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 :).

More car stitching

When I think about the HOURS I spent in the car this summer, I'd like to also think I was able to get TONS of work done. But since I get awfully woozy in the car, too, I'll just go ahead and be impressed with my own work. I found that a very slow version of embroidery was perfect: lap-compact, not too sadly affected by jostling, and quick to put away.

Crafting for girls is much easier than for boys, and I have two beloved September birthday boys that I needed gifts for. I settled on little pillows embroidered with their own designs. The project was inspired by one in Amanda Blake Soule's (soulemama.typepad.com) The Creative Family. With colors and themes to match their rooms. And I must show the great backing fabric for the rocket-launch one: count-down! I love it muchly.From ohdeedoh (apartment therapy's children's design site) you can find a how-to for a similar project here, and a great review of the book here.

mermaidens

I would really love to stay up all night and blog about all of my summer projects, but since I have tried that 3-4 times this week working on post-vacation catch-up (of both the household and mental varieties), I really need to get some beauty and mama's-patience sleep to get ready for THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL tomorrow.

But Marian's first post of the year gave me the bloggy itch, so I will post just one: my August nieces' birthday gifts. Appropriate because they were my first projects from the book I gushed about in my last post (weeks ago!). I chose the mermaiden doll, and if you want her to be yours, you are very very lucky because she just happens to be the one free pattern from the book lurking around blogland (on the Martha Stewart Crafts Dept. blog, here). Much of the sewing is machine, but they have plenty of hand-worked fussy bits, so these lovely ladies were part of my road trip. The recycled felted wool sea buddies were part road trip, part late night crafting with my sister.Amari's is *ahem* not mailed yet (but boxed & in the car!), so I don't have her reaction to brag about, but Ellee was rather madly in love. She saw me working on hers a bit (I was trying to cram it in before her birthday party), and offered to help, since we'd sewed together when I visited her in Arkansas in March. She hinted that she'd like one of her own ("you can make this for me"), but I had to tell her "Later, Ellee, but this one is for my niece." When she opened it up that afternoon, she was quite giddy with mermaid joy, and paid it this supreme-from-her compliment when she was showing it off to my sister-in-law: "It's not pink, but I like it." She had it with her every minute for the last two days we spent with her.The playcloths were a major Old Navy find: a gorgeous scarf clearanced to $1.99 made of three shades of blue cotton gauze stitched along one side. I cut it in half to make two, and the resulting cloths still long enough to be put to good dress-up use (I saw it in action). You should be so lucky! I bought green, purple, and blue, and found another purple one at ON just this week (though a bit more, since it wasn't 1/2 off clearance day), so you might still be in luck.... Perfect for wrapping, too.

Wee Wonderfuls was my first blog crush

I'm happily road-tripping around the West, and taking a bit of a blog break, but had to sneak in and post a review of the gorgeous book I have on the bed next to me: Wee Wonderfuls: 24 Dolls to Sew and Love.

When I discovered craft blogs 4 years ago, Hillary Lang's weewonderfuls.com was my first blog crush. I've purchased and sewn several of her patterns, was pleased as punch to see the pending book announcement, and so excited to get the e-mail this week that her books were shipping a bit earlier than expected. I'm a big fan of Hillary's, appreciating her writing and aesthetic, so I was expecting to love this book (bought one for me and one for my mum, shipped here on vacation because I thought we could ooo and ahh over them together). I can be quite critical of craft books, however: many seem to just be riding on an artist or blogger's niche fame and don't really offer anything new. But _this book does not disappoint_.

24 Dolls just came today, so I haven't actually sewn any of the projects, but I have sewn her patterns before and they're usually well tested. I particularly appreciate this book because:

(1) The photography is excellent. Not only is it design-gorgeous, but each view of a project shows useful aspects that help the reader in recreating or appreciating the toy's details.

(2) The illustrated instructions are very clear. Extras like color-contrasted stitch lines and measurements will keep me from making first-timer mistakes.

(3) There is an excellent mix of projects. Gender, detail, fabric type, size, and play use are varied. I could recognize each as uniquely Hillary's, but they are different from each other and from her previously shared or published patterns.

(4) The extensive "Wee Wonderfuls Basics" section at the end covering materials, methods, and expert hints is worth the price of purchase itself. It's clear enough for beginners and thorough enough for toy-maker-aholics such as myself.

(5) Although the instructions themselves are direct, each is headed with Hillary's own trademark best-friend commentary. She is so in love with these dolls; how can I help but share her enthusiasm? I do like a friend to "project" with, and am glad to have her along.

I am very happy.

(and so are my August-birthday nieces...hmmm...which doll to start on first??)

