weaving major

on blogging (part three of three)

2006-05-01T12:46:00.000-04:00

this is the third and final chapter of my thoughts on blogging. No pictures this time, because it would slow me down from a long-overdue conclusion of my thoughts on blogging.

So, to summarize. Blogging brings me joy and reminds me of the other joys God has given me. It is a journal of sorts, as well as a means of keeping records of my craft projects and keeping in touch with my family.

And blogging is also, for me, unhealthy at times. It distracts me from my children and my dishes and laundry. It becomes an alternate universe where I can escape to numb my feelings of isolation. It feeds my ego, allowing me to be a "writer" and "photographer" at no cost and not much effort.

In my last chapter, I wrote, "Is there a scale on which I can weigh the good and the bad of my blogging, and should I decide whether or not to blog based on the outcome?"

I do think that the good outweighs the bad in blogging. I realize that that is a dangerous thing to say. If you're allergic to peanuts, and a slice of peanut butter pie is only 5% peanut butter, it could still kill you even though the "good" ingredients far outweigh the "bad" ones. And for the rest of the world, the fact that it's 5% peanut butter matters not at all - it's all good pie.

So am I "allergic" to blogging? Could feeding my ego and distracting from my children harm me in some tangible way? Perhaps.

Or take that same slice of peanut butter pie. If you're trying to lose weight.... there's nothing particularly evil about that slice of peanut butter pie, and one slice won't kill you... but if you keep eating that pie, you won't lose the weight. Or if you eat that slice of pie, PLUS a bag of Doritos, PLUS a cupcake, PLUS.... Weight Watchers only allows you a certain number of indulgences, and you'll need to pick whether you want the Doritos or the pie, because if you really need to lose weight, you can't have both.

So am I "overweight" in the things that blogging feeds? Sitting in front of the computer, plugged into an alternate reality, escaping the life that God gave me to enjoy? Focused so much on telling my own story that I've forgotten how, or never learned how, to ask other people about their stories? Have I traded the "real food" of real conversation and real relationships for the "convenience food" of blogging and reading others' blogs? And is it junk food? And if I don't have time for the real thing, or don't know how to forge real relationships as a stay-at-home mom living in a trailer by the side of the highway, then isn't junk food better than starving? Perhaps.

But what initiated this internal debate about "to blog or not to blog" was none of these things. It was the niggling sense that, after a joyful year of writing blogs and taking pictures, God himself was asking me to give up blogging.

Since I tend to be an unrealistic pessimist who's convinced that anything fun or rewarding is bad, and that God is some sort of ogre who always calls me to do hard things and sacrificial things, I asked him to confirm it somehow. To give me some bolstering evidence, or some internal sense that I should be done... SOMEthing.

And in my devotions I read Luke 14:25-35 which says, in part, "...suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for the terms of peace."

This verse is in the larger context of Jesus saying it is going to cost everything to follow him. I never in my life until this last week saw this verse as anything but an extension of the earlier parable about building a tower and estimating the cost.

But it suddenly dawned on me that (arguably) in this parable *God* is the opposing king, and I can futilely fight against his will or I can be smart and ask how much peace will cost me. And the amusing answer is that it costs everything I have. He is so assured of victory in the end that he can demand whatever "ridiculous" terms he likes.

Or, to put it another way, it really all belongs to him anyway. He is not conquering new territory, he is fighting to reclaim all that is rightfully his, which includes me and the possessions I have (wrongfully) called my own. Whether he fights or we make peace, he gets it all. But the difference is -- peace. And peace is what I want.

So, it still seems that he is asking me to give up blogging - that in my case, that is one of the "terms of peace." And I can come up with many reasons why he might be asking me to, but the truth is - I don't know. When a more powerful king and his army arrive at my home, and we have already negotiated the terms of peace, and he says he wants to rip out the garden and enlarge the house, do you argue? Even though it hurts? Do you talk back if he turns your bedroom into a library and moves your room out to the potting shed? The terms of peace, remember? You promised to give up everything, did you not?

In that context, blogging seems like a small thing to give up, even if I don't fully understand why. And it's good to remember that this same king promises that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And that he loves me and that this painful process of letting go is somehow necessary, perhaps like giving up the peanut butter pie to lose a few pounds, even if I'm not allergic to peanuts.

One final question that someone is likely to ask inside their head if not directly:

do I know for sure, for sure that I'm not mistaking God's voice? That I've really heard him correctly? That I'm not just hearing some strange contorted echo of my own conscience and the thoughts other people have thrown my way?

The answer is no, I do not. But I am convinced that God is good, and that he can speak to me, and that the only way I will ever learn to properly listen to him is to keep trying to hear him and trying to do what I think he's calling me to do, using the Bible and good friends who are better listeners to help me sort through all the conflicting voices. I'm trusting that as I go I will learn better how to hear him.

And who knows? Perhaps after we rip this garden out and enlarge the house, God will say "now plant another garden over here" - and I'll begin blogging again. Or perhaps not.

Meanwhile, I will enjoy the larger house , the extra time in my life created by the loss of the blog - and I will try to listen for God's voice to see how we should fill this new room in the house. Listening more attentively to both God and my children seem to be a good place to start.

on blogging (part two of three)

2006-04-22T22:09:00.000-04:00

This post, the second of three about blogging, is about the drawbacks of and concerns I have with blogging. Photos here are from my yard over this past week.

For me, the biggest drawback to blogging is that quality blogging consumes an enormous amount of time. I can't stand to post "just text", I need pictures to go with that text. Which means, among other things, that I take lots of pictures all the time.

And my standards have gotten higher over time - I want not just ordinary pictures, but real beauty. I want to not just write about the past week, but have the whole blog entry well-composed and meaningful, poignant, beautiful. And the amount of time involved in that effort has run smack into the amount of time needed to simply maintain life as mentioned before: dishes, laundry, bills and so on.

I have a friend who used to be a missionary; he often said that he had time to either live the life God had called him to live, or to write about it, but not both. The older I've gotten the more I've empathized with his words. I've let several things slide (more or less, depending on the day) as a result of blogging, including writing our own prayer letters, writing emails, and simply taking the time to listen to and play with my children.

Recently my photo-hosting company, buzznet, changed how you access photos remotely. It makes my old photo links obsolete, though the photos are still there. I started to go back through my old blog entries and change the photo links, but found the process of changing about 150 blog entries (each with 2-5 photos!) quite daunting. Which brings me to my second concern:

Blogging (like everything else) is a temporary thing. I know that sounds self-evident, but I sometimes forget. Sometimes I fool myself into believing that the pictures and words I post in my blog will be preserved for all time - that I have actually accomplished something eternal by writing the words I write. Part of what prompted me to move my photos and text of most of my craft projects onto a free blog site was that a series of other free websites either went under or mysteriously lost all the pages I'd written. And now my photos are unavailable for many of my entries, which I could remedy with a few days' work... but with no guarantees that it won't be lost again in another year or two. I'm reminded of the photo a virtual friend of mine posted of a graveyard in Finland, where your remains would be removed if the rent wasn't paid. Nothing, ultimately, is eternal except what God chooses to preserve.

Blogging has also dumbed down my writing. I don't write in compound complex sentences anymore, and my paragraphs are generally only one or two sentences (these three installments notwithstanding!) This in itself is not bad- it has meant I have learned to write in true 'blog style' which is more like newspaper or magazine writing than novel-writing or poetry.

But I've discovered that a steady diet of writing blogs and nothing else is like Edmund's "Turkish Delight" in the Narnia books - it doesn't, ultimately, meet my need for writing. It's a temporary thing which I enjoy doing but leaves me unfulfilled, with a craving to write more and more and more. I have a thousand ideas for blog entries tucked away in the back of my head, most of which, if I write them, will emerge half-baked and less than I originally intended, even after a huge time investment. There's no putting it on the shelf and pondering it for a few days or weeks or months. There's no time spent in the chrysalis getting wings.

Blogging is, in many ways, too easy to be a real art form for me - my thoughts are published before I have really finished mulling them over, and I'm on to other projects. I treat it in some ways like a private journal, except that it isn't private. And I'm well aware of that fact. There are times I live for the comments my blog entry may or may not get. Instant feedback, praise and honor - more of Edmund's "Turkish Delight" which fills me up momentarily, but leaves me hungry for more.

Even my self-imposed goal of "writing [only] about the things that bring me joy" has its drawbacks. While it's been good for me, it sometimes gives me a sense of artificiality. I feel like I portray my life as more colorful and wonderful than it actually is. The trials and tribulations don't get recorded, unless of course they are over with. Sometimes I have an air of forced cheerfulness, where everything seems too good to be true. And I've realized that even when I only write about the joys, there are even joys too personal or heartfelt to write meaningfully about in public - at least for me. So it's strange, then, to limit myself not only to things that bring me joy, but things that bring me joy which also wouldn't embarrass myself or a close friend, and also wouldn't reveal too much about myself, and also wouldn't make me look like a hopeless case.

Part of my original goal, too, was to move my craft files over to a new ad-free website. Disappearing pictures notwithstanding, I've done that. And I haven't done any "quality" crafts in a long time, just the fun quick kids' crafts as befits this stage of my life.

And now, after a year of blogging, the same flowers are blooming in my garden that I blogged about (and posted pictures of) last year. I am enjoying them again this year, but are my loyal readers?

Often I feel that I've run out of content and am only blogging to buy compliments or to fulfill some sort of strange contract with my readers, whoever and wherever they may be. So that they (if they are as undisciplined as I am) can waste more time online looking at my blog along with the others, hoping to find something of value or interest...?

Reading blogs can be a bit like a casino at times, can't it? You pay your ten or twenty minutes every day, and sometimes you hit the big time with some really insightful thought, or a great craft that you would truly enjoy doing, or a deep belly-laugh that really lifts your spirits...

...but more often than not, you wake up in a daze realizing that you've just wasted two good hours of your day, and really should have gotten the dishes washed and the laundry folded, or the email written to your friend.

Which makes me think that perhaps the online "community" that I thought I was joining is not truly a community in any fulfilling sense of the word, at least not for me - but rather an addictive sort of entertainment that dulls my loneliness. At least that seems to be true much of the time.

So... to blog or not to blog? Is blogging a joyful reminder of all the good things God has poured on me, or is it an ego sop and a waste of time? Is it a "witnessing tool" or a distraction from my real ministry? Is there a scale on which I can weigh the good and the bad of my blogging, and should I decide whether or not to blog based on the outcome?

Tune in...

um...

...well, tune in sometime soon, whenever I finish getting all my scattered thoughts together.

on blogging (part one of three)

2006-04-18T12:26:00.000-04:00

This past weekend was Easter weekend. It was also my "blogiversary" - one year ago today (which due to Easter's strange calendar was not Easter), I started my blog. Both Easter and my blogiversary seem to be a good time for me to reflect on the practice of blogging.

This first part (of three) will be about the joys and benefits of blogging, the second part will be about the drawbacks and concerns I have with blogging, and the third part will be my conclusion.

The photos in this post are all from a glorious summery Easter weekend downstate with my side of the family. The aerial photos were taken (by kite) by Daniel and my dad; the photo of me and Chickie was taken by Kim.

My sister has been blogging for a few years now, but I never considered it for myself until one of Daniel's co-workers first put the thought in my head. He suggested a "team blog" at work, actually, with staff and spouses contributing. Though his idea never caught on with the rest of the team, it started me thinking about blogging and the purposes of blogging - whether or not blogging could be in itself a spiritual activity, a way in which to honor God.

I looked at religious blogs. I read political blogs. I read funny slice-of-life blogs.

And then I found craft blogs. I was smitten.

Here were other smart, witty, creative stay-at-home moms (as well as single working women, college students, grandmas and working moms) who thought about life and beauty and joy. Women who delighted in everything from wildflowers to Kool-aid dyed yarn, women who celebrated their three-year-old's first watercolor paintings and the cute cookies they made for their second-grader's class, women who made stunning quilts and adorable felt stuffed animals.

Here was a community, and I wanted to belong. Not only to belong, but to be a follower of Christ in this community. To rejoice in the creator of the crocus and not just the flower itself. To celebrate the maker of colors and seasons, to delight in the one who gave us our children and our gardens and our skill with the needle or paintbrush. To see that all of life points back to a creator who loves beauty and detail and color and design.

A year ago, then --after a gentle push from another friend who assured me that I didn't need to spend all my writing time trying unsuccessfully to write "meaningful" things -- I started a blog, and gave myself a manifesto - a purpose statement. That long-winded manifesto has been distilled over time: to blog about things that bring me joy.

It's been a wonderful year. Blogging has given me the excuse to lay on the ground next to my flowers with my camera, even in the slush, to capture their beauty. It has given me the extra 'push' I needed to finish several unfinished craft projects. It has reminded me to stop whining and to "count my blessings" - everything from the sunshine to the funny things my children say.

Blogging has made me look over my shoulder, several times a week, to see the gems God has dropped in my path which I had been too busy or preoccupied to notice. The beauty of a rainy window, or of beads in a bucket, or of a not-quite-opened flower in my garden.

Writing about my babies becoming toddlers, or my oldest son losing his front teeth, or my daughter learning to bake has made these ordinary things the milestones they truly are. Looking for "something joyful to blog about" in the midst of a dreary week or after a disappointment has sometimes turned my grumbling to heartfelt praise (And, admittedly, sometimes not. I'm often stubborn and unrepentant!)

Blogging has also fulfilled my urge to write during a year when "real" writing has been nearly impossible. Click a button and I'm published - that's an accomplishment, it's something tangible I have done today. I have written five coherent sentences, and I have remembered to celebrate the beauty in today. For a day that is otherwise occupied in laundry and dishes - or breaking up fights between kids, or taking care of sick children, or paying bills - it is nice to feel like I have done -- or at least brought to my own and others' attention -- something "real" or something of beauty.

Though I haven't been able to invest enough time to make my blog "all that it could be" in terms of both writing and photos, it has been not only a way to remember my joys and accomplishments, but itself a source of joy and satisfaction.

One of the hardest years of my life thus far (infant twins becoming toddlers, huge changes and tensions at Daniel's workplace which is also our main community, losing Dan's dad) has also been a year of joy, and that's good to remember.

If I had the past year to do over, I believe I would still choose to blog. It's been a good thing.

these colors are unretouched

2006-04-12T11:41:00.000-04:00

The snow we had last week has melted.

We're still working on the big piles of December and January snow, though the rain we're having today helps.

The woods are about 3/4 melted now. And the crocuses are just about done blooming. These pictures (from last week) are all I have to look at on a rainy Wednesday.

Between two mini-vacations and two rake-wielding toddlers when I'm outside, I haven't kept up with the start-to bloom dates of my flowers this year. But I guess I can figure it out with the EXIF data from my digital pictures, if I want to know someday.

I noticed yesterday that my not-scilla is ready to bloom. I noticed it as I just about dug into its home to plant something else there.

Yes, I keep a complete map of all the plants I've planted and where... but I always forget to consult it *before* planting anything!

In other gardening news, I bought some dwarf red Bleeding Heart at Stuff-Mart and discovered how to momentarily interest my seven-year-old son in gardening.

He's excited that he gets to tell people at school that his mother dug a hole in her yard and buried a bleeding heart in it.

To be fair, he was also interested in how the flower got its name and whether or not that dead-looking clump of roots really was alive. We'll find out soon!

addendum to self

2006-04-09T11:08:00.000-04:00

P.S. Self--

I've been reconsidering my recommendation at planting crocuses under the aforementioned cedar tree.

Sure, it's sunny all day there...

but the wildlife is another consideration.

How about some nice bright yellow Winter Aconite instead?

Or perhaps some Spring Meadow Saffron - Bulbicodium Vernum. Which is disappointingly pale pink, but is lovely otherwise and something the critters won't like.

Meanwhile, self, I have had a bit of bright color in the backyard, in the form of a pileated woodpecker and a downy woodpecker.

So if you're fabulously wealthy in July, you can buy me a camera with a quality zoom lens and tripod, so I can take better photos of the wildlife.

After you buy me my winter aconite, that is.

Thanks again,
love, Me

eggs

2006-04-08T10:20:00.002-04:00

Since we are headed south for Easter weekend, we dyed our Easter eggs early.

We made a big mess, of course, and cracked at least five of the eggs - good thing they were hard boiled.

Mac's hands are green and Bubbie's are orange, at least until their bath tonight.

Lots of people seem surprised that I let my little kids play with bowls of dye and eggs, and that we perpetually make messes at our house. Sometimes I wonder if it's more hassle than it's worth. My kids don't even like hard-boiled eggs.

But when I see the happy bright colored eggs and (more importantly) the grins on everyone's faces, I'm always glad we went ahead and made the mess.

snowmelt cookout

2006-04-04T12:17:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I read about other families and their traditions and I think "Oh no! We have no traditions at all! Our kids are growing up without traditions!" Then we will do something that we do every year, and often I won't even realize that we are in the middle of starting our own traditions. Such is the Snowmelt Cookout for us.

Every year when it's warm and sunny enough to stay outside for awhile in the evening, but long before all the snow is melted, we have a cookout. One year Chickie sat in her carseat for the cookout, bundled in blankets, and we fed her tiny bits of grilled hamburger bun. Last year we hauled Mac and Bubbie's highchairs out on the porch, since crawling babies didn't go well with slushy puddles.

This year everyone ran around and stomped in the mud and ate hot dogs and climbed on the riding mower, finally melted out from its four feet of snow. We were in winter coats and piles of dirty snow were everywhere, but we celebrated the sunshine and the warm weather and the crocuses in bloom.

