May Favorites: Piers Anthony, Magical Women, and Depressing Facets of Humanity

These are some of the books we returned the second that our library re-opened its returns. So excited to have some counter space again!

Sooo... how's everybody doing? Anybody else waiting for, like, the *next* sign of the Apocalypse? At this point, I'm not gonna rule out zombies...

My one comfort is that maybe all this shit is shit that, because it happened, will result in positive change. Our medical system is broken. Our system of social services is broken. Our society, and its collective sense of justice to everyone of all races, most particularly those who are Black, is broken. I don't even understand what-all is broken to have put Satan's stupidest hellbeast in the office of president of the United States for the past three and a half years, but clearly some kind of gears are flying off and knocking into other gears and sending them flying in order for that ridiculous mess to have happened.

So, yay for outrage, I guess. Yay for protests. Yay that we somehow, in the midst of all this shit, have built enough collective compassion that we will say George Floyd's name and admit that Black lives matter.

On the topic of understanding a little more about the ways in which hundreds of years of active racism have led our society to this point, this book was one of my favorite reads of May:



It's about the actual lived experience of Black Americans who fled the South for the North and the West in the time between the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. The author conducted extensive interviews with some of the precious few individuals who are still alive from those days, and it's made a huge impact on how I understand racial disparity in our society.

It's a whopper of a book, but it's a must-read.

It feels weird to move from such a heavy, important book to YA sci-fi/fantasy, but that's what I read this month. I snagged these two books from Will's library shelf--



--and I LOVED them! They follow an orphaned teenager who manages a company of wizards in a land that's semi-magical but also quite prosaic and is run by a despotic king. Our local public library just re-opened its holds queue, so I put the third book on hold and I'm super hoping that they call me this week and tell me I can set up my fifteen-minute slot for a no-contact pick-up.

This book was also great--



--and it's my greatest coup that I encouraged Will to read it, as well, she told me it didn't sound interesting, I told her just to try it, and she did, and she liked it! It's not one of her personal favorites, but the perilous adventures of a telekinetic woman mixed up with a crew of undercover operatives is just my speed.

Here's another SUPER depressing book about yet more ways that we are actively killing our environment:



You guys, I hate to tell you this, but it turns out that sustainably-sourced seafood is just about a lie. Wild-caught tuna is not caught by Ernest Hemingway's old dude with a rod and a reel--it's caught in a big-ass net with a ton of other sealife and oceanic infrastructure that just gets trashed. Like, thousands of sharks are killed and just get trashed. Turtles are killed and just get trashed.

I do NOT want sharks or sea turtles to die because of me.

And "dolphin-safe" just means that dolphins mostly aren't part of the by-catch, although now that often has to be done by putting divers into the water to herd the dolphins out of the nets as they close. Not only does that scare the ever-loving stuffing out of the dolphins--multiple times a year!--but it can also separate mothers and babies. It SUCKS.

And there are nets that just drag across the ocean floor, tearing away all the supporting infrastructure and killing everything down there, just for scallops.

Because I know you needed one more thing to be depressed about, you guys. Sorry.

Hey, want to hear about something else depressing? It's THIS guy!



William Smith basically invented geology by making the first geological map. He did this by essentially walking the literal roads in three countries, hammering away at the ground, comparing fossils, exploring mines, and low-key manipulating canal-builders into building canals where he'd sure like a nice big cut in the earth opened up for examination.

He showed it off to members of the new Geological Society, because he thought they'd think it was cool and he wanted to be a member. But at the time, the Geological Society was made up almost entirely of rich snooty-snoots who were, like, hobby rock collectors and looked down on somebody who actually made his living with geology (Smith's side-hustle was contracting himself to farms and figuring out systems of dikes and canals to turn their fields from marshland to viable cropland), and not only did they make fun of him to his face and NOT make him a member of their snooty-snoot society, but some of their members deliberately plagiarized his map.

Like, deliberately and systematically. It took them years to spy out all of the relevant info it had taken Smith decades to discover, but when they finally achieved it, they redrew his map, published it, and undercut his selling price on account of they were rich.

William Smith was sent to the literal poorhouse because of them.

Man, the zombies really ARE coming after us next, aren't they?

Okay, now that I've realized why I've been in such a bad mood all month, let's turn to Will's list. She's our champion of escapist literature!

