March Favorites: Sci-Fi, Podcasts, and People Dying While Mountain Climbing

I read some good horror this month! A couple were Tiktok recommendations, and one was something I stole off of Will's library bookshelf:

Honestly, The Cabin at the End of the World (which I read at the tail-end of last month and was also a Tiktok recommendation) was probably the scariest of the lot, but Hex comes in a close second, and Hold Back the Tide is the most satisfying. 

If you ever end up reading Hex let me know, because I dearly want to discuss the differences between the English and the original Dutch versions, and the Hieronymus Bosch allusions!

Here's the rest of what I read in March:

I re-read a bit of Saga so I wouldn't be lost when I caught up on the latest volumes; the most recent cliffhanger really pissed me off, though, and this is why I prefer to read graphic novels after their entire run is concluded and I can binge several years' content in a week!

Will was on a bit of a sci-fi kick last month. Here are her March favorites:

And here's the rest of what she read last month!

I went through a LOT of podcasts in March! I've spent a lot of time either walking on a local trail I recently found and immediately became obsessed with or endlessly stripping the paint off of one of our ancient doors (I should NOT have started this project. There are SO MANY LAYERS OF PAINT on this door, and I just don't see any other way out than through, and still I keep thinking that even when I finally finish it, now it won't match any of the other three doors in the old part of the house, all of which surely have at least that many layers of paint on them ARGH!!!), and so I have been absolutely blowing through podcasts, because why leave room in my brain for an original thought? Here are some of my March favorites:

So of course I have different podcasts for different purposes. When I'm doing something kind of mindless where I might zone in and out, like sanding that goddamned door or walking my local trail, I listen to a conversational podcast, like Double Love or American Girls. When I'm doing handwork like sewing or candlemaking, I like a narrative documentary, like Welcome to Your Fantasy or Even the Rich. Will and I listen almost solely to Welcome to Night Vale, although when we eventually catch up on it we've promised ourselves we can also resume The Magnus Archives. And when Matt and I are hanging out doing crossword puzzles and drinking cocktails, I like to listen to something that he might be interested in, too, like Pop Culture Happy Hour or I Hate it But I Love It.

You see, it only makes sense that I HAVE to have at least fifty podcasts in my listening queue!

I am possibly just using other people's near-death encounters to distract me from our global pandemic (infection numbers are going up again in our county, Syd's still too young to get vaccinated, there are reports of a variant that's breaking through the Pfizer vaccine, and I am worried all the time, ceaselessly), but that Deep Survival book has gotten me re-obsessed with people who climb mountains and then die on them. This is subtly different from my obsession with people who die in caves, because the stories are usually even more extreme, and the motivations are uniformly baffling to me. Like, I can totally understand soccer kids goofing around in a cave and not paying enough attention to the weather. I can kind of understand a random guy exploring a cave and crawling somewhere he can't get back out of. You don't expect something extreme to happen while you're doing something you're easily able to do.

But climbing the tallest mountains of the world? That is a CHOICE. I do NOT understand the mindset that makes you want to do something that is very likely to kill you, no matter how fit and prepared you are. Or starting off, knowing that when you reach a certain elevation your thinking is guaranteed to be compromised and you're definitely going to make stupid decisions, and you just have to *hope* that you don't! 

It's so weird to me. I am SO fascinated.

I started off newly obsessed with Mt. Hood, because I didn't realize actually how many people have died trying to climb it, but I quickly fell back into my old obsession, Mt. Everest, mostly because there aren't a ton of long-form documentaries about people dying on Mt. Hood available on YouTube, and there are a LOT of those exact documentaries about Mt. Everest! Here's one that I'm still thinking about:

That poor guy was super fit, super young, super confident and happy. He made a mountain buddy and they did everything together on the climb up--shared a tent, cooked each other soup, encouraged each other when the climb got tough--and it breaks my heart to watch that buddy's interview, to see him telling the interviewer that his summit day was supposed to be the best day of his life, but instead it was the worst day of his life, and he'd give it all up to have his buddy back.