And we did it not a moment too soon, because yesterday winter returned. (The second photo below is of snow on our car window.)

Like the crocuses, though - or perhaps because of them - we're still holding out hope for spring.

spring break

2006-04-02T14:08:00.000-04:00

like nearly everyone else in the Midwest, we headed south this past week for Spring Break.

...South, that is, to Wisconsin.

....OK, so it wasn't exactly tropical.

But at least there wasn't any snow there.

And aside from some time for Papa to do some not-too-exciting KAPping and a little household repair,

there were tractors to climb on.

and sidewalk chalk to draw with.

and a Granny willing to play board games.

and a Papa willing to allow a little time on the computer.

and an Uncle who reads Calvin and Hobbes.

and, best of all (according to the two youngest ones)...

trains came by Granny's front door at least twice a day.

This time Mac and Bubbie were big enough to see the trains, with a little help from the heat register.

for my sister-in-law-in-law

2006-04-01T15:55:00.000-05:00

No obligation, express or implied, is put upon Tracy (my sister in law in law) for this idea. But since she made one of my other quilt designs, I thought I'd give her first dibs on my other strange and perhaps wonderful idea.

Essentially, you make a bunch of flat puzzle piece shaped stuffed animals, each with four buttons and four buttonholes. You can then assemble them into any quilt you want.

All measurements are tentative and nothing has been actually attempted by the dreamer who thought this up when things were slow in her secretarial job 15 years ago. So in addition to no obligation, there's also no guarantee, express or implied, that this might actually turn out. As a matter of fact, I can think of several problems:

The buttons might not exactly be comfy to lay on.
There might be gaps or goofy overlaps at the corners where the four puzzle pieces join.
I don't know if the buttons will look fun on the quilt, or will just look dopey.
The puzzle pieces just overlap, they don't actually fit together. And I fear they might look like they just overlap. I'm hoping the generic "puzzle piece shape" will overwhelm your eye enough that you'll see them as puzzle pieces rather than just... um, a mess.
To make an eight-foot-square quilt, you'd have to sew 64 stuffed pieces. That just seems like a LOT of work. Even if you sew flat pockets inside out and only hand-stitch a small section closed.
And 64 pieces means 256 buttons. And worse, 256 button HOLES.
Perhaps you can tell by this list that I don't have an innate love for sewing.

Nonetheless, the idea still attracts me. It's on my list of things to try someday. But hey, Tracy, if you want to try it, I'd be thrilled and honored. Ditto for anyone else who stumbles across this blog entry and wants to have a go at it. But if you do, please let me know... especially if you figure out any shortcuts!

spring and winter

2006-03-25T12:38:00.000-05:00

Spring is here. Sort of.

Today, March 25, my two earliest crocuses - Korolkowii (above) and Tommasinianus (bottom) - bloomed. That's six days earlier than last year's April 1.

The snowmelt crocuses are tiny and beautiful. You get a sense for their scale when you know that it's the tiny fuzzy leaves of my creeping thyme they are poking out of here.

But the deer, as seen from the back window, attest to the fact that it's still very much winter here. Ever seen a deeraffe reaching the topmost branches? They'll eat cedar only when there's nothing else to eat. Which is why I don't plant deer-candy tulips in my garden.

But the still snow-covered ground makes the teeny tiny blossoms in the melted spots against our east and south walls even more luminescent and beautiful.

note to self

2006-03-21T13:23:00.000-05:00

Dear Self,

it is now the equinox. By the solstice you will not believe me unless I present the following evidence.

9 am. The rise under the cedar tree is the first thing melted in the backyard, apart from the failing septic field. Behold, it is also in full sunlight.

So please, this July, buy those bright yellow snowmelt crocuses to plant here. Or some brilliant, rich, intense purple ones. Please-o-please. They really will get enough sunshine here, however shady it looks in July.

12:15 pm. Still in full sun.

You can plant them right up in front of the tree, see? Up where the ground is a few inches higher. The base of the cedar is almost always in the sun, the whole day. I double-checked again this year. For a week now, running.

You aren't fussing about the price, are you, Self? If you succeed in this mission, you are bringing me out of the winter doldrums at least two weeks earlier, as I figure it now. That's two more weeks of vigorous cleaning and scrubbing and energetic re-organizing then you'll get this year. At least that's the theory. Hey, that's worth a $30 gamble, isn't it?

4 pm. Observe the sunshine. Which is still very much present. The house shadows are still a good ten feet away in front of the tree, and the tree shadows are still well away from the base.

Oh, and Self? Don't forget. Bright yellow or purple, as bright as you can buy. Ignore how much you may like pastel shades in the summer. Don't think about subtle tonings and gradations. Skip the bronze penciling and the mottled checkered patterns. Remember. In March you want color, and the more of it the better. OK? OK then. See you soon, I hope.

Thanks a bunch.
Love,

Me.

international ring of camel thieves

2006-03-19T11:52:00.000-05:00

BigE has read a lot of Boxcar Children mysteries in the past year, since he learned to read on his own.

It was not surprising at all to me when he came home from school this past September, talking about some mysterious marks he found on the science center table, shaped like a spider. Nor later, when he mentioned the mysterious scraps of paper left under his desk, NOT left by himself who always cleans his desk area like he is told to do. Who is defacing the science center table? And who is trying to frame BigE?

It didn't particularly surprise me when, by mid-October, he had recruited two of the other fourteen kids in the class to help him sleuth, 'Tom' and 'Jane'.

But now, after seven months of school, the detective work continues. Nearly all of the twelve kids (two moved away) have joined the ranks of 'detective.' Amusingly, it seems that when you join the detectives your name is erased from the list of suspects.

BigE, Tom and Jane continue to head up the detective work as shown in these two recent letters. Every stray mark on every table is analyzed to determine whether it was made by marker, pencil or crayon. Unusual colors of crayons are especially important, since not all the children have the same sixteen color box.

Time of day? Access of other children to the first-grade classroom? One suspect, or several children working together? These and other details are, apparently, discussed frequently at the top of the sledding hill.

The fact that it could be the work of twelve sometimes bored and sometimes sloppy first-graders who have no ulterior motives has not yet entered their minds.

Which is fine with me. Let it be an international ring of camel thieves, then. I'm enjoying the mystery too, and it is keeping three very bright children focused and alert -- even when they are learning addition again, only slower this time.

You never know when they might find another clue.

high time

2006-03-15T15:42:00.000-05:00

There's still snow on the ground. And snow in the forecast.

But it's time to take down the paper snowflakes in the windows. We need to hang up something more colorful.

And, apparently, a lot more fun.

pixelblocks

2006-03-14T07:54:00.000-05:00

The Andfam gave us Pixelblocks for Christmas and only now had time to play, beyond using them as game pieces for imaginary games. Such fun! The blocks are about the size and shape of a single square Lego brick, only they're transparent and come in about 20 colors, and their sides slide together.

we used their online Digital Stained Glass image creator to turn a small picture of a butterfly (shown above) into a very large Monarch, shown below. Their stained glass creator is a slick piece of software, allowing you to tweak your image as you go for best effects, choosing which colors to use or not (we only own 12 of the 20 colors, so we had to turn off 8 colors.)

It gives you a parts list and estimated assembly time at the end, with an online order form if you need to order more of any color. After you're happy with the Pixelblocks version of your picture, it gives you a several-page PDF with a full-size pattern of where the different colors go, so you can assemble your picture right on top of the pattern. I was actually impressed.

It took us probably four or five hours to finish. We used every last orange brick we had (and nearly all our grey and brown) but we had a lot of fun doing it! Now we can't wait to make other things. Unfortunately we need to take the butterfly apart to do it, unless we can come up with a pattern that doesn't use any orange, grey or brown.

Now I want to try making another design using Perler beads (those little plastic tube beads that melt together when ironed or baked) ...another friend gave us a bunch of Perler beads and we haven't decided what to do with them. We could make a whole huge masterpiece, in fact, because Perler beads are cheap! And small! Better resolution! And come in lots of colors! And we could save it at the end! And it would only take us... oh, about a million hours...

new eyes

2006-03-11T15:50:00.000-05:00

before:

after:

After I was ridiculed in 5th grade when I got my glasses, I was a little nervous sending my son off to first grade with his yesterday. Turns out I didn't need to worry.

BigE's questions:

Do you think all the Andfam will think I look like Gark?
Do they make me look more like a Math Genius?
Do you think the kids at school will say I look like a Math Genius?

Yes, yes and no. The kids at school will probably just comment that you have glasses now. Most of them aren't as funny as our family.

BigE said that the kids at school *did* say they made him look like a Math Genius. I strongly suspect that comment was really just a 'yes' in response to a pointed question.

And I suppose even Math Geniuses are allowed to ham it up for the camera.

I'm famous! (kind of)

2006-03-08T08:22:00.000-05:00

My sister-in-law Karin on the west coast has a sister-in-law Tracy on the east coast ...who also has a blog. I've actually met her once or twice. So occasionally I pop over to my sister-in-law-in-law's blog* to see how she and her family are doing.

Imagine my surprise at seeing this at my last visit!

Tracy's making my quilt! The dancing stars I doodled out several years ago and blogged about last June.

She has an extraordinary eye for color; she went above and beyond the "yellow stars and blue background" I envisioned (below), and it looks beautiful. It's even made out of leftover scraps, isn't that fabulous?

It makes me so happy to see it become a real quilt! Someday I'll be able to make it too... I can't wait!

(*even funnier, my sister Kim also occasionally visits Tracy's blog... she would be Tracy's sister-in-law-in-law's sister! It's a small, small world... or else a big, big family!)

beads are for hoarding

2006-03-06T10:23:00.000-05:00

We had some beads. We bought some more. Cheap plastic beads, seconds and sweepings from Nasco.

We love beads. We string them on strings. We make bracelets and necklaces. We let the babies play too, so long as we can watch closely. And at night after a week or so, mama cuts the strings and puts the beads back in the bucket.

Because beads are for hoarding. They are for making piles. For organizing by color, by shape, by size. For finding your eleventeen favorites. For trading with your brother. For digging deep into the bucket and letting the beads run through your fingers as you look for hidden treasure. Plastic beads, the poor person's jewel chest. There's just nothing like a huge pile of beads.

Until this past week.

Chickie made the above earrings (with very little help from Mama) as a gift for a very important visitor we're having this week.

I made the bracelet below, and Chickie promptly requested another one, only with the fish in rainbow order. And BigE picked out some beads for earrings for Mama.

So... suddenly beads are art. They are ornament. They are more than just treasure to be hoarded - they are to be used, to be combined together, to be worn, to embellish, to decorate.

And, per the kids' request, we're talking to a friend of ours who owns a small shop about whether there might be a market this summer for earrings made by a five-year-old and seven-year-old.

Two kids who would do well to learn a little about self-employment, money-making, consignment fees, pricing, tithing, budgeting, and the hard work that goes along with big dreams....

two kids who, if all else fails, would probably still welcome another excuse to play with beads.

one font becomes two

2006-03-04T09:32:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine gave me her handwriting sample in November, and I finally finished the font. Good thing it still looks like Christmas here in the North. It sort of disguises the fact that her gift is over two months late!

As I was working on her font it became obvious that she writes 'normal' letters that she writes when she's not thinking about it, and quite distinct 'fancy' letters that she writes when she wants it to look nice. These became two different fonts, and I set it up so that when she makes the normal one italic, it becomes her fancy font.

At least that's what I tried to do. I haven't quite figured out the font markers to tell the computer that "this" font is an italic version of "that" font. Apparently checking the "this is italic" box and saving it in the same "font family" isn't enough. Currently it works on my machine as I type... but whenever I save anything written in her regular font, it becomes italic when I re-open it. I don't think my friend will mind all of her writing turning fancy overnight, though I'd still like to solve the puzzle.

I now have handwriting fonts of several friends and family on my computer. Handwriting is a strange thing to have a copy of. So much of their personality is wrapped up in their writing. When I type anything in their "handwriting", even the silly sample text above, I can usually hear them "saying" those words in my head.

In theory, with a few clicks of the mouse I could have all my friends "tell" me how beautiful and creative and interesting I am as a person. It's a bizarre power to have, even knowing that it's an empty power.

Happily, I discovered the antidote to this unsettling feeling of power was to turn some of their emails into their font, and hear their own words in their own handwriting, restoring the "real" person to me. Huh. I'm sure that's not the first time truth has been an antidote.

according to the groundhog...

2006-03-02T07:38:00.000-05:00

...we should only have 14 more days of winter left here. I don't know about you, but I for one am not sure that I believe him.

Ordinarily we do not have a hill out our front window. My Crocus tommasinianus are located straight down from where BigE stands with his sled, about five feet below him.

Here's another reason to celebrate, quite apart from the good sledding: we shouldn't need our riding lawnmower (pictured above, front and center) for awhile yet.

sketches finished!

2006-02-28T09:53:00.000-05:00

I finished the playground sketches a bit ahead of schedule.

Click the sketches to biggify them, if you're interested. (I tried Kim's cool picture-shrink-and-grow trick, but Blogger doesn't allow Javascript inside the blog entries. So sad. On the other hand, Blogger is still totally free.)

For those who know the area, this swingset is at Cove, on the edge of the beach in front of the Hunny Pot, where the path to the Bear Dock begins. The nose of the boat is pointing at the lake.

The sketches are full of smudges and are far from lovely. You can see, above, how many times I erased and moved the swing-set before I got it right. This particular piece of paper was the third attempt. I finally got disgusted and cut the nice boat out of my first drawing and glued it onto the third, rather than re-draw it again.

The project supervisor was initially disappointed with my sketches as well -- not because of the smudges and ghosts, but because I got a lot of important details wrong.

Sketching, as I said previously, is not my strong point. Whether due to lack of practice or lack of some essential skill, I lack that whatever-it-is that tells me whether to make THIS particular detail stand out, or THAT particular detail. I work in tiny pieces and don't have a clear grasp of the overall picture. I can't maintain a sense of scale or perspective very easily. That's even true when I have a still life in front of me to sketch. My weaknesses are magnified when I am drawing largely from imagination and memory.

...so what is all this self-flagellation doing in a blog about things that bring me joy?

Because despite their failings I enjoyed drawing these sketches. Despite the hair-pulling attempts to get perspective right, despite the smudgy ghosts of seventeen different possible locations for the swingset, I had fun. If I lived in a bigger community that had more and better artists around, I wouldn't even have had the opportunity to do this.

Not only that, doing the sketches helped me to understand how the playground will look, even if the swing-set is an A-frame instead of a square frame. Even if there isn't a huge pile of boulders next to the nose of the boat, or the wheelhouse is too far back and too skinny. Even if the path by the back of the boat won't have stairs like I drew.

I'm pleased that the project leader (as he even said after he got over his initial disappointment) can show this to his team and say "like this, only different." Because it's a start. It's something the team can point to and discuss: "what if we moved the cargo net over here?" or "what are we going to do there if we don't do stairs?" or "it doesn't look like there's room for monkey bars there."

However large our disappointment that I'm not a better artist (or a better listener!) we all still know on some level that these drawings really are better than the back-of-the-napkin doodles they were discussing before. It's humbling to give imperfect gifts, but after I get over my pride I realize that it's still good to give gifts, however imperfect.

It was also nice to have a mini-vacation from blogging and from a few other obligations that I cancelled in order to finish these drawings. Nice to have the vacation, and just as nice to be back 'home' as it were in my normal routine. Hello again, everyone!

until March 1

2006-02-18T13:51:00.000-05:00

once again, as seems to be my nature, I've overcommitted myself. By February 28, I have to complete at least two more sketches of the boat above and play equipment nearby, most of which currently exists only in the head my husband and one of his co-workers.

We'll need a top view and a view from the back, at the very least, so that we can make sure the whole playground construction team (and the volunteers coming in April) will be working on the same idea instead of playing the "I thought you said" game as they build.

I'm clearing my schedule of everything not strictly necessary, in order to work on these sketches with Daniel. Sketching doesn't come naturally to me - I can do it, but it takes awhile. But beggars can't be choosers, and the non-profit group could afford my modest fees ($0) if I could spare the time.

Sadly, but probably realistically, my family voted suppers and laundry as "strictly necessary" for the next few weeks. And that means something else has to go. Something like blogging.

So you'll have to wait until March for pictures of the tiny computers we made yesterday on our snow day (made out of Altoids Mint tins, what else?) ...or pictures of our riding lawnmower buried under three feet of snow, with only the seat exposed.

And harder yet, I'll have to wait until March to ramble on to the world at large about whatever our family is doing. And to keep up with the dozen or so blogs I read regularly.

But hopefully this blog-vacation will help in the creation of a nice boat-shaped beach playground (complete with slides and cargo net and gangplank!) for some vacationers and their children this summer.

And by this summer I will probably feel like that was well worth two weeks of not blogging.... especially since it's likely that, a few times a week, four of the children on the boat will be mine.

I'll be sure to post photos.

sheets of icicle

2006-02-16T13:25:00.001-05:00

these icicles are not today's. They are from about two weeks ago. Strange and beautiful icicles, muscular-looking. Flat wide ribbons of ice, coming off the roof as a horizontal ribbon and then morphing into a vertical one: half an inch wide, up to six inches deep, three and four feet long, touching our windows and dripping down them. Who knew icicles could have such variety? We waited until the kids were asleep to knock them down (the sheer weight of them made them dangerous to the roof as well as to passers by.)