Alas, even poor Will has been struggling lately, as she has been bored, bored, BORED with the dearth of reading material since the library closed. Hopefully that will be remedied with our next library pick-up!

Will's partly been coping by re-reading some old favorites. I don't know how many times by now she's read this beautiful, positive children's novel:


She's also let me suggest a few books for her. She doesn't always love what I suggest, but I was stoked to see that she loved this particular old favorite of mine:



I may have even been about her age when I fell in love with Piers Anthony!

Here are Will's other favorite books from May:



Okay, that seems to have been quite a Ben Aaronovitch rabbit hole! And I will be quite sad if there's ever a month that Tamora Pierce doesn't appear on Will's favorites list.

And here's the rest of what she read!



It cracks me up that she always includes her AP textbooks, but she DID read them...

I've mentioned that I love narrative podcasts the most, so even though I'm still blowing through You're Wrong About, the kids and I have gotten super interested in this awesome horror podcast:



It's narrative, but not so much so that you can't space out for a bit or have to make everyone pause it while you run to grab a popsicle. It's for sure slowed down our progress in our family audiobook, Dracula, but it is the absolute perfect thing to listen to while hanging out on the back deck or working a puzzle in the family room--scary, mysterious, and engrossing!

And here's my latest YouTube obsession!



I really like long-form crafting videos--not even tutorials, but just watching someone make something incredibly detailed and sophisticated. Most of my other follows are dressmakers and costumers, so I was stoked to find this crafter who does all the other things, too! And I'm hella jealous that she has a Glowforge, which I have hopelessly desired for YEARS.

It's too bad I forgot the part about making any money from blogging, lol!

So far in June, all I've really done is wander around, sometimes eat nachos, and incessantly worry myself sick while reading Twitter updates about ever more acts of police brutality against peaceful protestors and ever more words of cruelty and inanity from our evil and incompetent president. I'm trying to read a history of women in computing, but I can't make myself relax and focus, and the earliest pick-up I could arrange for all of the fluffy, escapist fiction that I requested from the library is next Tuesday, alas.

So if all I have to show for myself come July 1 is a half-read history of women in computing and a thousand bags of tortilla chips eaten with cheddar cheese, black-eyed, peas, and too much onion, so be it. I'm sure the zombies will be showing up any minute now, anyway...

How to Latch Hook

This post was originally published on Crafting a Green World.

If you had a grandma who lived in the south in the 1980s, it's quite likely that you already know how to latch hook.

You might think that you don't remember lying on the living room carpet, working on a Rainbow Brite latch hook kit while your grandma sits in the recliner behind you and watches 60 Minutes, but I assure you that once you pick up a latch hook, it's all going to come flooding back to you.

There's one big difference, however, between this project and those awesome 80s kits, and that difference is what makes getting back into latch hooking a terrifically eco-friendly activity: whereas latch hook kits almost universally use acrylic yarn, the latch hook creation that you make yourself, from a pattern that you create yourself, can use ANY YARN YOU WANT. Any yarn! Wool yarn! Plarn! Cotton yarn! Or, my favorite of all yarns to use--STASH YARN!

Latch hooking is a fabulous stash-busting project. Creations can be as big or small as you want, with pile as short or long as you like, meaning that you can find a way to reuse any amount of leftover yarn.

Supplies & Tools

Here's what you need to get started:

• Rug canvas. This is a mesh canvas, ideally 100% cotton, that's stiff and sturdy and able to stand up to heavy usage. Use your least precious scissors to cut it to size! Rug canvas isn't all you can latch hook on, however. Any mesh, such as produce bags or plastic canvas, is workable, providing you use the appropriate size latch hook.
• Latch hook. The standard size of latch hook that you can buy online, at any larger craft store, or in a latch hook kit will work for rug canvas. If you want to play around with smaller canvases, use a smaller latch hook.
• Yarn. My yarn stash is upsettingly large, which is largely why latch hooking is so appealing to me at the moment, and my solemn vow is to use ONLY my stash until it's mostly resolved. You, however, can use any standard-weight yarn that appeals to you. Cotton and wool are both great choices, but you can also play with bulky blanket yarn if you size up your canvas accordingly.
• Template To Measure Yarn. Your template should be half the desired length of yarn. Cardboard is the ideal material.
• Scissors.
• Thread and a tapestry needle.

