lookee!

I finally updated my blogrolls.
There is some very good stuff out there, friends.
Check 'em out!

Friday fairy crafternoons

I started the fall with fierce Friday crafternoon plans.

And have had one: a couple of weeks ago.A Fall Fairy Friday. Small friends made chenille-stem fairies, and mamas made little bodies with wrapped wire armature. Our fairy-making spilled into kids-home time, so Marian got to wrap as well, my girl with the clever fingers.I used to make quite a lot of these little honeys, and it was fun to haul out all my supplies again, though they've spread to several different bins and I spent more time gathering than actually making. Which means that I have 5 head-and-clothes-less fall fairies, most of whom were wrapped last fall. Poor darlings; their chances aren't good for this autumn, either....

missed this morning

smudgy early-light babies-reading-Boynton in my bed

Cousin Mykita left yesterday! Reuben is mourning with a double ear infection.
(more of our visit, photo-rich, here)

oh baby!

Camie also completed Reuben's baby book just before she left. It's been a collaborative process over the last two years (meaning, she asks me what I want, then does all of the work between her own toddler and her master's thesis and...). She doesn't owe him a birthday gift for the next 18 years! I do hope I fill it instead of just stare at it. I have some other notebooks to transfer information from, and so many photos to go through...

Plenty of incentive, now:

Walnut-inked dividersMonthly pages (my request) are each hand-illustratedStab-bound so I can potentially add and remove pages (if I mess them up horribly)Beauty on every pageHmmm...now I also need to make one copy of his ever-planned-and-never-executed birth announcement (I tried to lino carve it to block print, but wasn't happy) to include on that particular page.

books!

I took my sister and her family to the airport in DC yesterday, and the house is eerily quiet. It will be interesting to track Reuben's reaction in the next few days. His cousin Mykita's arrival was perfect: just a day after his beloved sisters started back to school. I'm envisioning a calm routine and lovely working-together mornings, but they just might be my-mom-is-dull-as-dirt mornings. Time to work those playgroups!

We did not do nearly the crafting and project-ing that we envisioned, but I did make it a priority to get tutelage in her skilled specialty, bookbinding. I do love a handmade book. I'm letting it stay "her" thing, but can't resist the opportunity to try something new, and Becci and I each finished books in two afternoon sessions. It's especially nice to try a new craft with an expert, because they have all of the great tools, like corner cutters and Teflon folders, that aren't strictly necessary but make you feel awesome.I didn't get a shot of Becci's book, but here are the ones Camie and I worked on.
We were both feeling woodsy, it seems(surprise, surprise). Camie chose a weathered boards paper in my stash caught Camie's eye, and I lined my green mulberry paper book with birch bark strips I gathered during our Memorial Day trip to Vermont.I chose to use cuts of a silky paper that felt like the birch for the pages of this particular book, but I love the deckled edges and multi-colored pages of Camie's.Another book she finished:And in the next post: the best book of them all!

huckleberries

Vacations are over, the girls are back in school, and the babies are back in the woods! Wednesdays in the woods started with a bang a couple of weeks ago with the first of much great acorn gathering & the discovery of huckleberry season. The babies were way into it.My sister Camie is visiting from Salt Lake City while her husband Cody, a medical student at the University of Utah, is doing his family practice rural medicine rotation down the street. Her Mykita and my Reuben are a couple of months apart, sweet friends, and total disasters. We're exhausted and the house is a wreck. Plus we decided to take the opportunity for moral support and start cloth diapering (going the gDiaper route with cloth inserts, most of our own making). Just to keep it interesting. We're really loving it :).