No icicles at all today. Yesterday was clear and warm, and our icicles melted and fell off. Today we woke up cold, to clear skies. By the time the sun rose it was the only clear spot in the sky, and all the snow was turned pink and then golden by the strange morning light. I dashed out to get groceries. Now it's snowing steadily, a fine steady snow that looks almost like drizzle. The wind is blowing fitfully in two different directions. By tomorrow we're due to have about a foot of snow. We're guessing that means no school. Time to break out the cocoa and some new crafts.

We have up to six months of Winter here, depending on how you define winter. Sometimes that seems like way too much winter for anyone to endure.

But I'm starting to think winter days, and icicles, are like snowflakes: they're all cold, but no two of them are alike. And they are all, in their own ways, beautiful.

gratuitous photo of Bubbie

2006-02-14T11:39:00.000-05:00

this is for my mom, who noticed right away that Bubbie was missing from the paperclip photos of my last post. The paperclip photos of him didn't turn out, but here he is doing one of his favorite winter activities: eating snow.

I wouldn't want a Grandma to not get her ~~baby~~ toddler fix. Regular posting will resume when we cease being sick.

paper clip jewelry

2006-02-13T06:20:00.000-05:00

Saturday we all went sledding in town. Not my favorite activity. While I don't mind jumping out of airplanes at all, I am a wee bit scared of careening downhill on a sled. Go figure.

But that doesn't really matter. Guess what the big hit was this weekend? Not the sledding. Not the post-sledding cider and chocolate chip cookies. Not finishing our teeny-tiny school valentines (coming soon to a blog near you). Not Sunday's movie and popcorn.

Nope, the big hit was paperclip jewelry.

We got out our fancy paperclips from Staples and made bracelets and necklaces and rings and headbands.

BigE, true to his nature, used paperclips to investigate mathematical principles.

If you hang two blue paperclips off of one red one, and then two green paperclips off of each blue one, and then two pink paperclips off of each green one, you discover that...

well, you discover that you don't really want to spend time hooking on your sixteen yellow paperclips for the next row, nor even look for the thirty-two paperclips that would follow that.

But, as far as the jewelry goes: the nice thing about it is, I think, that you can't fail with it. Mama's bracelet doesn't look any nicer than yours. Or if it does, you can copy it exactly. No precision cutting, no measuring, no waiting for Mama's help. If you don't like it, you can undo it and re-do it.

As an added bonus, Mama gives all her most special-est creations right to you, instead of saying "first we need to make them for her friends, or for your teachers."

The paperclip party ended quickly, when Mac and Bubbie discovered how quickly they could wipe them off the table by sweeping their arms back and forth.

Chickie requested a photoshoot afterwards, and she had as much fun modelling and shooting as we had making the jewelry (and the math.)

BigE was reluctantly willing to participate in the photoshoot, provided we also took pictures of him as a monster. He's taking full advantage of the fact that he is now missing his front teeth.

anything but twice

2006-02-10T09:24:00.000-05:00

There is a common misconception that twin babies are twice as much work, and twice as much fun, as one baby. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

There are times when they are half the work of a single baby. Times when Mac is able to make a grumpy Bubbie laugh in spite of himself. Times when Bubbie and Mac quietly entertain each other in the front room while I get the laundry done.

And there are also times when they are ten times the work of a single baby. Times when Bubbie teaches Mac to turn off a reading lamp, or Mac teaches Bubbie how to empty the kitchen cupboards and climb inside. Whereupon they fight for ownership of the cupboard.

I personally think two babies with twice as much time and creativity to learn things (which they immediately teach the other) means four times the work, at the very least.

There are also times when I'm changing Bubbie and Mac is screaming and pulling on my leg. Times when I lay a sleeping Mac down in his bed for a nap, and Bubbie (cranky, and next in line for a nap) reaches through the rails and squeezes Mac's toes or grabs his blanket.

Then there's the fun.

I just might be biased, but somehow two boys playing Peekaboo,

two boys watching Papa out the window,

two boys wearing Ottomatic costumes or two boys covered head to toe in cocoa,

are more than just twice as funny. I'm not quite sure of the math, but I know I've found myself laughing (sometimes out of delight, sometimes near hysteria) more than ever in my life.

birthday emergency

2006-02-04T22:46:00.000-05:00

As we were eating lunch yesterday, Chickie looked up at my Command Center (the door of the pantry where I keep my calendar and to-do list) and said, "what's that?"

"It's an invitation to Lucy's party."

"When's the party?"

"Uhhhh... tonight!"

So at 12:30 we had six and a half hours to come up with a present for the only daughter of friends of ours. No time to go shopping, even locally, what with naptime and my eldest due home from school at 3:00. What to do? The birthday girl and her parents live in a single-bedroom apartment, with the living room converted into a nursery; they have less space than we do. So we were pretty sure they didn't want any more stuffed animals, dolls, large rubber balls,...

Soap dough was my first thought: alas that I never got the recipe right. Thankfully before I started experimenting I remembered that they only have a shower, no tub. Soap dough creations wouldn't be half as much fun in a shower! What to do... what to do...

Coloring books! I remembered that once upon a time my mom and I had digitally converted a photo to its outlines. That would make a fun coloring page!

So while the babies laid waste to our house, I started experimenting with Photoshop. It took me a long time and many failed attempts with the logical choices of "sharpen edges" and "find edges" and "trace edges." All my 30-step conversions were thoroughly rejected by my test client, Chickie: "that doesn't look like Bubbie." "that's ugly." "no, it looks goofy."

at 3pm we finally hit on something that worked:

in a few short steps, the photo above became the coloring page below!

Here's a short tutorial for all you Photoshop* users:

*for anyone who wishes they could afford Photoshop: all you probably need (and all I have) is Photoshop Elements, which retails for $99 and can usually be found for less... Purplus Software currently has 4.0 for Windows for $44.50. Small Dog Electronics has 3.0 for Mac for $83 - or $65 if it's a qualified academic purchase (which includes homeschool at Adobe's discretion.)

(1) Set your foreground color (at the end of your toolbar) to black.
(2) From the 'Enhance' menu choose Adjust Lighting > Shadows and Highlights.
(3a) for most natural light photos** choose lighten shadows 50%, darken highlights 0%, midtone contrast about 20%.
(3b) for most flash photos** you don't need to change the lighting.
(4) if your picture has a lot of grain/noise, from the 'Filter' menu choose Noise > Despeckle.
(5) From the 'Filter' menu choose Sketch > Photocopy.
(6) adjust detail and darkness to where they look best to you (I usually used 1-2 detail and 10-25 darkness.)

**the key to nice-looking coloring pages is to play with the brightness, contrast and lighting. The high-contrast areas with lots of detail end up dark in the final drawing; the low-contrast areas end up looking white with a few speckles.

For the daisies shot above, I had to first brighten the image until all the detail was gone from the white daisy petals, then decrease the midtone contrast until the grass wasn't quite as 'noisy' as in the original, which made the outlines of the daisies really pop out. On the other hand, on the tree shot below I had to increase the brightness and contrast in order to show the details of bark and tree branches; otherwise the bottom third of the picture was largely white with a few black speckles.

Any of these coloring pages can be downloaded full-size for your own (or your child's) coloring pleasure -- or just to satisfy your curiosity. Just click on the image to get to the full size.

After I printed and stapled my masterpiece coloring book--at 5 pm, with frozen pizza in the oven for supper--I suddenly awoke to the fact that the recipient was celebrating her SECOND birthday. Just four months older than Mac and Bubbie, who have just now mastered the art of scribbling.

So I quickly made a second coloring book with Sharpie marker - big, bold pictures of cats, and cows, and pigs, and about 3000 babies. And because her mother understands the need to craft, I gave the two-year-old BOTH coloring books... with a promise that I'd also give Mom a CD with all the printable pages on it.

why Chickie's closet is empty

2006-02-02T09:52:00.000-05:00

Poor Chickie. Lovely brightly colored hangers, and nothing to hang on them.

It's because of a killer.

And a cow.

And about 3000 babies.

The 'killer' is Killer Sudoku. My dad sent us an article (sent to him from my brother-in-law) with a link to the new kind of Sudoku puzzle, where you have to figure out which numbers go in what boxes by what adds up to the total in each of the dark rectangles. BigE was reading over my shoulder, and it was love at first site. But he wanted an easier 4x4 version. So we did another sheet for his class... or rather for BigE and one other kid in the class, who are the only local first-graders interested in Sudoku. If you're interested, you can get the sheet here.

The cow and 3000 babies, as well as the papas and tractors, and pigs and assorted other doodles...

...are Mac and Bubbie's latest coloring phase. They no longer hop up to the table, grab a crayon and start scribbling like mad. Instead they hop up to the table, grab a crayon, and make their demands: Baby! baby! putt-putt! Moooooo! After I doodle their request, they happily color it in and demand another.

So the lovely tiny closet made out of a cereal box and toothpick, and the tiny paperclip hangers shown in the Tiny Treasures book, are laying idle on a shelf. This has not escaped Chickie's notice. Only I'm not sure what to put on the hangers without spending hours stitching teeny tiny garments... something I'm not as keen on as making tiny hangers. Maybe I'll try to make a raincoat out of a plastic grocery bag and Scotch tape. Or does anyone have any better quick ideas?

The beautiful translucent metallic paperclips, by the way, are available at Staples. One of the many perks of having a daughter who needs tiny paper clip hangers is getting to buy beautiful paper clips.

surf's up, dude

2006-01-28T14:16:00.000-05:00

today* you can catch a wave...

...right off my roof...

...as long as you don't mind the just-above-freezing temperatures.

They're melting fast, so hurry!

*well, actually, this was three days ago, and now it's 45 degrees out! (that's 7 celsius, for those who aren't stuck in the 19th century...) ... but I didn't have time to post it until now, and it just didn't sound as exciting in the past tense.

tiny pencils, tiny mugs

2006-01-26T09:30:00.000-05:00

It all started with little birds and her post about the book above.

I was smitten with her tiny pizza and tiny sleeping bags. Both Amazon and Half.com had the book for under a dollar... surely that must be a sign?

And I have a five-year-old daughter, I could pretend to be doing all of this for her, right?

So we got the book in the mail last week. The first thing my daughter wanted was the felt book bag. So we made it together.

And then, just for me, I made the tiny pencils out of half a toothpick.

And then I needed a place to put my tiny pencils, and it occurred to me that the cut off end of an old Crayola marker cap would be just about the right size. And then after putting the pencils inside, it occurred to me that the bottom of the marker would also make a nice 70s-style travel mug. And then I realized that if I cut another 1/8" slice off of the marker cap and cut that slice in half, I could hot-glue the C shape on to the mug and make a nifty handle for it.

Then I had to stop to take photos.

And then my sons decided to get in on the photo shoot.

Meanwhile, my daughter needed some tiny paperwork to go in her tiny book bag. It occurred to both of us at the same time that she needed a tiny Friday Folder. (the kids at our school bring home their homework each Friday in such a folder, which the parent has to sign and return each Monday.)

So we scanned in each side of the folder (100% at 200 dpi) and then shrunk it to 20% of its original size, put the pieces next to each other so that they would fold into a folder, sharpened and brightened the image, and printed it out. I cut it out, covered it all with packing tape, and used the edges of the packing tape to wrap around and make the folder into a folder. The wrinkles of the battered back-and-forth-every-week paper folder scanned right in and gave an authentic look to the tiny replica (also shown above inside the purple book bag.) In fact, it worked so well that we're making them as valentine envelopes for all the kids in BigE and Chickie's classes.

We're using my niece's handwriting font to write the correct name and teacher and grade on the digitally-erased lines. We'll even scan in a few of their more colorful homework assignments, shrink them to size, and write "Very Good" marks and smiles and stars in red all over them. I'm thrilled, since the throwaway tagboard valentines the kids give each other annoy me - both impersonal AND required by the "if you give any valentines, you have to give one to every child" rule. I even hated that idea as a kid. Here's something, we hope, that at least a few of the kids will actually enjoy.

But I have to confess that my heart, like Bubbie's fingers, is still on the tiny pencils and tiny mugs.

Too late for both of us, as Chickie has claimed them all as her own.

Dover coloring books

2006-01-24T11:13:00.000-05:00

We have a few of these coloring books, from the Dover Pictorial Archive series. They all have beautiful designs and illustrations to color. We've liked most of the series, which ranges from optical illusions to trains, butterflies, cowboys, spaceships, Native American designs, Tiffany stained glass...

And the best part about this Dover series is the copyright, which allows you to make copies. The inside front cover of each book says, "This book belongs to the Dover Pictorial Archive Series. You may use the designs and illustrations for graphics and crafts applications, free and without special permission, provided that you include no more than four in the same application or project..."

So when we bought the books (and/or got them for Christmas), we scanned all the pictures in to our computer, and we print whichever one we feel like coloring. Over and over again, if we want.

Most of the illustrations are too detailed for young children to color well. But they're perfect in that they take up where normal coloring books leave off. My favorites are the kaleidoscopic and geometric designs, where you can color each picture hundreds of different ways. Coloring someone else's pictures may or may not be artistic, but I often find it therapeutic and relaxing.

I knew we had beautiful children, but...

2006-01-19T21:26:00.000-05:00

...it sure is nice to have it shown scientifically, by showing how much they look like celebrities. This ~~online toy~~ utility is a great way to ~~waste time~~ verify how beautiful your loved ones are.

Thanks to myheritage.com (and a tip-off from my sister Kim) we have proven that Big E (top middle) looks 44% like Elijah Wood... and 69% like... uh... Shirley Temple.

Chickie looks 61% like Olivia Newton-John, and 43% like Janet Jackson.

Mac looks 53% like Herman Hesse and 44% like Truman Capote.

Bubbie looks 60% like Yul Brenner and 42% like Oscar II of Sweden.

Of course, what more could you expect from such attractive parents:

Dan's 71% Andre Agassi and 56% Gene Hackman

and I'm... I'm... uh... I'm.....

44% Saul Bellow and 49% Margaret Thatcher.

Well, wasn't THAT fun. Um, moving right along...

fonts and gnomes

2006-01-18T11:44:00.000-05:00

OK, so I did work on this a little yesterday for my self-declared Font Tuesday, but didn't have time to blog about it. Above is another sample of my friend's handwriting. I've copied about half of her letters and pasted them into a grid, erasing any parts of other letters that come along for the ride. This will allow me to use Scan Font to turn them into vector images (stretchable outlines) for Type Tool.

I could just have my friends fill in the grid with their letters, but trial and error has shown me that their handwriting looks more authentic if I have them write whole sentences and then I pull the letters out of it. So... halfway through the cut and paste, I should be able to import it for next week.

But I did finish SOMEthing which I've owed someone for over a year now!

This sign:

to mark the trail to this place:

with a gratuitous picture of my sister's family, four years (and two children) ago.

I couldn't find a more recent picture. It must be that we don't go hiking as much as we used to. Hopefully that will change as Mac and Bubbie become confident walkers (and once the ice and snow melt!) All the little holes in the big rock are filled with smaller rocks that have gnomes painted on them. Fortuitously, I think I know four kids who would love to paint some more gnomes to commemorate our return to the world of hiking this spring!

miscellaneous things that have brought me joy

2006-01-15T22:54:00.000-05:00

I couldn't figure out how to tie these together into a nice story, but here's a bunch of stuff that's brought me joy thus far in the new year.

I sent six jars of colored bubble soap across the country to a friend in the southwest. After pouring out 10% of the bubble soap and squeezing out a bit of the air to create a partial vacuum in the jar, they were sealed with duct tape with a layer of paper towel and Saran wrap on top. I had a bit of trouble getting the lids on over all of that and hoped that meant the seal was tight. After the jars passed their "three hours laying on their side on the table without leaking" test, they were each put into a Ziploc bag and then into their duct tape bubble soap carrier which was generously lined with paper towels. More paper towels lined the sides, and the whole thing was enclosed in a large Ziploc bag. Amazingly, my friend reports that not one jar leaked in the whole trip from Michigan to Arizona. (Thanks, Dad, for the packing recommendations!) She and her children had fun making colored bubble greeting cards for a very late Christmas.

The U.S. Post Office might have raised their rates a few cents, but who cares? I'll gladly pay extra for cute stamps like these new ones! My mom (known to the kids as Moogie) was up for a visit (which was even more fun than the stamps) and we got to enjoy their cuteness together.

Shortly after Christmas, we got a new (to us) table and six chairs, all of which look a lot nicer than our old ones. And the chairs actually all fit under the table, which does NOT bow in the middle like our old one did.

And not only do they look nice, but they are virtually indestructable, being of heavy oak, with a laminate table top. Which is exactly what we'd been wanting, only we didn't know it. And we didn't have to pay anything for it. Sometimes I am still taken aback by God's goodness to us. As you can see in nearly all the photos above and below, the table gets a lot of use!

My daughter let me borrow her Rainbow Art paint set to make more different greeting cards. It was easy and fun... and actually made nice cards (in my humble opinion, anyways.) Top are the cards, bottom two are envelopes.

Some friends of ours left Michigan for a job in Wisconsin. Though we're sad to see them go, it was an enjoyable goodbye party with good food and bedtime stories from Narnia. I even got to cut Wisconsin-shaped slits in the apple pies. At least I think they are Wisconsin-shaped. It's amazing how you think you know the shape of a state until you try to re-create it from memory!