Directions

1.  Measure And Cut The Yarn

In this post's top image, the yellow and blue piece is made from 2" yarn; the purple and blue piece is made from 4" yarn. The process of latch hooking will halve that length, plus take away another fraction of a centimeter for the lark's head knot.



Cut your template to be as wide as the desired final length of nap of your project. To make the yarn pieces, wrap the yarn a zillion times around the template, and then cut straight across one side. You'll be left with a zillion pieces of yarn that are exactly twice as long as your template is wide--perfect!

2. Cut Your Rug Canvas To Size And Transfer Your Design

Cut the rug canvas at least .25" to .5" wider on all sides than you'd like the finished size to be, so that you have room to fold and hem the raw edges later.

It's possible to draw a design directly onto the rug canvas, although I've never found a material that works perfectly for this. Chalk rubs off, pencil rubs off more slowly, Sharpies smudge... try a few possibilities, and see what works best for you.

3. Begin Latch Hooking!

There are a few slightly different methods for latch hooking, but this is the way that my grandmother taught me. If it doesn't start to feel intuitive to you after a few tries, snoop around the Internet and see if you like someone else's method better. Hold the latch hook in your dominant hand, and use your non-dominant hand to double up one piece of yarn.




Wrap that yarn around the latch hook, and hold both the latch hook and the yarn in your dominant hand.




Push the tip of the latch hook underneath the strand of mesh that you want to attach the yarn to. This step can be a bit tricky, so mind that you don't snag the mesh with the latch.




Open the latch, then use your non-dominant hand to draw up that loop of yarn. Both strands of yarn should be pulled to one side of the latch, then the other way around the hook.




Pull the latch hook back out of the rug canvas. You might have to keep hold of the ends of the yarn at first to maintain tension, but then the latch will close itself as it's pulled through the canvas, and the hook will pull the yarn out with it.




What you're left with is a perfect lark's head knot! You can pull the ends of the yarn to tighten it, and then go on and make a billion more!

4. Hem The Raw Edges

When your creation is finished, turn it over and observe how lovely it looks from the back! All that's left is to hem the raw edges. Thread a tapestry needle with a thick thread or embroidery floss.



Fold one raw edge over so that one row of canvas lines up with another, then hem the canvas by catching just those horizontal strands of canvas with your thread.



Continue this for all sides of your creation. If you don't sew, you can also bind the raw edges of your project with iron-on fold-over binding (there's some especially made for rug canvas!), or, if you don't anticipate your creation being machine washed or put to heavy wear, just hot glue it, Bro!



The possibilities for latch hook creations are endless! Yes, you can make actual rugs, but wall hangings are also popular, as are pillow covers. I've seen wreaths, tote bags, and chair covers, and I'm nearly positive that someone in my family had a pair of latch hooked slippers back in the 1980s. If you, too, hung out with a Southern grandma back in the early 80s, please tell me what YOU latch hooked!

Homeschool Science: Would a Blue Whale Fit in Your Driveway?

It would in ours!

Although, to be fair, we DO have a really long driveway...

Measuring whale lengths was the very last activity that I wanted the kids to complete to earn their Girl Scouts of Hawai'i Aloha fun patch, way back when it was actually a unit study based on our 2019 vacation to Kauai!

We just never got around to it last summer, though, and once autumn hit we had so many autumn things to look forward to that it was less tempting to dive back in. Now that we're spending so much more time on our property, however, and ESPECIALLY now that Will's AP exams are over (yay!), we actually do have the time to dive back into some of our unfinished business... and finish it up!

This activity was loosely based on the time that we drew life-sized dinosaurs all over a local park's basketball courts. My dream *had* been to go back to the basketball courts and draw life-sized whales, but we obeyed our governor's strictest stay-at-home order to the letter, and so to modify the activity to be able to be done on our own property, I wondered if we could measure life-size whale lengths on our driveway, and then just draw models of the whale next to its measurement.

Reader, we COULD!

I swear, these Smithsonian Handbooks are some of the best homeschooling resources that I own:

We have a whole stack of them. We used them constantly from the time the kids were toddlers... to today!

The kids each chose a couple of whales that interested them (fighting over who got to pick the narwhal, because OF COURSE), then I helped them measure that whale's length on our driveway.

Once they got the length measured, they focused on drawing a good model of their whale and learning its gross anatomy and some facts about it to share with everyone.