But those guys didn't even have to GO THERE! They made this choice, surely knowing that they could die and people they met along the way could die! 

I don't get it. I'm fascinated by it.

I wonder what I'll be fascinated by this time next month?

Make a Pegboard Cookie Cutter Holder

 This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World.

Trying to store a bunch of cookie cutters is the pits. For several years, I'd been using a drawer underneath our kitchen table to hold our cookie cutters, because that's where they all seemed to fit on the day that I first unpacked them. Of course, we've acquired more cookie cutters since then, dragons and castles and Girl Scout trefoils, and not only did they no longer really fit, but the kids were unconcernedly smashing them in their overarching goal of simply getting that drawer closed again whenever they dared to open it. 

 Also, we had to dig through the whole thing just to find, say, the big snowflake, or to see if we had a star that would make a good size for a cookie wand topper. 

 Fortunately, our kitchen also has a large, accessible, and out of the way space above the kitchen cabinets. My husband and I turned the whole area into an easy open storage system just for cookie cutters, and I couldn't be happier with it. 

 Here's what you need to make your own! 

  pegboard. Pegboard, otherwise known as perforated hardboard, is a decently eco-friendly choice of material. It's generally made of sawmill waste or other residual wood fibers, is adhered with resin, and doesn't tend to contain formaldehyde. That being said, it's a good rule of thumb to always know the provenance of your materials, so that you can double-check that you approve of the manufacturer of the specific pegboard that you're looking at. 

  pegboard pegs. You can buy all kinds of cute varieties of peg; just make sure that you're buying the correct size for your pegboard. 

  wood glue (optional). I had this at hand,  but my dowel pins fit so snugly that I didn't need them. In fact, I had to use a rubber mallet to tap the dowel pins into the pegboard, they fit so well. 

  paint. Spray paint is not great for the environment, but I'm selective in my use of non-eco-friendly materials, and painting all of those little dowel pins and all of that square footage with all of those little holes? Yeah, I used spray paint. To make the project more eco-friendly, choose a brush-on zero VOC paint, perhaps with a paint sprayer. 

  wall hanging supplies. We tapped in nails at the corners of each pegboard, but you use the method that you prefer. 

 1. Cut the pegboard to size. Adjust your sizing a little so that you cut between the rows and columns of perforations. We had to piece together three sections of pegboard to cover the entire space that I wanted, so we had the additional annoying job of trying to cut the pieces so that the holes would line up perfectly across them. If you can accurately bisect the rows and columns, it works, but ours were a little uneven, so I just hung them to be even, and I didn't care if their tops didn't perfectly line up. 

  2. Add the pegs. Take your time so that you can figure out a pattern for the pegs, then push them in so that the back of each peg is flush with the back of the pegboard. I actually brought some cookie cutters out to the driveway so that I could test how they'd look with various spacing. 

 3. Paint the pegboard. I did my painting out on the driveway while my kid was running a bake stand out by the road and the drive-in next door had just opened for the evening--it was an absolute circus. Pro tip: if you want everyone in the universe to look at you, paint something weird in your driveway and then get people to drive by. Bonus points if you're also taking pictures as you work, because that's apparently also REALLY interesting to look at. 

 4. Mount the finished cookie cutter holder. This was too high for me, so my husband did the mounting while I stood below and assured him that he was NOT lining the perforations up correctly. I'm the only person who can tell, though, so whatever. 

 I LOVE our cookie cutter holder! 

The cookie cutters would look tidier if I'd hung them all myself, but the kids actually really wanted to do it, and who am I to stand in the way of a child wanting to do a chore? It reassured me, as well, that both kids can reach even the tallest cookie cutters with our step stool, so they can still bake independently. And we're all baking more, for the time being, while the ability to see what cookie cutters we have is still a novel thing, and the kids have rediscovered cute shapes that they'd forgotten we had. 

 It may not be great for our ideally anti-consumerist stance, however, as the kids have also figured out what cookie cutters we DON'T have and apparently desperately need. We don't have a dog cookie cutter, for instance, nor a cat one. The horror! It's possibly time to try out that DIY cookie cutter tutorial that I've been eyeing for a while now...

