Heard of kickstarter.com?
Kind of like Kiva, but more first world. Which is good and bad.
Little capital campaigns that give you hey-I'm-a-helper cute rewards. My friend John used it to fund his self-published book last year. My only other backer effort so far.

It could definitely get addictive just browsing...
I just pledged in at the $15 backer level for Lille Huset: one extra little house and one bicycle (had to!). Brilliant and beautiful across the board.
I love them very much.

I would like to GET THEM ALL.
But should get a job first....

(PS: if you're interested, this particular campaign ends 4/22. If she gets her goal, it's a go--1/2 way there!--and she gets her $ and we get our swag, and if not, well, not.)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1166919790/lille-huset?ref=live

UPDATE: Goal met! But can still purchase kits at kickstarter rate for a limited time. I would, if I were you...

TRACKS!

Reuben self-taught a deep and abiding passion for trains via Thomas the Tank Engine and that love is deep and true. Most days, he spends at least an hour building tracks and pulling an assortment of engines and cars around, and loves for us to join him. I think building toys are especially nice because they give older siblings and parents something to DO when trying to play with I-still-prefer-parallel-play toddlers. We acquired some fancy tracks for Christmas and a whole bin full of extra tracks in a miracle-of-a-hand-me-down, and the more complex set-ups that these allow often leave us with this situation:After some browsing, I found short attaching segments to purchase in a couple of places online, but decided to wait awhile. Their price alone wasn't too horrifying, but when you add shipping...a familiar dilemma. I thought I'd wait until there were additional things we wanted to purchase from the shop. Or a holiday for the giving. I remember kind of wishing in passing that I had a router so I could try to make my own matching tracks. Then one day it occurred to me to work with what I had: lots of tracks!

On one 8-inch straight track segment, I could trace out 4 joining pieces, using another track as a pattern: two each of male/male and female/female segments.I tried to wait until I purchased finer-toothed blades for my scroll saw (I only had some 12ers from a thick-wood project last Christmas; the poor saw has been neglected...), but then decided one afternoon I would be happy with rough results and cut just one.
The blade I used didn't make 90 degree turns very well, but after a little sanding work with my Dremel, it fit neatly enough.
Heady with success, I purchased a new set of blades...well, a week later. Busy along with heady along with forgetful. But the next cuts were cleaner
and up to the challenge!

* actual basement action shots make up in cool what they lack in photographic excellence ;)

At Audrey's request, I tried cutting a curved segment into two shorter ones as well, but centering the link placement correctly was more difficult than I thought (ie, they only fit with a good shove. More Dremel action! Or a do-over). Just thought I'd let you know in case you want to try ;).

birthday in the woods

Yesterday morning birthday boy and I escaped to a friend's little corner of the woods, where she is the steward of a farm on the weekends. She is the lovely sort of person whose house looks like this:

(spot one of my bowls? And the fired version of these wee pumpkins?)

We had honey blueberry muffins, lemon tea, wood trucks, and a nice fire inside, followed a quick walk out.
I infinitely preferred the morning to the afternoon. We took a little trip to Hershey to see one of Marian's specialists (her story; I really will force her to catch y'all up on all of her good news soon), and were caught in the cafeteria by a phone call from Reuben's oncologist. Seems we all had ourselves some tangled communication lines, and instead of being done, baby boy has 5 more rounds of chemotherapy. Which means we're only half done poisoning him. We'll start again next week, juggling 2 kids in the hospital (a minor surgery for Marian) at the front end of the week with an MRI and family escape to the Jersey shore at the end of the week. Maybe even a family photo session if I get me proverbial ducks in a row. And to think that I thought next week ("when everything slows down") would be the week I finally listed what I haven't given away (houseguests always get something) of the pottery I finished in my lonely little etsy shop (evidence that it was once active here).

Sigh.
Gird up loins.
Get on with it.

We attended (Nathan spoke at) the funeral of a good friend on Monday, the most eloquent of reminders that biology can be a fearsome foe. As much as I hate chemotherapy, I hate cancer more.