Here's Syd working on her blue whale, which does, indeed, just fit in our driveway!

I think everyone's favorite part of homeschooling is how we can interact with and love on our pets all day. They seem to know when the kids are doing something especially interesting or unusual, and they always want to join in!

Both kids really enjoyed this project!

Ah, here's one thing that I do NOT so much appreciate about homeschooling. Guess who's fighting again?

Someone threw a piece of chalk at her sister, and someone else kicked her sister. It's fine.

I also like homeschooling because generally, we're pretty chill about distractions here. Want to take a break from memorizing whale anatomy to chalk your father's freshly-washed hair?

It's art!

Spots also participated in Homeschool Art, which is what she gets for lying down on somebody's chalk rainbow:

Eventually, the kids remembered their whales, and finished their whales, and we all took a whale walk along the length of each whale, and then listened as each kid explained interesting facts about that whale's life and significant details of its anatomy:

And that's how we finally finished our unit study of Hawaii!

Six Months Ago: Teach Your Kids to Make Applesauce

One Year Ago: An Alice in Wonderland Birthday Party for She Who is Thirteen

Two Years Ago: Sports Legends and Space at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis

Three Years Ago: Physics and Force at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis

Four Years Ago: Homeschool Science: Zometool Crystallizations

Five Years Ago: I Let My Kids Drive the Lawnmower

Six Years Ago: Cahokia Mounds Homeschool Field Trip

Seven Years Ago: Zooming through the Montessori Green Series

Eight Years Ago: Geography with Montessori Pin Flags

Nine Years Ago: Tutorial: Easy Rainbow Cake

Ten Years Ago: My Child as a Confederate Soldier

Eleven Years Ago: Wildflowers, Interpreted

Twelve Years Ago: At Last, a Tie-Dyed Quilt!

I Bought a Vintage Disney Puzzle off of Ebay

So, you know, that's about how I'm doing during this pandemic!

I've actually been looking for this Disney Fantasy puzzle, manufactured in 1981, for decades. I don't really remember gobs and gobs from my childhood, but one of my most vivid--and happiest!--memories is working this puzzle with some of the adults in my life at my grandparents' giant wooden dining room table.

The funny thing is that I remember the puzzle being super challenging--like, it had EVERY Disney character on it! So many Disney characters!--but I was probably only about 5 or 6 years old. 

And the puzzle actually only has 300 pieces!

Fridays after our school day and Matt's work day have ended are what I've come to think of as Happy Hour. I set up a new puzzle and a podcast (Welcome to Night Vale or The Magnus Archives are current family favorites), or some coloring and an audiobook (we're currently medium-way through Dracula), or just crosswords and Syd's Spotify playlist (she's no longer heavy on the Billie Eilish!), and, most importantly for getting the kids' buy-in, SNACKS. Matt makes the adults cocktails, and we just hang out around the table and chill. 

It turns out that a 300-piece puzzle is just about perfect for chilling around a big table on a Friday night, with margaritas and Cheez-Its and Zebra Cakes (because SNACKS!).

It took one to two adults and one to two kids about two-and-a-half hours to put together this puzzle--

--and it's just as adorable and interesting as I remembered!

Syd asked, "Where are all the princesses?", and that's one of the most interesting things, because in 1981, there weren't many princesses! 1981's Disney was still very much associated with anthropomorphized cartoon animals:

Alas, all the racist characters are present--see the crows from Dumbo? And the Br'er animals from Song of the South?

But you've also got some pretty deep cuts from the other Disney cartoons. When is the last time you've seen Clarabelle Cow?

Syd also noticed this one--why the snot is Tinkerbell's dress PINK?!?

Ugh I love it SO MUCH!!! I don't know what happened to the one that I had when I was six, but this one I am keeping forever, and I am FOR SURE going to put it together again while watching Disney movies when we buy a month of Disney+ later this summer (HAMILTON IS COMING TO DISNEY+!!!!!!!!!).

But only the movies that came out by 1981. And not the racist ones.

I'll let you know what color Tinkerbell's dress is!

P.S. If you, too, remember liking Disney circa 1981, this 1981 Disney newspaper is hella cool. I *might* have gone to Disney World the first time around then (although the only thing that I remember about that trip is the Main Street Electrical Parade, particularly Pete's Dragon scaring the shit out of me), so it's interesting to see what was going on!