On the Sculpture Trails

A few weeks ago, I had the idea to compile all of my random and many must-dos of Indiana into a single Google Map. Not that we're actually visiting any of those scattered museums and doughnut shops and used bookstores and historic homes right now, sigh. But soon, hopefully!

And if nothing else, also putting all the state parks and locations of interesting waterfalls and public caves and land preserves on the map has helped me be more creative when figuring out spots for family hikes. 

That's how we ended up at Sculpture Trails on the most beautiful day of last week. It's absolutely absurd that this was the first time I'd ever been there, as not only is it nonsensically close to where I live, but the kids and I used to carve scratch blocks for their aluminum pours back when they'd hold them at our local hands-on science museum almost a decade ago. So the fact that it took 13 months of a global pandemic to get me there is a little bit bonkers. Thank goodness for my hand-keyed Google map, I guess!

I was too excited at being out and about with family and friends to think any interesting thoughts while I was there, so instead here are all the photos I was delighted to take out there in the sunshine:

Because ultimately, everything is really all about me, I'm now feeling like my property needs more lawn art! Like, maybe not cast iron sculptures, but I could totally DIY something like this out of plywood and spray paint, right? Wouldn't it look lovely in my woods, perhaps just barely visible from the drive-in but only if the light is right and you happen to be standing in just the perfect spot?

Is there a line between "outdoor art installation" and "Dang, that lady's yard is tacky!", and if so, how does one come down on the correct side of that line...

...or even decide WHICH side is the correct one, lol?

Easter 2021: The Lowest of Keys

I experimented with staining an egg, and I LOVE it, and painting one galaxy-themed, which... well, I can say now that I've done it!

Over the weekend, I spent some time looking through old blog posts, reminiscing about Easters past, and whoa. Last Easter was the most high-key celebration we have EVER had for that holiday! Like, we did more for Easter last year than we did when the kids were toddlers! We dyed eggs and painted eggs and sewed eggs out of felt, I modeled an egg out of plaster of Paris, my partner built an entire MACHINE for egg decorating, I... BAKED AN ENTIRE LITERAL CAKE.

I get it, man. This time last year, I was absolutely beside myself with anxiety, and Easter was a darn good distraction. The kids were reeling from the cancellation of all their fun extracurriculars and every last out-of-the-house activity on their schedules, and, again, Easter was a darn good distraction.

This year, I'm still absolutely beside myself with anxiety, but that's old news by now. The kids, even though all their fun extracurriculars and most of their out-of-the-house activities are still cancelled, have a new normal. The younger kid's life is full of public school busywork, and the older kid's got plenty of her own, more meaningful (ahem) academic deadlines. 

So what did we need in this little break before nine pages of biology worksheets that won't be on the test, AP exam prep, and assisting with nonsense biology worksheets and exam prep and my own work?

We needed nothing, mostly, other than to hang out on the couch together. Or the back deck, in the shade. Or the driveway, in the sunshine.

To be honest, I might have gone overboard a bit on the traditional Easter Basket Clue Hunt. It took the kids upwards of 40 minutes to solve all the clues, oops, and one of them, I'm pretty sure, was long ready to say the hell with it and let the baskets be uncovered in their own time. But how can one prove one's worth for an entire basket of candy and small presents if one doesn't decipher and then follow clues that lead one from the refrigerator to the trampoline to your own bed to the bird feeder to the aerial silks rig to the car to the tree house to the bookshelves? What is Easter without computer research to find a specific Dewey Decimal number, or half an hour rifling through the car to find an Easter egg hidden in a secret compartment that you 100% did not know even existed in that car?

Sunglasses compartment? How is that even a real thing?

In my family, gummy bunnies and chocolate eggs and fuzzy socks and ponytail holders and geography coloring books are only for the wisest, the bravest, and the most daring.

Also, Peeps bunnies that I hand-sewed from felt. I had to put in just a little bit of high-key effort, lol!