In other cooking-related news, I got a bunch of spices for Christmas from several friends, most of which were in glass jars. So I emptied plastic jars, threw out old spices, labeled, organized... and emptied out one of my kitchen drawers and made a spice drawer with all my spices in it. Alphabetized, even. (I detest cleaning, but I do so love to obsessively organize.) Who knows how long my alphabetical spice drawer will last in a house with two curious chair-dragging toddlers? But for the time being it makes me happy to have all my spices organized and easily found.

Angry Chicken, one of the craft blogs I visit often, had a link to a new-to-me blog, MeggieCat, which in turn had a link to some fun papercrafting activities, including Keri Smith's free Secret Note Dispenser from her new book "Tear Up This Book."

BigE and Chickie and I had tons of fun making a bunch of these for some young cousins of ours (oops, did I just give too much info away to certain cousins?) . We used the "adjust hue" feature of our graphics program to turn Keri's teal box into a whole rainbow of boxes. Thanks again, Keri! After BigE and Chickie went to bed, I made two more dispensers for them and wrote "secret notes" for their lunches. I don't often take the time to do that sort of thing for them, but I ought to more often because they always thank me profusely for the extra fun.

And here I thought these two weeks had been sort of blah... until I remembered all of this all together in one place. I think blogging, as an intentional public declaration of joy, has been good for me.

Font Tuesday: S, Q and Y

2006-01-10T10:57:00.000-05:00

Maybe, just maybe, I can start Font Tuesday again...

Introducing S, Q, and Y, the latest members of the Stuffed Animal font family. They join the previously (way back in June and July!) created A thru F, J, G, K and V:

...bringing the total to fourteen letters. I've made it half way! Half way with the cartooning and scanning,anyway. I still have to get them into the font program and clean them up and re-size... but we won't think about that yet.

Next week, though, when my "real" computer comes back from its lobotomy, Font Tuesday will be set aside for making a handwriting font for a friend of mine whose handwriting is so nice that the font creation will be a joy. Despite the fact that I've had her handwriting sample for (ahem!) uh, about two months now and (cough, cough) haven't done anything with it to date.

I'm hoping to get Stuffed Animal finished before the snow melts. Not my highest-priority goal for the winter, but certainly one of the more fun goals...

puzzle piece barrette

2006-01-06T15:45:00.000-05:00

I was just thinking that I'd blogged about all the crafts I'd ever done and held on to, and how on earth would I keep my blog craft-related if I didn't have old projects to fill in the gaps between my crafting binges? Then today Daniel had the day off and I got to go to school with BigE and listen to kids read out loud to me. I dressed up (for me that means "no pajamas") and grabbed an old barrette out of the cookie jar that holds my hair things.

oh yeah, that's right, I made this! It was made a bazillion years ago from a puzzle that was being discarded because a few of its pieces were missing. I selected a bunch that fit together nicely, separated them, painted them different colors with acrylic paint, and waited until they were dry. Then I reassembled them, covered them with Mod Podge, and glued a metal barrette on the back. My daughter gleefully took this photo for me--any excuse to use the cool digital camera with the tiny movie preview in back!

If I had the barrette to make over, I'd use clear acrylic instead of Mod Podge (which gets tacky when it gets wet, and so I can't wear this barrette outside when it's raining or snowing!) At least I've learned a little about crafting since my college days.

I also made some puzzle piece picture frames, but I don't think I have any left around to take pictures of. I'll have to do some sleuthing, and then I'll have something else to post someday. And some wood and birch bark barrettes, which I should be able to find somewhere in the cookie jar...

the real meaning of Christmas gifts (part 1)

2006-01-04T14:39:00.000-05:00

This year we didn't get our Christmas shopping done. Out of the fifteen or so families I regularly buy gifts for, I got absolutely nothing for four of them (thus far), and felt bad about the "incompleteness" of most of the rest of the presents. The presents didn't "say" what I wanted them to say, they didn't mean what I wanted them to mean. While other people have been urging us not to forget the "real meaning of Christmas", I've been completely sidetracked as I've wrestled with the question of what a Christmas gift is supposed to mean, especially in light of feeling completely overwhelmed with all the wonderful gifts we were given!

This blog entry is my attempt to figure out the meaning of Christmas gifts. I'll write my practical applications in a separate blog entry soon. (That will be added pressure for me to come up with some conclusions, I hope. Meanwhile, any insights my readers may have are welcome! )

picture from Old Island Stamp Company

1. Christmas presents can be something the recipient genuinely needs. I've heard stories about kids getting new boots or winter coats for Christmas. But I don't know what (if anything) any of my friends and family truly need that they can't afford to get for themselves or their children.

picture from ThimbleberryJam.com

2. Christmas presents can be something that says, "I remember who you are." I remember that someone likes the color yellow or the smell of vanilla. I remember someone lamenting that they can't get thimbleberry jam locally, or admiring the funky blue coffee mug their co-worker was toting around. But as the years and miles grow between us, I find myself wondering: does he still love the color yellow, or is he tired of it? How many vanilla-scented candles does she have sitting on her fireplace? Did a new grocery store move in that carries funky flavors of jam now? And what sorts of other things have caught his eye since he saw (and I bought) that coffee mug ten years ago? Part of my issue here is that I've been a terrible communicator. Having four little kids at home certainly hasn't helped me improve on that, but I really haven't been good about staying in touch. Many of my friends and family have moved, gotten married, had kids, changed jobs... are they really the same people they were ten or twenty years ago? How do I know what they like now?

a tiny felt stocking I made for my dad a few years ago

3. Christmas presents can be homemade things, something that says "I spent some time making this for you." This has been my favorite approach to Christmas in the past. But the last few years I've found that I cannot raise four young children and have any sort of devotional life and keep the house clean and dishes washed and ALSO make unique homemade gifts for people. And there are times I wonder whether any of the handmade gifts are genuinely welcome, or just added clutter that people feel guilty for getting rid of, but don't really want. Since I live far away from most of my friends and family, and they're all polite and well-mannered, ;-) there's no way for me to tell.

picture from Tassier's Sugar Bush

4. Christmas presents can be "luxury gifts" like real maple syrup, or gourmet cheeses, or handmade soaps from a craft fair. Things that most people like but wouldn't normally get for themselves. This has been my default mode for the past few years, without enough time to hand-make all my gifts. But I've been increasingly uneasy about it. Each year when I set about doing my Christmas shopping, the words of James 5 have rung in my mind a little louder: "You have lived your life in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in a day of slaughter." Should I - should we all - be spending money on luxuries and gifts for our rich (by worldly standards) friends -- while millions of victims of tsunamis, earthquakes and unjust wars are still trying to dig some sort of life out of the rubble?

picture from iTunes Music Store

5. Christmas presents can be cash or gift certificates. I've never liked this idea... to me it feels like the "here, you get what you want" approach to Christmas. Not that I haven't appreciated receiving gift certificates... but it seems so impersonal somehow. It doesn't satisfy my gift-giving urge.

picture from Heifer.org

6. Finally, Christmas gifts can be charitable contributions given "in honor of". You can give to thousands of organizations from American Cancer Society to Samaritan's Purse to Unicef... all of them non-profit organizations who genuinely need your money and put it to good use feeding the hungry or working to cure cancer or hundreds of other good things.

This sounds like a wonderful option... until it occurs to me that I am no longer giving any expression of love to my friends or family who, rich or poor, I do want to show love to. Friends and family living far away, who I can't just cook supper for or drop by for a visit. Friends I can't mail a hug to; friends that because of my four young children have not gotten a letter from me in years. And by my giving $20 in their name to some charity, are they going to feel loved by that? Besides which, like giving a gift certificate, it doesn't fill by deep-down love for finding or making just the perfect gift....

....So... what should I do?

Or, to use an overused phrase, "What would Jesus do?" And/or are there other gift-giving choices I have besides these six? Tune in to this blog again soon. Hopefully I'll have some answers. Or if YOU have any answers or insights for me, feel free to comment or email!

yet another online toy

2005-12-30T12:02:00.000-05:00

If you're a compulsive list-maker like me, or maybe even if you aren't, Wists is a terrific new toy. It's designed for shopping, but you can use it for anything on the web that has a picture. It becomes your own bookmark list with pictures (and tags, if you want them.)

You sign up, pick a username, and then add a bookmark button called "Add to Wists" to your bookmark bar. Then whenever you're out browsing the web and run across something you like, click the "Add to Wists" bookmark. It pops up another screen and you click on the picture you want to add to your Wist. It creates a bookmark to the original site, and gives you space for a title, description and keywords (also known as tags.)

Tags are great, because you can use them to create sub-lists with their own page. So I've started several lists that I've wanted to make ever since I started a blog, only this process is so much easier. You can even create badges that update themselves as you add items. So I did just that. Only because Blogger doesn't allow Javascript in the posts, you'll have to wait until I have time to add them to my template. Meanwhile:

First off, my list of things that make me laugh as I've run across them on the Internet, like the lightbulb salt and pepper shaker above.

Next, my small start at a list of beautiful handcrafted things that I've seen on the web. This is my idea box for when I need a new project (for those days down the road when I'll actually have time to work on projects!)

Finally, the list I've wanted to put together for a loooong time: chapter books for new readers. There are tons of good picture books and early reader book, but as any mother knows, once your child really starts learning to read on their own, there's never enough good books to keep your kid occupied. My eldest son, now seven, reads books as fast as I can beg, buy or borrow them. I have several dozen more recommendations to add to the list when I have time... my only hope is that someone with a just slightly older reader will return the favor! ;-)

I've also started lists for craft supplies online and my favorite books... but I've barely made a dent in those. So many lists, so little time... and to think, I still haven't actually DONE anything besides make breakfast and play on the computer today. Guess it's time to get some dishes washed...

mmmm, theology

2005-12-29T21:47:00.000-05:00

I love theology. I know, it sounds dorky, doesn't it? I'm allowed to love chocolate. I'm allowed to love my husband and children. I'm expected to love good movies, good music, good friends. I ought to even have a beverage to claim as my own, be it Izze or the beer from my favorite microbrewery, or the ever-addictive Diet Coke.

Provided you know that I'm one of those wacky born-again Christian weirdos, I'm also allowed to love God and love church and love either hymns or choruses (though people still look at you funny if you claim to love both.) I'm allowed to love Sunday school, I'm allowed to love worship, I'm even allowed to love interpretive dance... (though I never really have managed to love interpretive dance. Sigh. Always room to grow.)

But theology? Dry, dusty theology?

Daniel's mom got me a book for Christmas off my Amazon wishlist. Poet and Peasant / Through Peasant Eyes by Kenneth Bailey. And while I was at my parents' house for Christmas, I even got a few hours' time to read the first third or so of the book.

Admittedly, this book is hard to read. It's written by a scholar of Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic (as well as Old Syriac and several other languages, from the look of it) and he is trying to state his case to other PhDs.

I'll be the first to say that I don't understand half of his reasoning. I studied (and failed!) Greek in college. But after wading through the argument stage and getting to his conclusions, I'm loving this book.

This Mr. Bailey grew up in rural Arabic culture; his parents were missionaries. He says the reason that we Westerners don't understand (or don't fully appreciate) a lot of Jesus' parables is because we interpret them from a Western mindset. And how can we not, since we've (most of us) never known anything else?

He then goes on to explain several parables in Luke. The first one he talks about is the Parable of the Shrewd Manager in Luke 16.

This parable has bugged me and bugged me ever since I really started to read the Bible. Why does Jesus make an example out of this guy who cheated his master? How am I supposed to apply this story to my life?

I've pestered many pastors and scholars and Sunday school teachers to no avail. Bailey is the first one to explain it in a way that makes sense to me. Do I know if he's right? No, I don't. But what he says has the ring of truth, and it makes the story so cool.

OK, first if you haven't read it recently go here and read it, and then come back.

Done? Good. Now here it is with the first-century Palestinian context, so far as Bailey can reconstruct:

The owner hears reports from the town (which operates like an extended family... everyone knows each other's business) that the manager is being wasteful with the owner's resources. He comes home and fires the guy on the spot. Not "give me an account of your stewardship" but "give me the accounts": turn in your books NOW, because you're through.

According to prevailing law, the manager could have jailed the steward, and/or had him repay for his wastefulness. But, being a kind and loving owner he simply fires him.

Now the newly fired manager is humble enough to even consider farming or begging as occupations, but decides those things won't work. He comes up with a risky, radical plan.

Nobody knows he is fired yet, but everyone in the small town will know it soon. So, before word gets out, he gets all the debtors together. In all likelihood the debtors are tenants who are farming the fields owned by the master (land owner), in exchange for a set amount of the goods produced with his fields.

The ex-manager tells them (or implies) that the master has decided to be generous and give them a tax break. You owe him 1000 bushels? quick, make it 800. You owe him 800 gallons of oil? Quick, make it 400.

The tenants don't know what is going on or there is no way they'd go along with it; there's no way they would go along with a plan to cheat the master and end up in jail (and/or without anyone willing to rent fields to them). See how boldly the ex-manager says "my master"? They think that the master arrived home in an expansive mood and that the manager arranged for special Christmas bonuses for all of them.

So they change the books together, quickly, and the tenants all go home rejoicing at what a kind and generous master they have. There's partying in the streets, everyone's drinking a toast to the health and generosity of their loving master.

Meanwhile the fired manager gathers up the books and smugly hands them to the master - who, as he looks at the books and the manager's face, immediately knows what's going on.

The master now has a choice between going back out into the streets and saying to all the partying tenants "look, it was all a big mistake, I just fired this guy" - so that he and the manager would both be the jerks, the bad guys, the wet blankets who completely destroy the party...or the master can honor the last-minute changes in order to keep the goodwill of the tenants and the honor of his own name.

What was the shrewd manager praised for? Not for being deceitful, says Bailey, but for risking everything on the kindness and generosity of his master. The "shrewd manager" was a shrewd judge of character. He knew he could get away with this and that the master would keep the tax breaks on the books. The manager was, and would evermore be known as, the local hero who arranged the generous tax break from the generous master, just before he was fired.

The manager risked everything on the kind and merciful character of his master, and THAT is what he was praised for. Isn't that so cool?

Bailey had a lot more to say about it (and about verses 9-15, which he makes a case for moving to the end of the chapter) - but that's been the thing that really stuck with me. Such a deeply satisfying 'answer' to that parable. I find myself astonished again and again at the shrewd manager's complete trust in the master's mercy and kindness. How do I (how should I) "risk everything" on God's loving kindness? What will that mean for me? As of yet I don't know.

And I'm amazed by the fact that Jesus continually chose such unsavory characters (smelly shepherds, nagging widows, half-breed Samaritans, conniving managers, etc.) to drive home the truth of God's trustworthiness, his love, his patience, his kindness. After all, if God can show mercy to them, perhaps there's hope for me as well!

a love of dingbats

2005-12-28T09:47:00.000-05:00

I have a lot to say on the subject of Christmas, but I fear it will have to wait until after New Years, when it will be hopelessly after-the-fact. Oh well...

Meanwhile, as my sister Kim already blogged about, I made handwriting fonts for her family for Christmas. Since she put up samples on her blog, there isn't a lot left to say here...

...except for the dingbats. I think dingbats are my favorite part of the fonts I make - they're the frosting on the cake, the chocolate chips in the cookie.

Uncle Dale (with Kim's help) got six or eight face icons, all with different facial hair to match his current style or mood. Kim created about fifty little cats, dogs, flowers, squiggles and other fun. Princess Leia had several different sizes of emoticons. Gark had upside-down emoticons. Emidala and Tobi-wan didn't include any extras, but Emidala had a doodle on her page that I included, and Tobi-wan put smilies inside his letters.

LittleD and Baby Buzz were too young to participate. Which means I get to make them all another font in a few more years, hooray! It's a fun challenge to try to re-create someone's handwriting. And because our whole family now has the fonts, we can even email each other in our own handwriting. Silly, but fun!

first ornaments

2005-12-22T12:55:00.000-05:00

When my mom and dad were first married, they didn't have a lot of money. Mom was in college and Dad was in grad school. For their first Christmas, if I remember the story right, they didn't have a proper Christmas tree, they had a houseplant in their tiny college apartment which they dubbed a Chanukah bush. It held their ornaments, which (owing to school expenses and meager incomes) weren't many. My mother made Christmas ornaments that year - Christmas carolers out of cardboard egg cartons.

I wasn't impressed with them as a kid. They weren't shiny or iridescent, they didn't flash or wind up or sparkle or glow. But now I'm amazed that she squeezed that much personality out of a disposable egg carton. Now, 40 years later, this caroler hangs on my own tree, slightly battered and having many of its joints re-glued after certain twins-who-shall-remain-nameless have desired and obtained it, several times, by means of their newly acquired skills of chair-dragging.

Ten years ago, Daniel and I were newly married and living on missionary salary. Having just made a large down payment on our "new" trailer home, we didn't have a lot of money. Unlike my parents, we had the benefit of a slightly battered hand-me-down plastic Christmas tree. (For that matter, living where we do, we could have had our pick of 'real' trees - were it not for Daniel's allergies.) I handmade our tree ornaments as well - pasta angels.

Slightly battered, and having its joints re-glued several times for the same reasons as mentioned above, the angel hangs on our tree still this year, not too far from the Christmas caroler. They are certainly not the most beautiful ornaments on our tree; they are not the ones that our guests comment on, but like the Velveteen Rabbit they have, in many ways, become Real to me.