Wednesdays in the woods

Today was full, but we squeezed in a bit of woods in the afternoon. After Audrey's guitar lesson, which brought us to country roads, I drove a bit farther to the edge of Michaux, our closest state forest. I chose the first fire road I saw, and stopped the car once the woods were all around. It was cold and the kids were hungry and the baby finally asleep after fighting it in a particularly thrashing way, so we were not getting out. I rolled down the windows to let the smell and the sound in and we were silent for a few minutes. I asked the girls to notice.

Audrey saw the different thicknesses of the tree trunks, and how, after a length of bare trunk, the branches would suddenly spread and the leaves make a one-layer carpet in the air. She heard water.

I saw the translucent brightness of the leaves, as if they captured all the sunlight to share. And looked beyond the near trees to see those in deeper. I identified the water as a just-starting rain, falling on a million leaves.

Marian was carsick after doing a math worksheet and wouldn't talk.

beautiful birch

Five years ago I checked an extra bag on a flight returning from Idaho Falls (my hometown) to Nashville (my home at the time). It was full of birch limbs pruned from the trees my dad planted in our front yard 25 years ago. In our continual quest to find/create more storage space in the chain of small apartments we fit our growing family into, Nathan had been building shelves and I, a long-time birchophile, thought that shelves with birch supports would be crazy-amazing.

Darn tootin' they are.I found these two photos in the August 2008 photo folder, when I finally sorted the limbs I wanted and decided on a shelf design, then for Reuben's nursery.A year later, I surprised the whole household by waking up feeling very vigorous and FINISHED.(Here's the obligatory Reuben shot: helping me sort the finally-found-that-box! branches. He thought the whole thing took way too long.)

To cut the limbs to exact shelf-supporting lengths I--okay, N did the work--borrowed a friend's chop saw last year (I think that's what it's called: one that pulls the blade down onto the wood). I had 9 branches that were at least 13", which I designated as shelf supports (3 per shelf), and a remaining 4 that were just a bit smaller, which I had cut to 12". I designated those as the bottom legs. We worked from the bottom up, using 1 1/2" wood screws to attach the branches at both ends. I predrilled the holes at first, but by the second shelf was only drilling a shallow hole (with a large bit) to countersink the screw head, which still prevented splitting. I charmed Nathan into being my good helper for the screwing-together part, and it was extraordinarily helpful to have another set of hands for this shelf's assembly because the branches don't stand by themselves for long.

I was going to attach another board along the back to add stability, but the finished shelf is sturdier than I (okay, Nathan) originally thought, so I left it off. Since the shelf will be holding my extra pottery, I am going to screw it to the wall with a couple of wee brackets so a certain little troublemaker (who is learning to crawl now that his arm feels better) can't pull it down (and I can't knock it over--the whole family had chocolate milk on the carpet tonight and guess who was the only one to spill hers?).

I wanted a loose organic feel, so spaced the branches irregularly, while keeping their support function in mind. I chose 8" wide 3/4" poplar planks (well sanded--progressing from 100 to 150 to 220 to a silky 320 is always worth the time) because I love the luminosity of the poplar grain. Unfortunately, that didn't quite come through once I stained them green (I used a very thin rubbed-on coat of IKEA's green stain, followed by a couple of coats of their beeswax polish. I've been very pleased with IKEA's wood finishes; they are inexpensive, easy to work with, and beautiful. I've read that they are solvent-free and vegetable-based, though I haven't thoroughly researched it. The site lists ingredients as "Linseed oil, Wood treatment oil, Pigment" and "Beeswax, Wax, Linseed oil, Wood treatment oil", respectively. They're pretty stinky, but I'm pretty sure that's the linseed oil. 24 hours later, the smell on these particular shelves is minimal, though I have had it linger for days when I put on lots of coats in a row. I give them a hearty recommendation.I love the color anyway and think the whole effect is very sunlight-streaming-through-a-birch-leaf canopy.I cannot believe these shelves are finally standing behind me as I type, ready to be filled once I paint this room (I will tape tomorrow!).

I would be so envious of myself.