I was not able to talk everyone in the family into coming together to make an Easter-themed meal. I had big dreams of everyone choosing some tacky, Easter-themed menu item--bread shaped like a bunny with a hole cut out of its tummy for dip, perhaps, or Jello poured into plastic Easter eggs to set--but nobody else had the same enthusiasm, so we got by with our old standards of canned cinnamon rolls shaped to have bunny ears, and, for the adults, morning mimosas and evening Baileys drunk out of hollow chocolate rabbits.

I also wasn't able to martial the kids to dye Easter eggs with me, even though they had expressed enthusiasm for the project long enough for my partner to get the eggs hard-boiled. Come to think of it, I'm actually pretty sure that was just a ruse to get enough hard-boiled eggs into the house that I feel like I have to make egg salad, a favorite of the kids that I rarely make because I detest peeling the eggs.

I was able to get everybody onto the back deck to paint wooden eggs, however! One must take one's successes wherever one can get them!

It is VERY important that I watch Jesus Christ Superstar on Easter, and usually I can wheedle another person or two into watching it with me. I tested everyone's patience even more this year by insisting on watching this Swedish arena production that I'd heard had some interesting acting choices for Jesus and Judas:

It DID have some interesting acting choices! Of course, it was also in Swedish... When the younger kid complained, I was all, "Well, I could always sing the lyrics along with them in English," and she was all, "Oh, yeah? Why don't you, then!"

Joke's on her, because I did! 

It's REALLY fun to hang out with me.

The fun thing about having emphasized the creation of handmade eggs for the kids' entire lives is that by now, we have a LOT of eggs. 

A LOT. OF EGGS.

My partner had the genius idea to actually, you know, *count* the eggs as he hid them this year, and... yeah, he hid 120 of them.

Unfortunately, after a full ten minutes of hunting--

--we only got back 109. Oops!

I guess we'll have a fun side quest while we mow the lawn this summer!

Some Easters, it's pouring. Some, it's freezing. Some, there's a global pandemic going on but at least the weather is gorgeous, sunny and warm, and when one finishes one's quest for Easter eggs (or, rather, gives up on one's quest for Easter eggs, as there are still 11 unfound eggs out there!), it's especially nice to just lie down on the warm driveway, a cat or two under your arm, and savor a day with nothing important to do other than eat candy, paint wooden eggs, and watch TV with your mom:

And if your Mom sneaks the opportunity to get the first family portrait she's managed since October--

--Well, every holiday has its own magic.

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!

How to Refinish a Clock with a Coloring Page

 This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World.

If you can get a clock with a dragon on it, always choose the dragon clock. Dragons are awesome. 

 But if you can't get a clock with a dragon on it--if ALL the clocks at the thrift store are boring and beige and dragon-free--then just choose one of the boring clocks, take it home, and put a dragon on it yourself. 

 This particular clock cost me a whole dollar at Goodwill. It wasn't exactly beige, but it wasn't anything special, either. I refinished it with my special secret paint method (which I'll share with you in a minute!) and a completed coloring book page, and now it's my new favorite thing. 

 Want to make your new favorite thing, too? Just follow along! 

 You will need: 

  clock. It should be in working condition, with a flat face (ie. no sticky-uppy numbers) and an accessible one--flip it over and look for the screws attaching the front to the back. If you can reach them, you can probably dismantle your clock, refinish it, and reassemble it without too much fuss.

  coloring page. You can also use scrapbook paper or wallpaper, of course--just make sure that your paper is acid-free, if you don't want to have to change it out every few years. 

  paint. As you'll see in a minute, I'm using three different paints on this clock: primer, a stone texture paint, and a silver glitter paint. It's what I needed for the exact effect that I wanted, but you can use whatever paint you prefer, as long as it will work on the surface of your clock. Plastic, for instance, will need a primer designed for plastic. 

  miscellaneous supplies. pencil, scissors, white glue and paintbrush, etc.  

1. Disassemble the clock and refinish the frame. Do NOT lose those little screws! This clock was intended for my kids' bedroom makeover back in 2017, which they have requested have a Medieval fantasy castle sort of theme. We're not going too far overboard, but we are painting their walls grey, displaying my older daughter's sword and dragon collections, and adding some small touches, such as this clock whose frame I wanted to look like it came from a treasure trove. 