If these ornaments both survive another twenty or thirty years, they will be passed down to another young couple who, we hope, will be learning that Christmas can be a joyful time even without a lot of money to spend - learning that they can celebrate angels and carolers, and the birth of the Messiah - with a handful of scraps and a bit of glue. Learning, perhaps, that it was the poor "wrong side of the tracks" shepherds who got to kneel first before their Christ. Learning that it is, in many ways, entirely appropriate to celebrate the King of the earth with scraps and glue.

second chance

2005-12-19T10:22:00.000-05:00

We had a nice 'hnow day' on Friday. We all went outside... very briefly. Neither of the babies could walk well in their heavy winter gear. Bubbie was content to sit on the sled and eat snow from his mittens as I pulled them around the yard, but Mac hated having mittens and boots and hood on, quickly got cold, and demanded that we go back inside.

we did have time to spy a really fun snow fort under our big fir tree, where Papa's plow truck had built walls and the snow-covered branches made a sloping roof. And it's already made for us! I'm itching to go back outside and play in it with the big kids, but that will have to wait until Papa has some time off, and that doesn't happen when it's snowing.

The big kids stayed out for awhile digging tunnels and knocking icicles down, and teasing Mac through the window. As the photo above clearly shows, Mac was happy to be back inside looking out.

With the big kids outside and the little kids watching their antics, I went back to making shrinky-dink snowflakes. I tried clear shrink stuff this time, and was delighted with the results. They're about 1-1/2 to 2" across when shrunk (about life sized here on my own computer screen, though your results may vary according to your monitor settings.)

It's probably a good thing I sent out the white snowflakes with the packages I already mailed, or I would have judged them 'not good enough to send' and I'd have made a dozen more, I like the clear ones so much better. Now I want to make a hundred clear ones and turn them into a garland... someday when I have more free time.

Maybe that will happen when my snow-covered, red-cheeked kids can all get their snowpants off by themselves and make their own hot cocoa. Of course, by that time I hope to be outside playing in the snow fort with them... at least some of the time.

Hnow day

2005-12-16T06:42:00.000-05:00

School was cancelled yesterday, and today was a planned vacation. Our snow day (Mac and Bubbie say, "Hnow! Hnow!" as they point out the window and bounce on their toes) wasn't school for BigE or Chickie, but it sure was for me: I learned (or re-learned) lots of important lessons.

I learned that the window quilts we hung make great hiding places for toddlers.

I learned that the joy of having a snow day can evaporate quickly, and that kids can start major wars -- even before 9 am.

Fortunately, I have a grandma who loves us and each year sends us a gingerbread house kit. The timing couldn't have been better.

I learned that kids might not decide on their own to go out and enjoy the snow, but that when essentially forced outside by a tired and crabby mother (whose overstimulated and oversugared toddlers won't nap) they actually have a wonderful time.

I also learned that I have forgotten how to rest, to slow down, to enjoy a 'snow day' or a Sabbath. Instead of suiting up Mac and Bubbie and enjoying a Hnow Day together, I tried unsuccessfully to get a normal Thursday workload done. I tried to back up our computer files, tried to do dishes, tried to do laundry. There is always work to be done, and I always feel like I need to be doing it - instead of trusting God and resting.

Papa, having plowed since 5:30 AM, came home at 3 and took Bubbie for a plow ride (and nap) at a neighbor's house. Mac fell asleep in my lap and forced me to rest and reflect for awhile.

Today, God has given me another chance at a Hnow Day. Mac and Bubbie woke up at 5:30 again, excited to see Papa off for another day of plowing. I did dishes last night after the kids went to sleep, so I'm hoping that I can learn to rest with my kids today.

out with the soap flakes, in with the snow

2005-12-12T14:25:00.000-05:00

The mad scientist returns, with more failed attempts at soap dough. It's too late to make it for Christmas now, so we're hanging it up for the year.

I tried microwaving bars of soap to soften them, instead of grating them.

First attempt: added 2 tsp water, 1 tbsp glycerin, 2 tsp shortening.

Second attempt: added 2 tbsp glycerin.

Third attempt: added 1 tbsp shortening to the 2nd attempt.

All three attempts managed to be crumbly and sticky at the same time, as shown above. Perhaps in January we'll try again...

To console ourselves (and since we were too sick to attempt baking day), Chickie and I made shrinky-dink snowflakes, starting with a hexagon about 4" wide, and ending up with something 1 to 1-1/2" wide, as shown above.

They'll make nice presents - Christmas ornaments - but I need to keep Chickie from claiming all of them as her own.

We also made paper snowflakes awhile ago, now hanging in our front window. The other morning it was fun to see their early sunrise shadows on the wall.

Deck the Halls

2005-12-07T11:31:00.000-05:00

'Deck the Halls' is one of my favorite Christmas carols musically... singing the 'Fa la la la la, la la la la' is just so satisfying. And I do love decking the halls with boughs of holly. Or at least decking our mobile home with cookies and a plastic tree and lots of twinkly lights.

But it's such an empty song. These past few years it seems like it's entirely too appropriate for my feelings about Christmas: it's all about the lights, about the gifts, about the cookies and the songs.

Not that I'm opposed to lights and gifts and songs, of course... in their proper place. Like cookies and fudge, these things should be secondary; I shouldn't be filling my mind with the 'empty calories' of decorating and wrapping and buying and baking... and having no room for contemplation and worship like Anna and Simeon... no room for 'pondering in my heart' like Mary.

Last year as part of my contemplation, I rewrote the words of the carol to be a hymn. I gave it to a few friends of mine. This year it ended up in the hands of the music committee at church, and our church is going to sing it this Sunday. So I thought I'd pass it along to everyone in Blogland. You're welcome to copy it, use it, and share it as you wish, so long as you don't make a profit off of it (see Creative Commons license below.)

Deck the Halls (rewritten)

Angels, bring the joyful tiding
          of Immanuel, hallelujah!
God with man is now abiding:
          our Immanuel, hallelujah!
Unto you is born a Savior:
          Glory be
          unto God,
          peace on earth!
Peace to all who find God's favor
          through Immanuel, hallelujah!

Shepherds, leave your ninety-nine,
          for Immanuel, hallelujah!
Here's a Lamb that you must find
          our Immanuel, hallelujah!
Wake the city with your praises
          Glory be
          unto God,
          peace on earth!
God's own Lamb has come to save us:
          our Immanuel, hallelujah!

Simeon, your wait is ending
          for Immanuel, hallelujah!
Anna, at the altar bending
          to Immanuel, hallelujah!
Come and find your heart's desire:
          He is born!
          Come and see
          Christ the Lord!
In your arms hold the Messiah:
          The Immanuel, hallelujah!

Sing, ye saints of every nation
          to Immanuel, hallelujah!
We have seen the Lord's salvation
          through Immanuel, hallelujah!
Come and worship Christ the Savior
          Glory be
          unto the
          Lamb of God!
He is crowned the King forever:
          Our Immanuel, hallelujah!

(c)2005 Kelly (Weaving Major)
http://weavingmajor.blogspot.com, m134@bounce.to

Lyrics above are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

...This year I've had a very hard time being quiet before God or meditating on the Advent of Christ. My mind is full of presents and twinkly lights and to-do lists and musical productions. I'm contemplating making some changes next year. We may not decorate the house. We may not even give presents. But I'm torn. I'm unsure how to preserve the magic and wonder of Christmas for my children, without destroying it for myself.

I have a feeling the answer lies somewhere in simply slowing down, in being still. In being, like Anna and Simeon, continually waiting and worshipping - not just having it on my list of things to do. How to do that as a mother of four little kids? I'm not sure, but I'll keep asking God about it, and keep trying.

molecules, lights, cranks and water

2005-12-05T08:29:00.000-05:00

We went to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry over our Thanksgiving break. It was a free admission day. We had a blast, despite the huge crowds (next time we'll pay the admission and hope for a quieter time!)

Above is BigE (and Bubba and Chickie) with his favorite exhibit, a rear-projected computer "molecule" that interacted with your shadow. You could move or 'cut' or hook together the molecules, which seemed to be afraid of your shadow.

Chickie liked the demonstration of how white light is made up of different colors. She is still not convinced that colors really do create white light, but she really liked having a whole rainbow of shadows to play with.

Mac and Bubbie liked turning cranks, listening to telephones, and playing in the water at the Idea Factory.

Well, we ALL liked playing in the water, because there were air-powered water cannons so that you could squirt targets... and the targets made lights light up, and gears start turning, and plastic balls got bounced into the stream of water.

Even with little kids, the museum was definitely worth the trip-- a real treat for our small-town kids! But next time, we'll pack our own lunch instead of eating at their high-priced cafeteria... and I think we'll pack some dry clothes as well.

kidoku

2005-12-02T09:22:00.000-05:00

When we were all together for Daniel's Dad's funeral in October, Daniel's brother from the West Coast brought along a Sudoku book. The Midwestern brother and his wife were hooked immediately. I held off from temptation, with nine kids (four of them mine!) and at least ten grownups in the house... but at Thanksgiving there was just our family and Granny, and sometimes the Midwestern brother and his wife... and their Sudoku book.

My own father, as it turns out, is also into the Sudoku craze and has written several Sudoku puzzles himself, including the one above.

Midway through solving my first puzzle, BigE (also known as MathBoy) sidled up to me and asked to help. He understood the puzzle almost immediately and enjoyed it, but the process of solving one was a little long and complicated for a first-grader.

Enter "Kidoku." I scribbled a 4x4 puzzle on a notecard for BigE, using only the numbers 1 thru 4, and he was hooked. Chickie wanted some Kidoku puzzles as well. They spent much of Thanksgiving working Kidoku puzzles and critiquing my puzzle-writing abilities.

When we got home, they asked for still MORE Kidokus. So I made some more, this time on the computer. (Excel spreadsheets, as my dad discovered, make a great place to write Sudoku puzzles.) And I played around a bit with the solution grids just to understand the geometry (which is a lot simpler for a 4x4 grid than it would be for a traditional Sudoku grid!) It's been a long time since I've done any math playing. We've all had a lot of fun.

Now I'm writing up a few pages of "Kidoku" puzzles for BigE's first-grade class, for their self-guided math center. BigE promised to user-test all of the puzzles personally.

Chickie's also begging for some for K'garten, so I have a hunch I'll have a lot of explaining to do to two teachers.... especially the K'garten teacher, who still has them practice counting every day. I'm hoping to convince her that this could be just one more fun way to get a few of the kids (who perhaps already know how to count) to practice writing out their numbers...

i'd be lost

2005-11-30T08:50:00.000-05:00

My sister wrote a blog entry about a "ladies night out" that she went to, where she was frustrated by the other women who "jokingly" complained about their husbands and how they "deserved" time away from their families. I've shared Kim's frustration in the past as well.

When I mentioned Kim's post to Daniel, he said the best response he ever heard came from his friend Paul. Some guys they were both working with were complaining about their wives spending all their hard-earned money, how easy it is to stay at home all day, etc. In a pause in their conversation Paul said,

"man, I'd be lost without Sue. She takes care of my books. She takes care of the children and homeschools them. She gets the groceries and cooks the meals. She does all the laundry. All of this without complaining. She's always there to listen to me and talk to me."

Daniel said it shut all the guys right up... partly because they knew Paul meant every word he said. It condemned their words without anger or finger-pointing.

I feel the same way about Daniel as Paul does about his wife, but have trouble getting words out in conversation. So I thought I'd work out my words here on my blog, so they would be ready in case I was in a similar situation - or just because I need to remember to tell Daniel how much I appreciate him.

I would be lost without Daniel. He's a terrific husband and a wonderful father. He genuinely loves me and the kids, though there are days I'm not quite sure if any of us have earned that sort of unqualified love.

He goes to work every day, and doesn't complain about having to work, nor about my staying home. He appreciates the work I manage to get done at home (laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, running errands and childcare - though I rarely get more than two of those "done" on the same day) and doesn't complain about the things that are perpetually left undone.

Daniel is a creative genius who has learned to weld, to blacksmith, to do basic carpentry, to build and fly his remote controlled camera rig, and too many other things to list. He has rebuilt everything from trucks to fans to buzzsaws, to make them better, stronger and/or faster. He can diagnose and fix just about anything electrical or mechanical. But he's still willing to do the yucky mundane tasks like washing furnace filters, or chopping wood, or changing the oil in the cars.

He values my gifts and lets me use them. He lets me crop and fix his kite pictures. He asks intelligent questions about why I adjust colors the way I do in Photoshop, and tells me that he doesn't understand it but it really does seem to improve the pictures. When he has to write something, he asks me to go over it with him, and graciously and humbly submits to my endless questions and fine-tuning - and is actually grateful for my help.

He doesn't mind me spending time playing with fonts, or trying unsuccessfully to make soap dough... even when there are still dishes in the sink. If I get distracted for too long, he'll gently suggest that it might be time, for my own good, to put the computer or the craft project away for a few days.

He listens well. He does not get frustrated with or embarrassed by my tears. If he thinks of any solutions to my problems, he suggests them - but he often just listens and empathizes. He is truly my best friend.

He's gentle, kind, patient and loving... and to top it all off, he's really handsome too.

revenge of soap dough

2005-11-26T20:54:00.000-05:00

I intended to post this (and a few other half-composed entries, coming soon) before I left for Thanksgiving, but never managed to.

My tentative soap dough recipe worked fine. At least, it worked fine on the last two bars of soap that have been in our bathroom closet for a few months.

Fresh new bars of soap are another story.

Fresh new bars of soap don't grate like chocolate bars, they grate like colby cheese. I think it's because they haven't been drying out and getting harder for a few months. The long and short of it is that fresh new bars of soap gum up the mixer and can't really be ground into fine powder.

Which is why there are eleven bars of Ivory soap unwrapped and on the washing machine in my bathroom, which hopefully dried out some while we were gone Thanksgiving week.

Over Thanksgiving it dawned on me that I ought to make use of the fact that my dad is a chemist, and ask him what I could mix with soap to make a good soap dough - pliable but not sticky, which will dry out and make a nice soap.

My dad being a chemist is one of the many, many things I'm thankful for. He's made sense of lots of the world to me - from how caffeine is extracted from coffee to what makes a good hair conditioner. When I was younger, his long technical answers to my questions often bored or frustrated me. The older I get the more I enjoy it. Now I'm actually anxious to hear more about what makes soap soapy and how it can hopefully also be made doughy - and why.

Golden November

2005-11-18T12:21:00.000-05:00

You might think that late October and early November is a bleak season in the U.P., after the leaves have come off the trees but before the snow falls. Sometimes it feels that way. But then, there's the tamarack.

The tamarack is among my favorite trees. (It's also known as larch, but I don't like the word 'larch', it sounds ugly, and this is a beautiful, if somewhat strange, tree. The Abenaki (Native American) name 'hackmatack' (meaning 'wood used for snowshoes') suits it even better.)

The tamarack manages to look spiny and soft at the same time. The needles come in tufts along the larger branches and singly on the first-year growth. It grows in swamps and needs plenty of sunshine. It's often the first tree to re-cultivate an area after a forest fire.

The whole tree was useful to many tribes of Native Americans: needles were used for pillow-stuffing, spring shoots were nutritious, twigs for decoys, branches for arrow-shafts, inner bark scraped for a flour, bark used for tanning or made into tonic for various illnesses, resin for chewing gum and boat patches, wood for snowshoes and dogsled runners, roots for rope. It's a utilitarian tree, still used today for house frames, railroad rails and fence posts. It largely goes unnoticed among the cedars, pines and spruces -- except for in the fall.

Tamarack is the only conifer which loses its needles in the fall. Before the needles fall they turn a brilliant yellow. I've had these photos sitting on my desktop for awhile, waiting to be blogged about. Now the tamarack trees have lost almost all their needles, and snow has been falling steadily today - and this snow looks like it could be here to stay.

The tamaracks this year, as many years, are the single beautiful thing outdoors that tided me through between the last brilliant red leaf and the first magical snowfalls.

more mad soap dough science

2005-11-15T16:59:00.000-05:00

We tried making our own soap dough again.

Ivory Snow is just as perfumey and gritty as Dreft. Strike one.

A week or so later, I bought Ivory bath bars and grated one with a knife. They grate surprisingly easily... somewhat like a hard cheese, or unsweetened chocolate. I mixed the gratings with 1/4 cup water and a toothpick's worth of paste food color, and stirred with a fork. It was not enough to dissolve the gratings. Kneading with my hands was enough to turn it into a sticky hamburger mess. Two tablespoons of baby oil and a little more water only confounded the issue.

It's now sitting in a remote corner of the kitchen on top of a plastic lid, shaped into a something that vaguely resembles a bath bar, drying until it's somewhat useable. Strike two.

A few days later I grated another Ivory bar. I put the gratings into a blender and ground them and ground them into a slightly sticky powder. I added two tablespoons of water and two tablespoons of baby oil. This prevented the blender from being able to process the mixture. I dumped everything into a bowl and kneaded by hand and.... success! An oily but otherwise nice white soap dough, which BigE and Chickie immediately begged to play with.

Spurred on by my success, I decided to try a colored version. And decided to use liquid food color. And decided to try just chopping the bar before blending it, instead of grating the whole thing. And Mac decided to get fussy and demand all of my attention, so I probably added the water and oil before I'd thoroughly ground the soap. And the blender was sticky from the last time anyways.

In short, I changed too many variables at the same time. The blue batch was an oily and lumpy mixture slightly better than Strike Two. Since the blender is now oily and covered in sticky soap bits, I've called it a day.