I think the "Mermaiden." I found some gorgeous blue gauzy scarves on clearance at Old Navy today for $1.98 that will make the ultimate sea play cloths. But I think I might shrink her a little bit. My only complaint about wee wonderfuls patterns has been that they're not quite as wee as I want them. But I am a bit crazy that way.

Summer co-op camp: day two

Wednesday was a more low-key camp morning at our shadiest local township park. I brought piles of washed wool, some dyed in kool-aid, and the girls experimented with carding, spinning, and plying wool. I was rather delighted with the results and itchy to spin more myself.


The playground, trails, and water mister won their share of child attention, and I did a lot of chasing after Reuben (though perhaps, again, not as much as I should have), so we didn't get to all of the wool introduction activities I had hauled along (felting or weaving or sewing wee delights with felted wool sweaters). But later we might :). For now, wool bracelets it is!

Summer co-op camp, day one

I found this leaf while cleaning up. Day one: nature crafts embodied

We've had two days of kid camp so far, and the memories of both make me grin here at my tired HP so late at night.

Day one was as lovely as I'd imagined. It was most successful from my standpoint because I wasn't teaching and could dedicate a lot of time to chasingthough probably not quite as much as I should have. This kid has an instinct for driving me crazy. That dislodged board in the photo above, for example: no matter how many times I lined it back up, he would move it "open" before he walked past. Which was frequently, because the iron gate was a mighty temptation to my hinge-loving man. If only I was so persistent in straightening up after him at home....

I loved that Isla (tribal queen) & Reuben showed up matchy-matchy green and brown
But while she painted her face, Reuben painted his clothes and I had to scrub them while the paint was wet because I like those funny one-pieces WAY more than my husband does :), so by the end of the day...well, they still matched, even green gone.

(Alas, the naps were far too brief. Reuben's, for instance, was cut short when I asked Becci to bring out her gourd instruments to play show and tell. And play. Oops, mama...).

Our activities for the first day were great. They seemed especially magical to me, I think, because I didn't do anything other than show up and admire, which I am good at.

Rock painting



Artist trading card sandpaper prints (do you know about artist trading cards? Do read the wiki if not and make plans...)

I couldn't shut up about this one; the results were amazing and the kids loved it: crayon on sandpaper, iron transfer it to cardstock & watercolor wash the background. I can't wait to try it on fabric.The ironed wax had a little halo that the watercolor wash highlights. Audrey called this one Hestia's Flame (and I don't need to explain that to Lightning Thief fans).Pinecone bird feedersand A nature scavenger hunt
with great details like twig scrolled instructionsand little bookletswith clever envelope covers

and "leapfrog from the walnut tree to the gazebo" tasks.(about 1/2 the kids, after they completed the scavenger hunt)

We feasted on mint tea made from leaves (apple mint, lemon balm, and spearmint) the children gathered themselves during an introductory tour and homemade granola bars.And finished up with time in Big Spring.56 degrees year round. But shallow and fairly slow and so very lovely.
Luckily your feet get numb pretty quickly and then it's not too bad :).

spins

In preparation for wool Wednesday of summer fun camp next week, Marian and I made CD drop spindles, then Becci & I tested them (Marian chose kid play over mom play, imagine that...).
See my fine purple-and-white first attempt (my first use of the wool kool-aid dyed here--it's brighter than this 10 pm photo) on the crazy-good goat find Becci bought for us at the Newville library book sale. From the flyleaf of this 1965 book (handily stapled on the first page by library personnel 40 years ago): "Schnitzel, leader of a herd of yodeling goats, is on his way to becoming world famous. In The Sound of Music, a movie to be released about the time this book is published, Schnitzel appears in an appealing puppet sequence. At Thanksgiving, he was a feature of Macy's Parade. And at Christmas, Schnitzel was invited to entertain at a White House party for children. Through this book, Schnitzel and his Yodel Cheese are sure to make new friends among children all over the country."

After reading a couple of tutorials, we basically followed these instructions for making our CD spindles, but instead of the well nut, I just took my CD to the hardware store (Pague & Fegan, at 153 years the oldest hardware store in Pennsylvania) and found a channeled rubber grommet that fit 2 CDs stacked together and then a dowel the right size to squeeze into that. 2 CDs (free) + rubber grommet ($0.54) + 7/16" oak dowel ($0.99; I cut it in 1/3) + cup eye hook ($0.19). I found a fat lipliner pencil sharpener that fit our dowels, Marian sharpened them, and with brief use of a drill & a handsaw & some sandpaper, we had ourselves 3 neat little drop spindles (I made 2 CD ones and 1 with a wooden wheel) for very little. You can see all of our supplies out on the patio in the photo above. After a little perusal of the instructions available, I found the youtube videos done by Megan LaCore, and followed them. I thought she was very clear and also didn't drive me crazy, so she won.