 To get the effect, I primed the plastic frame, then sprayed it with two coats of stone texture paint. When that was dry, I sprayed it with two coats of silver glitter paint, making the whole thing super sparkly and mysteriously like a vein of silver torn from the rock. I've since also done it to a picture frame and a light switch cover, both also intended for the kids' bedroom, and they've all come out looking amazing. 

  2. Prepare the new paper background. To fit with the fantasy castle theme, I used a completed coloring page from the Tolkien's world coloring book. You can use any paper you'd like. Use the frame to help you trace a template of the clock face onto the coloring page, then cut it out. 

 Gently set the page on top of clock and mark the center; cut from the edge up to the center, then cut a hole in the center to accommodate the clock's stem. 

 3. Glue the new clock face down. Gently peel up the paper in sections, and paint the back side with a thin layer of white glue; press it well so that it doesn't bubble. 

 My hands are filthy because I was also working on the second coat of those grey walls. The kids were off at sleepaway camp, and I wanted to surprise them with their new room when they got home! 

  4. Reassemble the clock. This will probably involve cleaning the glass front of the clock, and then putting it all back together. 

 You can do other cute things with the clock face, of course, such as adding number stickers or stencils or decoupaging several different papers onto it, but double-check the placement of the clock hands, first--the minute hand on this particular clock was sooo close to the clock face that there wouldn't be room for more layers of paper and Mod Podge.

How to Make a Glittered and Embossed Easter Egg

This is a fun Easter craft to do with giant Easter eggs! I created this last year when I was on a Zentangles kick, but I think it would work well with any kind of design, abstract or realistic.

I use the largest wooden eggs available from Casey's Wood Products (and I buy them in bulk, because the younger kid, especially, LOVES to decorate wooden eggs and wooden peg people), although I've seen larger plastic Easter eggs, and I'm sure you could upcycle those, or even use papier mache Easter eggs exactly ("egg-sactly"--UGH, I can't stand myself!) the way that you do these wooden ones.

To make the glittered and embossed Easter egg, first you draw a design directly onto the egg. With my wooden Easter eggs, I draw the design on in pencil--

--but if you were upcycling a plastic Easter egg, you should use a Sharpie.

Next, trace over your drawing with hot glue:

Try to do a better job than I did keeping your lines even by keeping the pressure on the glue gun's trigger nice and steady. You might want to practice on cardboard first.

I sure should have!

Pull off all the little hot glue strings, then use spray paint to prime and paint the egg a base color. This is basically the same thing that the big kid and I did when we made our spooky potion bottles, but then, because we were going to mess with the embossing a lot more, we painted on the base layer and THEN did the hot glue. 

OMG I just realized that you could make these EXACTLY (egg-sactly!) the way you make the potion bottles! Hello, spooky embossed Easter eggs!

Okay, pace yourself, Julie. Finish this blog post, wash the dishes, edit your kid's English essay, answer a zillion emails, go to your Zoom meeting, and TOMORROW you can make spooky embossed Easter eggs.

ANYWAY, you want that base layer to be a color similar to the color of glitter spray paint that you're using. For one thing, it adds depth, and for another, it'll hide any thin spots if you don't do a perfect job with the glitter spray.

Spray this glitter spray OUTSIDE (I feel like you were already outside; I mean, you just spray painted your egg and I hope you were outside for that, but seriously, this glitter spray means business!), let it dry for the recommended time period, and then admire your beautiful Easter egg!

I hate that you can't see how awesomely sparkly this Easter egg is. Here, though--I'll zoom in, and you can see all the billion bits of glitter that make it so sparkly:

It's. So. SPARKLY!!!

I've mentioned before that we are fierce, ferocious, take-no-prisoners Easter egg hunters at our house, and so pretty, precious-looking eggs like these aren't for Easter egg hunts, because I would be absolutely beside myself to lose this, then hit it with the lawnmower five months later. 

Honestly, the lawnmower wouldn't be that excited, either. This baby is BIG!

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!