Here is my tentative recipe for next time, whenever I do enough dishes and laundry to be brave and mess up my kitchen again:

1 bar (4.5 oz) Ivory soap, grated (or perhaps chopped)
2 tbsp water
1 tbsp baby oil (possibly more, but two left the soap dough oily)
small amount paste food coloring (or substitute liquid food color for 1/2 to 1 tsp of water)
Zippered plastic bags or small clean butter/yogurt containers

Grind Ivory soap in blender until it's a uniform and slightly damp powder. Dump into bowl. By hand, mix in water, oil and coloring. Store each color in a separate container.

Experiments will continue after we recover from this last batch. BigE and Chickie have made enough soap for their own baths to last now for several months, but I suppose they can just keep adding to their collection...

made with love and a crayon

2005-11-14T12:35:00.000-05:00

After a long break from font-making, I created two new fonts this weekend. Or rather, my kids did.

Chickie wrote out the alphabet with black crayon on paper and then begged me to "put it into the computer".

It's now a Kindergarten Crayon font, and it's yours for the downloading. Extra-large, it looks like...

When BigE saw the final product, he got out his own crayons:

And produced Crayon Curlicue, now yours for the downloading. Extra-large, it looks like...

As you can see, I didn't spend any time touching up the fonts, I just took them as they were scanned. It made my job easy (less than four hours apiece!) and preserved that drawn-by-young-children effect at the same time. What could be easier or more fun? So I have a hunch I'll be making some fonts for Christmas presents...

overdosing on cuteness

2005-11-10T08:47:00.000-05:00

First up, a letter from Chickie to her K'garten teacher who returns to school from maternity leave next week. (Chickie also addressed and stamped the envelope herself - I wish I'd have thought to get a picture of that as well!)

I particularly like her new-to-me version of 'Row your boat', ending with "Ha ha ha fooled you, I'm a submarine."

Next up, a school paper from BigE.

His text is answer-the-question-about-the-story busy work, but I love how the picture shows the girl and her friend being happy. I love the shape of their arms and legs!

And finally: it snowed last night. Guess who's excited?

closure

2005-11-08T13:54:00.000-05:00

I don't like feeling closed in. I like windows. I like possibilities. I like options. But there are times closure is a good thing. This is one of those times.

This past weekend Daniel started enclosing our porch. His friend Bumpus came by to help, too.

I will miss our porch and having as much light in our kitchen. But I am thrilled to have a room to put our winter coats and muddy boots in, instead of having them all in our living room.

And I'm excited that we can move our chest freezer onto the porch, and have enough room in the kitchen for all six of us to eat together at the table.

And I'm convinced that when we paint the walls of our porch it won't look so much like we have a deer blind attached to our house.

November blues

2005-11-03T11:09:00.000-05:00

The leaves are, for the most part, off of the trees. My garden is largely dead. Daylight losing time has begun (now that daylight saving time is over) and it gets dark before suppertime. I've got the November blues....

but I'm so very thankful that even blue can be beautiful.

The flowers above are frost-bitten pinks and a bachelor button.

The leaves shown here fell off our silver poplar onto our blue (and frost-covered) ten-year-old minivan. (You can click on either leaf photo to get to the bigger one posted at Flickr.)

leaf recipe

2005-11-01T14:28:00.000-05:00

take one yard, four kids, one adult, three rakes, and about a million leaves.

rake well.
mix well.
form a large pile.

lose a shoe.
find it again.
add one plastic climber/slide.

slide.
laugh.
rake.
repeat.

saving the world from brain-sucking aliens...

2005-10-29T23:48:00.000-04:00

it's a good thing it isn't left up to these two goofballs.

This year's costume, improved from last year, had shirts from the OttoMatic game intro, with Chickie's shirt transfer digitally manipulated to be pink and purple and green. Their antennas featured glow-sticks and floral wire, and BigE had a green mahooka thanks to a major donation from the lemon juice bottle.

Still, maybe a younger generation of ottos will stop goofing around and save the entire world someday.

Or maybe not.

eat your Halloween vegetables, dear

2005-10-28T16:41:00.000-04:00

BigE's first grade class had a Halloween party today. I signed up to make a veggie tray, because the teacher was imploring us to bring healthy snacks. So... no cute pumpkin cookies, no ghost marshmallows, no cupcake monsters with candy-corn teeth.

What's a mommy to do? A mommy who wanted to use her creative juices to make new, different, exciting Halloween costumes, and instead her kids ask for the same thing as last year?

Well, the answer came last night at about 9 pm. Piece by piece.

First came the flat pumpkins, formerly known as carrot circles.

the lovely plastic sign was cut out of an extra plastic raisin-canister lid which I saved even though it didn't fit any cheap tupperware I own. I folded the pumpkin part up and covered the base (ring part) with the carrots. I mean, with the flat pumpkins.

Next inspiration was the shrunken haunted forest, formerly known as broccoli and cauliflower. Then a pepper bonfire.

Then the hard part: red cabbage and celery. I thought of lots of spooky names for both of them... purple witches' cloaks, green moldy bones, etc. and then I thought, yuck! who's going to want to eat that? And why am I glorifying witches and death and rot?

So eventually late in the evening, the purple cabbage became "more leaves to rake" and the celery became stacked firewood. And I found a creative use for all my non-essential blank cheaperware lids.

I went to bed tired but happy. Halloween vegetables were adorned with shrink wrap. They went to school with BigE in the morning.

And they returned, 98% of them, in the afternoon.

These are first graders, after all, and presumably at a Halloween party there wasn't a lot of incentive to eat carrots, even when shaped like flat pumpkins. So it's veggies tonight and tomorrow night at my house, and veggie soup for supper on Sunday. I can hand out the rest to any trick-or-treaters I get on Monday night, right?

Soap dough... a first semi-successful attempt

2005-10-28T10:32:00.000-04:00

I made my own soap dough on Monday.

Here's the recipe I used: 5 cups Dreft, 1/2 cup water, 1/4 cup baby oil (plus more on hands), small amounts of paste food coloring. As you can see, it was as messy and sticky as making hamburger patties. What you can't see in the photos is that it reeked of laundry-detergent perfume. Pyew!

Next time I won't use Dreft. Well, I guess I'm stuck using Dreft until the box is gone... sigh. I'm hoping Ivory Snow isn't quite as perfumey, or else I may be grating bars of soap to do this.

Next time I will also use more baby oil and less water. And if I can find a less-perfumey laundry soap, I might use Kool-Aid instead of paste food color, so that the soap dough can smell like lemonade or mango-berry or whatever.

After I got the dough into sticky balls, I left it out to dry for a day or so. It behaved much better then, and BigE and Chickie were able to make cute little pumpkin soaps.

After two more days, the leftover dough hardened into solid lumps. So I guess I should either use less laundry soap/more water, or use the dough right away.

Overall, the homemade detergent bath soaps were not as fun to handle as the expensive soaps that came with the soap dough kit. They tended to be sticky and/or crumbly, and they had a gritty texture from the undissolved detergent. If I added more water to dissolve the detergent, they turned back into raw hamburger consistency.

But my kids still had fun with it. And they had some homemade bath soaps to bring to school for the make-your-own pumpkin contest, so it served its purpose. Now I have to get cracking on Otto costumes and veggies for this afternoon's school party!

gratuitous photos

2005-10-26T10:50:00.000-04:00

I thought I'd take the time to celebrate the return of my pictures stored at Buzznet.

first up, my crocus pulchellus, still blooming in the middle of my sage, which I simply cannot stop taking pictures of. Look at how lavish the stamens are!

second, my youngest son, who helped himself to a book that I haven't had time to read yet.

note the title. And the blue colored pencil marks. I think Bubbie already has developed his own unique learning style.

OttoMatic

2005-10-24T11:42:00.000-04:00

Scratch the pumpkins and kitties for Halloween costumes. When BigE, Chickie and I re-discovered last year's "super hero" costume for spirit week at school, they both decided they want to be OttoMatic this year for Halloween. I'm not wild about gun-toting superheroes, but at least Otto is a grade-B science fiction alien robot saving the human race from brain-sucking aliens...

The mask is the bottom of a milk jug, with eye holes cut in it and pipe cleaners inserted into slits the top and duct-taped in place on the inside.
The "mahooka" (as a four-year-old that was BigE's word for bazooka, a.k.a. Otto's big gun) is the top of a one-liter soda bottle hot-glued to the handle of the same milk jug.

The iron-on transfer on the shirt is probably the most expensive part of the costume. We took a screen shot of the game's main menu (option+apple+3 on the Mac) and printed it out on a t-shirt transfer.

Now both kids want to be Otto. Chickie wants to be "a girl otto". I'll have to find some bows to tie on top of her antennas, I guess. We've got the milk jugs and t-shirt transfers... and now I suppose it's up to me to drink some more soda.

mothers' clam chowder

2005-10-20T11:02:00.000-04:00

This is not "my mother's clam chowder". This is a clam chowder recipe for mothers of toddlers.

get toddlers to nap.

Make white sauce over low heat. (equal parts butter, flour and milk - in this case about 2 tbsp each.)

Toddlers wake up. Remove from cribs, allow to wake up fully before placing in kitchen.

Rush back to stock pot. Scrape gook off bottom of pot. Work with lumpy white sauce until smooth again. Thin with more milk. Simmer over low heat. Try to remember to stir occasionally.

removing lid from nearby chocolate chip container reduces lumpy white sauce stress considerably. Caution: do not add chocolate chips to clam chowder.

find age-appropriate developmental toys for toddlers. In this case, unpacking bowls and potatoes provides at least ten minutes' fun for toddlers, and only an hour's cleanup for Mother.

as time permits, chop three potatoes and an onion and add to chowder.

as brain cells permit, rush back to soup and scrape gook off bottom before it burns, stirring frantically and removing from heat. When it gets unreasonably lumpy, add thickener (baby rice cereal works well), stir till lumps disappear, and re-thin with more milk.

Chop another potato and throw it in to make up for the extra milk. The potato lobbed across the kitchen by a toddler is an ideal candidate, provided you can retrieve it from behind the chest freezer.

don't forget to put the laundry in the dryer. Your eldest child is out of socks again.

open a can of water chestnuts, chop the contents and throw it in the soup. Not only does it add a nice crunch, but it may convince any picky eaters you have that all the lumps are potatoes and water chestnuts. Do not mention the word onion in their presence.

after potatoes are cooked, remove soup from heat and add two or three cans of clams and their juices. Add pepper and salt to taste.

if you have chives or green onions in your garden, you can rush out and pick some to add for garnish. But the toddlers might cry if you don't stay outside and play for awhile. That's OK, your soup has to cool down anyways.

Cut chives with scissors or knife into your bowl of soup. Immediately remove scissors or knife from running toddler's hands.

Enjoy your chowder. If it's still piping hot (because you forgot to turn off the burner), frozen corn makes an excellent way to cool it down.

Which is good, since you forgot to wash the ice cube trays and make ice cubes.

We have red!

2005-10-17T09:15:00.000-04:00

...so it must be fall now.

We also have yellow!

And purple! (my crocus pulchellus again.)

We even have all three together in one wacky flower!

this is my saffron crocus, finally blooming this year (probably because I forgot to water the garden, and they need a dry summer.)

I didn't know the stamens drooped down like that. And after looking at the colchicums that Knitting Iris brought home, I can see why they are called Autumn Crocus.

I had to Google to discover that the number of stamens is the easiest way to tell crocus and colchicums apart: crocuses have three, colchicums (which are poisonous, don't eat those stamens!) have six.

The three red stamens are the edible part of the crocus - the world's most expensive spice. It takes about 4000 stamens (which must be hand-picked) to make one ounce of saffron, and the flowers only bloom once a year. So I hand-picked my stamens and they're drying in my kitchen window now.

Chickie begged for a stamen, stuffed it in her mouth, chewed it up, and promptly spat it out with much melodrama. BigE nibbled off a tiny corner of his stamen, decided it "tasted like onion" and handed the rest back.

I guess it's a case of pearls before swine, because Mama swine (that would be me) never could taste anything 'wow' in the world's most expensive spice, either. But it does turn your rice or noodles a lovely shade of golden yellow... and Yooper saffron will make a fun surprise present for some of my less swine-ish friends.

the joy of sticks

2005-10-14T21:21:00.000-04:00

We went to Wisconsin last week. We said goodbye to Daniel's dad, who died two weeks ago tomorrow.

Grandpa was buried near his father. And near his brother, who died at the age of three days.

It reminded me again how precious life is - and what a gift it is to have two boys born seven weeks early. If Mac and Bubbie had been born seventy years ago like Grandpa's brother, they may not have lived much longer than the uncle none of us ever met.

But Grandpa lived to the ripe old age of 74. He lived long enough (as was his plan) to see all of his children married - and to see thirteen grandchildren. We had a nice reunion at Grandpa's funeral. He would have loved to watched the grandkids playing.

We also experienced joy on a much smaller scale: the joy of sticks.

Sticks for deer antlers, trees for climbing, sticks for poking into the grill.

The cousins from Tennessee played "clay pigeon" by shooting their long skinny sticks at a short chunk of wood one of them threw up in the air. The cousins from Mississippi ran up and down the wheelchair ramp, running their sticks along the rails to make music. All the cousins traded sticks and traded stick games.

Sticks, the great unifier of the cousins, the source of fun for age one to ten. Who needs TV or Nintendo? Grandpa would have been proud of them, seeing how well they all played with sticks. And he probably would have had a story or two from his own "stick days."

oh goody, Halloween!

2005-10-13T15:04:00.000-04:00

I've never been a big fan of Halloween or trick-or-treating. But I love costumes, especially the challenge of thinking up costumes that can be made with limited time and limited resources. I think I got the love of that challenge from my mom. Buying a $20 pre-made costume at Stuff-Mart has always seemed like cheating to me.

This was BigE's Halloween costume last year - he wanted to go to Kindergarten as "three pumpkins stacked up on top of each other." It took a lot of mental energy to work it out, but not much effort to put together once we had an idea where we were headed.

Top pumpkin was his head, painted like a jack-o-lantern. The other two pumpkins were giant plastic orange snack bowls, punched top and bottom with paper punches and then strung together over Big E like a double clamshell, with "green vines" (green string and green curling ribbon.) An orange shirt and green pants (and green hair!) completed his costume.

And for nearly a year we had plenty of popcorn bowls... until Mac and Bubbie discovered they made great step stools, scooters and landing pads, at which point they all broke.

Chickie's costume was an emergency last-minute creation as she saw BigE getting all the attention (and makeup.) She wanted to be a kitty. Fortunately she had a kitty jacket, so all it took to transmogrify her was a black triangle nose and some white whiskers. As you can see, she was quite pleased.

This year BigE wants to be three pumpkins... with some bats flying around. Chickie wants to be "Hello Kitty." Believe it or not I'm actually a bit disappointed, and hoping to talk them into something different... so that I can have fun too.

our "small" house

2005-10-11T12:22:00.000-04:00

We live in a small house. A mobile home, to be more precise. A 1973 single-wide Marlette mobile home with two additions on it. A total of 900 square feet for six people.

By most American's standards it isn't nearly enough space. But by most of the rest of the world's standards, our house is huge.

There are times we are content living here. There are also times we're convinced we need more space - times where our contentedness is a conscious choice and not made easily. But it helps to remember the things we like about owning a small house:

As Christians we know that "this world is not our home, we're just passing through." Owning a small, aging mobile home reinforces this concept. We're glad that this is not our permanent home, even if we do spend our remaining 50-or-so years on earth in this aluminum box. It makes us yearn for heaven, which is a good thing.

Less floors to vacuum. Less windows to wash. Fewer knick-knacks to dust. Smaller tub to clean... need I say more?

I can hear what everyone is doing from anyplace in the house, without monitors. I know if one child is picking on another, or if a baby wakes up from his nap, or if the washing machine is done.... or if everything is suspiciously quiet and I need to go investigate. At night I can hear when a child turns over, or cries, or is developing a bad cough... or gets up for the third time to see if the clock in the front room also says it's too early to get up.

Fewer lightbulbs to change, less vacuuming, fewer rooms to heat. It's better for the environment -- and better for our utility bills.

Because we made the choice to live within our means (in part by not buying a larger house), I can stay home with our children and not have the stress of finding and keeping a paying job and good childcare, taking time off work when the kids are sick, etc.

We have to kiss a lot of "stuff" goodbye, because all our stuff does not fit in our small house. For a dyed-in-the-wool packrat, this is a good thing. It helps me not form too many attachments to mere "things" and frees me to be creatively generous with my extra possessions.

We have to keep the house somewhat tidy just to survive. If the computer table is full, there is no other place for our papers to go without being eaten by a pair of one-year-old teething boys. Since I have no natural tendency to clean, it's good to have external motivation. This also keeps the piles from getting so large that I don't know where to start. (At least most of the time it does!)

It brings our family together. Quite literally. And when we need more elbow room, we go outside and enjoy nature - something we have in abundance here. Something we might otherwise forget to enjoy.

Don't we want a bigger house? Sure, sometimes we do. But meanwhile, we're content. Sometimes it's an act of will to be content, and sometimes it is a genuine joy to live here.

And it also helps to remember that for most of the planet, our house is a luxurious mansion: Indoor plumbing! Three separate bedrooms! A room just for sitting in! Our very own washer and dryer! And even space to store hundreds of books, and craft supplies, and a computer and printer!? Who in sub-saharan Africa or rural Asia wouldn't trade houses with us -- provided they even have a house to trade?

These luxuries are all gifts that we take for granted far too often -- but they are that: gifts. Excellent, wonderful gifts that we don't deserve -- but are really glad to have.

it sort of doesn't seem like fall...

2005-10-09T19:34:00.000-04:00

...when there are raindrops on the Salad Burnet

...and the crocuses are peeping through the sage.

