function.

5. After the Cricut finishes its cuts, re-set the paper size exactly the way you did in step four, and re-cut the stencil, again using the multi-cut function.

6. Unload the mat and, using the x-acto knife, finish cutting out the last little bits that didn't completely cut in the Cricut.

And then you're done!

Now go tag somebody's building with Kentucky.

Raw Wool, 1/4 Fleece

Guess what I bought at the Ann Arbor farmer's market yesterday?

It has grass and twigs in it, and smells like sheep. The girls and I are going to have a blast this summer.

A Big Reunion for My Little One

She chose an outfit consisting of all her favorite party clothes:

She wrote her name on her nametag so that all her former nurses and doctors could remember her:

Her father showed her an incubator just like the one that held her four years ago:

She got her face painted--

--like a purple pony, which was just what she requested:

She ate lots of party food:

She played lots of party games:

She did the bubble dance with her sister:

And she reminded us once again, as she reminds us daily, that we are very, VERY lucky people:

I hope that you had a lucky day today, too.

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!