The Salad Burnet got a long-overdue haircut a few weeks ago and now has new green leaves.

We have two species of Fall Crocus planted in our garden: the Crocus sativus - the real Saffron crocus, which is supposed to bloom soon; and Crocus pulchellus, pictured above, blooming now.

Yes, these are real crocuses (not colchicums whose common name is Autumn Crocus.) Thanks to Odyssey Bulbs I learned that there are as many varieties (and colors) of true crocus blooming in the fall as in the spring.

After the first year we have never gotten a bloom from our Saffron crocus, though it faithfully sends up grasslike leaves every spring. But the Crocus pulchellus is doing well, even where the purple sage is overrunning its turf. It's wonderfully refreshing to see crocuses in October when the leaves are changing. It reminds me that Spring is coming soon... right after winter.

dough, dough, dough

2005-10-03T08:37:00.001-04:00

It's dough time at our house.

Chickie got Soap Dough for her birthday, which is a fruit-scented, somewhat sticky play dough made of soap.

In a giant tackle box full of cutters, a dough press, and all sorts of pattern rollers, there were:

three tiny four-ounce tubs of Soap Dough.

We used it up pretty quickly making teeny tiny fruit-scented worms and blobs. (One of the websites I read suggested making small single-bath sized soaps to avoid gooey soap blobs laying around the bathroom. Made plenty of sense to me!)

I would feel cheated with the soap dough gone already... but for Google.

It's not a huge surprise that the internet is a ready source for recipes for replacement Soap Dough, whose basic ingredients are soap (grated bar soap or Ivory Snow) food coloring and water, and optionally vegetable oil and/or soap scents.

Now that we have the huge tackle box full of fun dough toys, we'll definitely have to make more soap dough. I'd far rather be making soap dough than buying cool play dough toys*, so I'm glad it worked out that way!

(*if you already have regular play dough tools, they will work just fine for soap dough, though you may need to clean them in between dough types.)

When we do make soap dough, I'll post the full report here.

But that doesn't end our dough fun.

Chickie also got plastic bubbles for her birthday. Somewhere between a soap bubble and a latex balloon, these bubble things have unaccountably given me the creeps ever since I was a child.

Fortunately Big E and Chickie didn't inherit this particular phobia of mine. They had a blast making wrinkly multi-colored bubbles out of toxic-smelling colored goo. The bubbles are now perched all over in their room on their dressers and bookshelves.

But that still isn't all.

We returned to our favorite dough: Sculpey Eraser Clay. We had bought more at Chickie's request, and broke them out after we got tired of the Soap Dough and Plastic Bubbles. The women made pencil toppers this time:

My apple and pear erasers,

and Chickie's beautiful ringed planets. (She left the purple ring on the left sticking out on purpose, to be funny.)

The guys made 'stick' erasers - BigE's are the blue knobby ones, Daniel's is the orange one.

Then Chickie and BigE each decided to wrap up a handmade eraser as a gift for their teachers. That made me glad, that they are learning the joy of sharing their creations. I hope their teachers enjoy them too!

bittersweet

2005-09-27T19:36:00.000-04:00

This past week I was washing dishes, and caught a flash of something golden fluttering past my window, in the back yard.

My first instinct said it was a butterfly and then, with a jolt, I knew it was a yellow leaf floating down from the (still mostly green) trees.

This past week we celebrated Chickie's fifth birthday. She wanted to make her own cupcakes for her Kindergarten class. And she did, with a little help. She hardly seems like my "little" girl anymore.

This past week we were sick. We had to postpone Chickie's birthday party one day because I was too sick to have company. But we did manage to have it the next day. We had a good time with the family we invited; making and eating pizza, making shrinky dinks and playing outside.

This past week - after much debate, prayer and pondering - we bought a new 5-megapixel camera for our Kite Photography.

And three days after it came in the mail, we accidentally landed it in the sand. Cost of camera: $140. Estimated cost of repair, not including shipping: $120.

After more debate we're getting another new camera - because we were truly impressed with the quality of the 200 photos we managed to take in those three days.

click above photo to see it big (or huge if you prefer.)

This past week, Daniel's dad has been dying. He has been on kidney dialysis for the last few years, and in the last year has had several stroke-like episodes which have left him less mobile, less alert, and with less to enjoy of life each time. He recovers somewhat from each episode, but never fully. Mom brought him home from the nursing home a month ago, feeling that she could do a better job managing his care at home. Now he sleeps most of the time. Dad still has bright moments where he is coherent - but now those bright moments seem like golden leaves falling from the trees, rather than summer butterflies on the breeze. The golden times are (for him, and in many ways for all of us who know him) almost at an end.

I read somewhere once where a person was defending the idea of heaven based on the fact that we humans were not created for "time" as we know it, but rather for eternity. Despite the fact that we live "in time", time always seems like a foreign thing to us.

Is that why seasons pass so quickly?

Is that why I burst into tears of grief as well as joy when my daughter turns five, or when my smallest son takes a few steps by himself, six months after I expected him to?

Is that why death take so long to arrive when someone is suffering, and yet it still seems too soon when it does happen?

Is that why after 10 years of washing dishes in this particular kitchen (and 28 other years before that), it still surprises and saddens me to see a golden leaf flutter by my window in the fall, instead of a golden butterfly?

a tale of two round-headed boys

2005-09-23T12:40:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time there was a little boy, first of six children, with a very round head and ears that stuck out. His mother's father was a minister in the United Methodist Church. His mother was short and enjoyed gardening. His father never had a college education, but was very intelligent and figured out his own highly successful equation for deciding when to buy or sell stocks.

The little boy loved math and science. He would fill his pockets full of rocks and ride the city bus, barefoot, down to the university geology department, where he would have private interviews with the geology teachers who would answer his questions about rocks.

Once upon another time, nearly six decades later, there was a little boy, first of four children, with a very round head and ears that stuck out. His mother's father was a certified Lay Speaker in the United Methodist Church. His mother was short and enjoyed gardening. His father never had a college education, but is very intelligent and can assemble just about any engine from scratch, even if the parts are tossed in a box and shaken.

The little boy loved math and science. He would ask hard math questions of anyone who would listen. He came home from first grade disappointed because he wasn't going to learn decimals yet... so could his mother please just sit down and explain decimals for him?

Both boys spend a lot of time in front of the computer, playing "hard math games" and other thinking games. Neither one is bothered if their friends or classmates think they are weird or nerdy: matter of fact they kind of like being different.

Both boys also like to be outdoors (and barefoot when they can get away with it), looking at mushrooms, rocks, clouds, butterflies or whatever else captures their attention. They both love to teach (and are good teachers) and love to learn.

They also love holding babies. Since each of them has two little brothers, they have had lots of practice.

One of these little boys turns 65 tomorrow and has about a dozen patents to his name. That boy is my dad. The other is 6.5 years old and could probably explain decimals and fractions to you. That boy is my son.

As my son and I were going to the School Open House the other evening, one of his classmates came out, still explaining all of school to his mother. As the door opened we heard him say, "And this is [BigE]. He's the smartest boy I know." BigE grinned, nodded, and said that this boy was one of the funniest kids he knew.

It's a real joy to be surrounded by such wonderful (and smart) men.

Happy birthday, Poppie!

high school handwriting

2005-09-20T13:26:00.001-04:00

I got to finish a font for a friend who graduated from High School this past spring. Above is a sample of her actual handwriting (writing a form letter I invented that used all the capitals, numbers and punctuation I could think of) -- below is the completed font.

It was a more intriguing project than I expected. Nearly every letter had two or more forms to it - what looked to me to be "childish" letters and "grownup" letters. Curiously, the more childlike letters appeared to be where she was taking her time and making it "neat and tidy", and the more adult looking letters were her "in a hurry" letters. The adult letters showed more personality and I liked them better.

To make the font look like her handwriting, I had to find a balance between her child-like letters and her adult-like letters. It was a challenge.

She left for college before I had a chance to hear whether or not she liked it. I also loaded the font full of her dingbats - smileys, funny faces and music notation -- so, if nothing else, that part ought to be fun.

the week in photos

2005-09-17T20:56:00.000-04:00

Apples in our front yard...

Five-point buck in our back yard... (who hopefully won't eat our apples before they are ripe...)

Getting to help record the chorus for All God's Critters on a friend's CD...

watching Papa and Buzz Saw Louie from the front window...

...and splashing and getting very wet.

ten bucks well spent

2005-09-14T13:39:00.000-04:00

Every year in mid-July I try to hit the clearance sales at the nearby Stuff Mart garden centers.

I never ever find anything I am looking for, but I usually find something. This year I found ten dollars worth of plants, all at 40 to 75 cents. Above is Dead Nettle, below is some daisy-like bloom whose name I can't remember. Oh wait, here's the tag: Leopard's Bane, Doronicum. I still don't know much about it, but now that I've written it down I can find out.

I also got pink yarrow, yellow yarrow, some balloon flowers and a few more pink petunias for Chickie. About half of the perennials survived. Most of them are plants I wouldn't ordinarily be drawn to, but at 50 cents or so, I figure it's worth a try. Over the years some of these have become my garden staples, surviving where the $6 special order from Jung's didn't make it.

And these plants, like their more expensive May counterparts, still come with a bonus:

Sand gardens. Sand pies. Sand cakes and sand castles and sand everything until the plastic gives out. Yogurt containers last a little bit longer, but yogurt containers don't come with the tags to stick in, which show the pink sand-flowers as vs. the purple. Or the chocolate sand-cake vs. the lemon.

Now that it's September, most of the flowerpots have gone to the great garden in the sky (via the recycle bin.) Today we say goodbye to the last of our .50 flowerpots, now filled with cuttings from our garden, which are moving to a friend's winter windowsill. We're still somewhat amazed that we got to keep the plants inside, too, after all the fun we had with the pots!

Baking Friday

2005-09-10T12:14:00.000-04:00

With Chickie gone to Kindergarten Monday thru Thursday, and BigE gone to First Grade all week - our house is very, very quiet.

Somewhat unrealistically, I thought this meant I would have lots of time to make fonts and play with crafts. This turns out not to be the case: the time alone with God and the time spent cleaning (both of which I should have been doing all along!) easily take up most of my newfound free time that the twins haven't already claimed, and a few other obligations are going to take up the rest.

So... no Font Tuesday. All things considered, it's a pretty small way to "die to self."

Instead of having Font Tuesday this fall, I'm going to have Baking Friday. Chickie has wanted to help me bake just about since she's been born, and since Mac and Bubbie came along I have been in too much of a hurry to indulge her. So my goal for this fall is to get all the dishes and laundry and cleaning done Thursday, have frozen pizza for dinner on Friday, and spend the babies' naptime baking with Chickie.

This week we made pies - strawberry rhubarb pie for a neighbor, and apple pie for us.

Bubbie woke up from his nap in time to show off his new "climb up on the chair by himself" skill, and helped himself to the extra apple pie filling.

The apple pie crust got smashed when the handle swung out of our makeshift pie-safe (an upside-down steamer basket) just as I set it over the pie.

Fortunately the designated-as-a-gift pie survived, though I still need to learn to seal the edges a little better!

That's OK. I'm far more concerned with Chickie and I both learning to be generous and have fun than with producing beautiful pies ... and maybe with a little practice we can have beautiful pies as well.

And the smashed apple pie tasted delicious anyway.

Now I would really like to think of a special activity to do with BigE each week.

sharpie T-shirts

2005-09-06T14:31:00.000-04:00

Mac and Bubbie, as our third and fourth children, have inherited a bunch of baby T-shirts. Old, stained baby T-shirts that are in great condition but dingy and stained even after I tried bleach, Oxi-Solv, various stain sticks and other stuff. Sure, we could probably afford to buy a few new baby T-shirts - but what to do with the old ones, with lots of wear left in them, that are frankly too ugly to even give to the thrift shop?

I'm so glad you asked.

Yet another excuse to buy the 17-color rainbow of Sharpie markers!

Here is Mac modeling Chickie's shirt - and being very proud of how well he can stand up! now.

Bubbie got BigE's shirt dirty before we got a picture, but below he's modeling two shirts I made. The reason there are three shots of Bubbie and only one of Mac is that Mac still fits in our good "gifts for twin babies" onesies, while Bubbie, two inches taller and three pounds heavier, is growing into the old, stained toddler onesies.

Here is Bubbie in faux buffalo check plaid,

and here in smileys. I got so tired of making tiny smileys on the front that I made a big one to cover most of the space in back. Then I liked it so much I wish I'd done it on the front as well.

No matter. We have a lot more grubby old white onesies laying around to play with.

None of the shirts are so polished and professional that I can dress the boys up for church in them. The sharpies do bleed a bit in the wash, particularly the red. But they're great for playing at our house and in our sandbox.

(And no, before anyone asks, we didn't tie-dye BigE's shirt - we bought all our kids' tie-dye online from California Dreamin' a.k.a. Refined Design, and that was definitely money well spent: the shirts are well loved, well washed, well worn, and still bright and fun.)

two cents' worth

2005-09-02T16:13:00.000-04:00

Reading about the hurricane and devastation in the South, I feel powerless - me in the U.P., some thousand miles away, living with my four little children. Even if we tried to drive our gas-guzzling minivan down to Mississippi to "do" something, we would all be more in-the-way than helpful. All I can send is money, and not even a lot of that, given the huge need.

I understand the value of large mission/rescue agencies like the Red Cross doing relief work with Katrina's refugees. They are necessary and helpful. But I feel powerless giving them my measly contribution - I want to help in a more personal way, a way where the small amount makes a noticeable difference.

I'm not sure that's a scriptural need of mine. Jesus said that the two cents' worth the widow dropped in the temple treasury was a bigger contribution than the fortunes the rich donors were impressing each other with.

Nonetheless, I want to send my money to needy people, not to big umbrella help organizations. And here is one case where I can - as opposed to sending help most places overseas (like Iraq or Romania) where do I care, but don't have any personal connections.

Daniel works under the same umbrella organization as some Christian camps in the south who are housing refugees. Were our situation reversed, I could imagine our favorite nearby camp doing the same thing: cancelling reservations, ordering food, washing linens, loaning clothing, moving beds, preparing meals, making connections, working overtime - this time for no pay, for now-homeless refugees of the hurricane - trying to re-establish some sense of family and security for their new "campers".

I don't know any of the people at these camps, but I can imagine what it would be like administratively and personally. (still can't imagine what it would be like for the refugees themselves, though! wow.)

In our regular email we got updates on what some of the local camps are doing. Since our agency also posted it on their website, I feel like I can re-post the information below, to my small group of readers in case any of you are interested in helping. I know of one person who is going to use one of these camps as a network to try to "adopt" a family that has nothing and is willing to re-locate to her neck of the woods (Ohio) - to house them and help them find jobs.

You could, of course, also make your own "local connections" - maybe there are churches in your denomination nearby, or members of whatever organizations you're a part of, that are closer and could use some help and prayer.

This is what we learned from our umbrella organization:

Acadian Baptist Center (Eunice, La.) is housing 200 evacuees. Staff members are desperate for donations of food or money.

Acadian Baptist Center
1202 Academy Dr
Eunice, LA 70535
jnewsomabc at aol dot com

Camp of the Rising Son (French Camp, Miss.) is filling up with refugees. One family that just arrived reported that they swam from rooftop to rooftop to reach safety. They showed up at the camp in a borrowed car with only the clothes on their backs.

Camp Of The Rising Son
100 Lake Rd
French Camp Mississippi 39745
(662) 547-6169
crs at frenchcamp dot org

Camp Garaywa (Clinton, Miss.) is housing disaster relief workers even though they have no power. Fortunately, their freezer is on a generator.
312 Camp Garaywa Rd.
Clinton Mississippi 39056-5406
garaywa at mbcb dot org

And I'm sure hoping one of these camps would like a big box of used clothing, because our local thrift shop always has more donations at the end of the summer than they know what to do with. It would be great if our surplus could meet a real need, not just sit in someone else's closet for awhile.

And I'm also remembering the reason the widow's contribution was worth more than the rich people's - because she gave all she had to live on. Not just the $20 that she won't be missing anyway, not just the used clothes that it would be good to shovel out of the closet anyway. And not because she gave to the "right" organization, but because she gave with the right spirit. Giving sacrificially is something that, as a rich American, I haven't really "had to" learn yet. But I would like to learn these lessons before I need to learn them.

And I'm remembering what an older, wiser person always said in response to someone saying "all we can do is pray": He said, with a twinkle in his eye, "has it come to that, then?" He knew firsthand the power of prayer - or rather, the power of God in response to our prayers.

That's another lesson I would do well to learn better. Being powerless is good if it makes me truly seek God and rely on him to meet the needs of these people affected by Katrina - each one of whom God knows by name. I really can't ask for a more personal "connection" than that, whether in the South or overseas.

painting the 'guest room'

2005-09-01T09:41:00.000-04:00

As I said earlier, we moved the big kids into the ex "guest room" two and a half years ago... long before we knew we were going to have twins. I had several ideas for a mural in their new bedroom, including a folksy farm scene at sunset, or a shop with painted tools hanging on the walls, or a giant map of our town on one wall and a map of the world on the other wall. Chickie was too young to participate in the discussion, so I asked BigE what he would like painted on the walls.

BigE, 4- 1/2 years old and with tears in his eyes, said "I thought *I* was going to get to paint my walls!"

...so guess what we did.

(click any picture to make big)

last of the summer blooms

2005-08-29T22:08:00.000-04:00

There's still plenty blooming, but not many new flowers showing up in my garden. I've counted four - two 'regulars' and two surprises.

Buddleia Davidii - Butterfly bush. The bush was a gift from my mom several years ago. Every year it dies back to the ground. Every spring I think it's completely dead this year. And every year it comes back.

Garlic chives. Beautiful flowers and the leaves taste good to boot... and it's nice to see a fresh new face in my garden at the end of August. I was amazed the first time I saw them; they really *are* a different species than the typical purple pom-pom spring-blooming chives.

And... surprise! Tangerine blossoms coming (the pink buds near the stem) and a fruit getting ripe. I just might be the only person in the Upper Peninsula with tangerines ripening in my garden. I'd have lemons, too, but I gave my lemon tree to my mom after Mac and Bubbie were born... our house gets pretty small in the winter. I fear I'll have to give away my tangerine tree as well this winter. Takers?

At least I get to keep my apple tree, which at last count still has eleven decent looking apples on it, despite the drought (and conspicuous lack of care and watering on my part.)

And... surprise! These dainty yellow blooms are on my chamomile Treneague, also known as non-flowering lawn chamomile. I dropped an email to Sandy Mush Nursery to ask them how to proceed with my flowering non-flowering chamomile. I don't really care for a refund, I'm actually quite charmed with the little blooms - but I'm curious how they will answer.

painting the nursery

2005-08-28T21:29:00.000-04:00

In making a record of all the crafts I've done that I can remember, I completely forgot one right under my nose: the murals in the nursery and in the kids' room.

The nursery was mostly done just before and after our oldest was born. The first picture was of Richard Scarry's Mr. Fix-it, above, taken from a pop-up book given to Daniel by the family of a good friend, his then-boss. Throughout the book Mr. Fix-it is shown overinflating tires, turning kitchen faucets into geysers, and in the end steam-rollering a car: "Mr. Fix-it can fix things for GOOD!" Mr. Fix-it is not only in the same line of work as Daniel, but they both wore red hats and bib overalls. We thought he would be an important person for our babies to learn about.

Next came one of Daniel's childhood favorites, the Cat in the Hat. I had to paint a fake door around the cat so that I could leave the walls white but still paint the blue background that increased the Cat-in-the-hat-ness two hundred percent.

Next came one of my childhood favorites, Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad. The murals got bigger and bigger as they went. I'm not quite sure why.

The strange lines on the walls are the fake-wood paneling painted white. We live in a 30-year-old mobile home and decided it wasn't worth it to drywall the inside of a 6x8-foot bedroom.

It makes me laugh to see Mac and Bubbie looking somewhat like Toad and Frog themselves; short and tall versions of Baby.

After Frog and Toad came Ernest Shephard's original pre-Disney Tigger, Piglet and Pooh. This was by popular demand from many of my friends, when they saw what I was doing - "you just can't have a cartoon nursery without them!" I didn't have any real objections to it. Piglet especially looks so much cuter in the original style. Pooh looks like he's about to turn the bedroom light on.

I had plans for Maurice Sendak's Wild Things in the closet-turned-crib-space... but... it's hard to believe these pencil lines have been on my walls for six years, even surviving - still unpainted - through a washing or two.

I also had other ideas in my head. But then BigE got big enough to have his own ideas. And what he wanted was - Bert and Ernie. I balked at this. I didn't want television characters... but the irony was, we don't have a TV. BigE met Bert and Ernie through Golden Books. I had no real reason to say no.

As you can see, I very nearly finished these guys. All but the black Sharpie Marker outlines missing from Bert's legs. I'd forgotten it was unfinished till I snapped the photo yesterday. Bert and Ernie, another short-and-tall combination that Mac and Bubbie love to point at and "talk" to. Who besides God would have guessed that there were going to be twins in this room?

We moved the big kids into the big room after putting drywall in and painting, long before we knew we were going to have twins. I had several ideas for a mural in there, including a folksy farm scene at sunset, or a shop with painted tools hanging on the walls, or a giant map of our town on one wall and a map of the world on the other wall. Chickie was too young to participate in the discussion, so I asked BigE what he would like painted on the walls. His answer, and the resulting room, coming soon to a blog near you.

looking forward to fall

2005-08-26T11:57:00.000-04:00

over the last few weeks I've come face to face with some ugly realities about myself. One of the big things is that I'm afraid of everything: afraid of the future, afraid of making wrong choices, afraid of calling my friends lest it be at a bad time of day, afraid of inviting anyone over to play with me lest they be annoyed by four little kids running around demanding their attention, afraid to say anything 'real' in conversation lest I say the wrong thing.

It all sounds rather silly on paper (er... on computer screen) - but there it is. I've known I need to spend some time alone with God, thinking about these things, praying, meditating on His words, asking Him to change me... because I sure can't figure out how to change myself... but I haven't even known how to figure out how to spend some time with God. I've felt too tired to even be able to make wise decisions about my time.

Then a friend of mine called and said she'd really like to watch Mac and Bubbie once a week this fall (while BigE and Chickie are in school) so that I can have some time alone to think and pray. And I got to spend a little time with another friend I haven't seen all summer - who filled me in on some good things BigE can probably look forward to from his first-grade teacher, who she has subbed for. And I also got a little time with a friend I haven't seen for more than a year. And none of my friends ran away screaming when my kids "entertained" them with endless silliness and bragging.

So right now I feel like there might be some hope, even for me and my kids.

Yesterday was Daniel's afternoon off, and there was wind. So we went to the beach and he got to do some KAPping while I got to spend time with a friend.

And our pastor's family gave us their swingset that their family has outgrown.

And Mac and Bubbie learned to slide down the climber, mostly by themselves: Mac leading the way fearlessly, even sliding out the ladder-hole once instead of the slide-hole - and Bubbie very cautiously watching and imitating.

Daniel and the big kids went out in the evening for some more kite photography while I put babies to bed.

All in all it was a lovely day. I'm looking forward to fall.

raining buckets, climbing walls

2005-08-23T07:28:00.000-04:00

It's been raining buckets here the last few days. But I'm not the one climbing the walls, at least not this time around - BigE is. There's more than one way over a baby gate, apparently.

Speaking of buckets, Bubbie learned how to climb in. Mac wanted to do it too. He needed to be put in a bucket, but fortunately didn't mind if his bucket was smaller.

Good King Gentius and his flower

2005-08-19T10:04:00.000-04:00

My favorite end of summer wildflower has bloomed at last.

the Fringed Gentian. This flower is named after King Gentius of Illyria (180-167 BC) , who discovered the medicinal qualities of the roots (emetic, cathartic, tonic.) As legend has it, King Gentius prayed for healing for his people in the midst of a devastating plague, shot an arrow in the sky and it landed in a gentian plant.

bitten by the shrinky bug

2005-08-16T12:14:00.000-04:00

OK, I've known for a few months I had to try it:

Shrinky pins!

My first experience with white Shrinky Dinks... er, I mean white Grafix Shrink Film. I like it.

So does my daughter... no big surprise there! She made some beautiful pins, above.

My most successful pin was the daisy... which admittedly doesn't exactly look like a daisy with its thick petals-- but I love the shape and the way the petals lay.

I cut a circle about the size of a dime and colored the center yellow. It looked like a fried egg - see the top photo, bottom left corner. Then I cut notches in to the yellow center all the way around, and then rounded - or at least angled - the petals. I'm going to try some variations on the theme, next time the Shrink Film comes out of hiding, which will probably be soon.

I don't know what I'll do with these pins, since I don't (currently) sew, and don't even have a pincushion to stick them in. But they're fun to make and fun to admire.

Also of note were a few test shrinky buttons which Chickie immediately claimed as her own. I have lots of ideas, so I'll be making more!

But by far the best thing we made was this:

smiles and memories. I'm trying to take to heart the lessons I learned with the eraser clay - to have more fun and make more messes with my kids, even when we don't have company over. I have fond memories of making Shrinky Dinks when I was little, and I'd love to pass on the legacy of being willing to make messes and have fun.

home again, home again

2005-08-14T23:36:00.000-04:00

We're home again, after a week's vacation in southeastern Wisconsin. It wasn't exactly a pleasure trip, as it was mostly for visiting Daniel's dad in the nursing home; he may not have much longer to live. But we managed to have some fun as well -

swinging,

jumping,

riding,

and tea with Granny.

Click the pictures to make them big.

We also got to run up and down Grandpa's new wheelchair ramp (he comes home this week, if all goes well), visit the zoo, watch movies, explore the farm...

...and squeeze in a little bit of KAP for the grownups. Daniel, shown here with his kite string, got some good pictures of the farm and countryside. And as a fringe benefit we could report to Mom that all the shingles were indeed still on her roof.

We were glad to go, and we're also glad to be back home. Dad's precarious health reminds me of the saying that for those who follow God, life on earth is the only hell they will ever know, and for those who choose life without God, life on earth is the only heaven they will know. Thinking about that makes every moment of my life stand out in stark contrast. It reminds me to be thankful for our own health, and to use our time wisely -- and with joy.

Flowers with attitude

2005-08-09T16:01:00.000-04:00

In my mind, August flowers are the ones that can put up with anything. Flowers with an attitude. Black-eyed Susan. Goldenrod. Queen-Anne's Lace. Swamp Milkweed. Tall flowers, thick stems, fleshy petals - flowers that can take 100 degrees and humid, but can also handle frost at night if they have to. Even the names have an attitude; Death Camas, Evening Primrose, Jewelweed, and Water Hemlock are also blooming now.

So I'm always surprised by the tiny wild lobelia growing in the marshy places.

Which I didn't get a picture of, because my kids just aren't as interested in flowers as I am.

I'm also always surprised by Grass of Parnassus - a delicate white flower, about six inches tall, with zany transparent veins. It's like an exotic orchid, growing in drifts all over the roadsides near the lake.

It's my second-most-favorite August wildflower. My favorite hasn't bloomed yet.

using laziness to advantage

2005-08-04T20:29:00.000-04:00

When I find cool craft stuff that my kids would like and that's not too expensive, I buy it.

And then, because I'm inherently lazy, I squirrel it away, in a secret bin too high for my kids to reach, for "rainy days" that almost never actually arrive, because the crafts would require too much clean-up.

Well, yesterday was a "rainy day". We had some young friends over because their oldest brother had broken his arm at a camp five hours away and needed surgery... so while Mom and Dad went down to retrieve (and comfort) him, their other kids played over here for the afternoon and evening.

Since a new computer game of Freddi Fish can only hold seven kids' attention for so long, I realized we needed a craft. I reached into my secret bin and pulled out... Sculpey eraser clay.

It's every bit as fun as I hoped it would be. It works just like regular Sculpey or Fimo. It's a bit tough when you first take it out of the package, but (like regular Sculpey) when you knead it and warm it it's pretty much like playdough.

We made dinosaur eggs. Planets. Aliens. Cubes. And an ice-cream cone. And then we cleaned up the clay crumbs by making balls of clay and rolling them in the crumbs to create even more dinosaur eggs. We poked holes in the ends of most of the erasers, to fit on the end of a pencil.

In a fit of generosity I gave all my creations away before I photographed them, to our visiting friends and their brother coming home from surgery. But we still have these ones were made by BigE (above) and Chickie (below.)

And to our delight (and my surprise), after they were baked and cooled: they erase! Like real erasers! And, at least so far, they don't leave little crumbs of eraser clay behind.

In my secret bin (don't tell my kids!) I still have wood picture frames for painting, a deck of I Spy cards, some Catch-A-Bubble soap bubbles that harden after blowing, a tiny twirl-a-paint, a few jigsaw puzzles and some neon play-doh... but nothing as cool as Sculpey Eraser Clay. I'll have to keep my eyes open for some more rainy day emergency crafts.

Five stars for Sculpey Eraser clay. Chickie's already asking when we can make some more erasers.

And three stars for laziness, which -- while it has its problems -- also comes in handy when you need an emergency craft project.

last Font Tuesday until fall: Peppermint

2005-08-02T21:02:00.000-04:00

I finished my Peppermint Outline font. From it, as Daniel suggested, it was easy to make a black (filled-in) version of the font too. I could do more tweaking, but since I've decided I'm too busy, I will just let it rest as it is. Someday (in addition to endless tweaking) I'd like to make a "Peppermint Inline" version, with very fat outlines and just a thin white inline.

The Peppermint fonts were inspired by a label I hand-lettered for Vegan Peppermint Cocoa, my favorite cocoa. It isn't exactly healthy, but to me it tastes better than Swiss Miss and is probably also a little better for you. (Or for me, if I'm the one drinking it, I guess.) It's my own recipe, adapted from some online make-your-own recipe that just used powdered coffee creamer and tasted too fake-creamy to me.

Vegan Peppermint Cocoa

3 cups Moo Not (powdered soy milk available from Dixie Diner*)
2 cups powdered non-dairy coffee creamer
2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
1-1/4 cups sugar
1 tin Peppermint Altoids**, ground (I use a spice grinder)
1/2 teaspoon salt

mix well in a half-gallon container (the 2-lb Moo Not container works well.) You can use empty cocoa containers if you want to give them as gifts (Hershey's is shown in photo above.) You need about 1/4 cup mix per 8 oz hot water.

*Dixie Diner: FWIW, we buy their Moo Not to make cocoa, and also their Beef Not - which doesn't taste like anything, but it's cheap and nutritious. We use it in highly spiced recipes. DD's spices and dried veggies are good and fairly cheap. We have not liked any of their pre-made meals or other food substitutes, though.

**You can also use 1 ground cup of hard candy such as Starlight Mints or Lifesavers (that's 1-1/4 cups before grinding), and reduce the sugar to 1 cup. I've enjoyed Spearmint and Wintergreen flavored hot cocoa, but I did NOT like the Raspberry Cocoa I made!

mmmmmm.....cocoa.

...Oh yeah, the fonts! You can get them here as PC TrueType fonts (which also work for Mac OS X) or at my Font Foundry.

Now, no more fonts until October. But probably some more kite-flying, kids and gardening. I don't know how much crafting, though... I've caught up on all the old crafts that I did take photos of, and would have to beg and borrow to find any of the crafts that I gave away without documenting. Maybe I'll have to start writing about Daniel's hobbies now! :-)

life, death and tansy

2005-08-01T20:07:00.000-04:00

The tansy's blooming, summer must really be more than half over. (the end of our season was accelerated, I think, by drought.)

Tansy is a strange flower. It looks to me like a bouquet of daisies that have been subjected to endless rounds of 'he loves me, he loves me not' until none of them have any petals. It doesn't smell like a normal flower, either - it's spicy like camphor.

Tansy is associated with both life and death.

Tansy was used to flavor beer (and possibly preserve it) before hops came on the scene. In medieval Europe it was a common culinary spice often used to replace cinnamon or nutmeg, and was brewed to make a bitter (but popular) tea.

It has been used used to preserve fresh meat and as an insect repellant. It was also used, because of these properties, for funeral shrouds and bouquets. It symbolizes immortality because its dried flowers are long lasting.

In Greek mythology Zeus gave Ganymede, the beautiful Trojan prince, a tansy drink after he was carried away to Mt. Olympus - to make him immortal and allow him to continue his job as Zeus' cupbearer forever.

However, tansy can be poisonous. As eNature.com warns,

"Tansy, and herbal extracts derived from it, can be poisonous and even fatal to humans. For centuries this plant was used medicinally to cause abortions, with sometimes fatal results. The bitter-tasting leaves and stem contain tanacetum, an oil toxic to humans and animals. Sensitivity to a toxin varies with a person’s age, weight, physical condition, and individual susceptibility. Children are most vulnerable because of their curiosity and small size. Toxicity can vary in a plant according to season, the plant’s different parts, and its stage of growth; and plants can absorb toxic substances, such as herbicides, pesticides, and pollutants from the water, air, and soil."

In medieval Europe, cakes flavored with Tansy juice were eaten at the end of Lent as a means of cleansing "bad humours" from the body, and in remembrance of the bitter herbs the Jewish nation ate at the Passover.

The name of Ganymede's tansy beverage was athanasia [a=without, thanatos=death] and this legend is where Tansy got its common name - as well as its Latin name, Tanacetum Vulgare - which means, amusingly, "common immortality."

Death and life. Immortality, and the angel of death passing over the Jewish children because the Israelites stained their doorposts with the lamb's blood. Yes, and funeral wreaths, common teas and cakes, and cleansing bad humors from your body.

Once again, life and death are linked together; immortality is tied together with dying - and the commonplace and the extraordinary are here together in the same plant, along with death and life. Despite all the dangers, I'm very glad to have it at my door.

lessons on slides, wind and busyness

2005-07-29T15:26:00.000-04:00

yes, I did play with my kids yesterday. We went to the playground. (It was Daniel's afternoon off--and can you tell from the photo what he was working on in the adjoining football field?)

That's me at the green arrow, helping Mac walk up the steps while Bubbie crawls ahead. BigE is near the red arrow, at the top of the white ladder. Chickie is at the purple arrow, getting ready to go down the green swirl-a-slide.

We discovered that yes, one adult actually can help two nearly-walking toddlers have fun on a playground.

This was the drill: Kelly holds Mac's hands so he can "walk" behind Bubbie, who is crawling up any stairs he can find. When Bubbie gets near an opening he can fall through (ladders or stairs down), Kelly yells for BigE or Chickie to come guard the opening until we're safely past.

Fortunately Bubbie was only interested in going up, up, up. And Chickie and BigE thought it was very fun (and very important) to guard Bubbie. So Mac and Bubbie and I went up, up, up to the top of the swirly slide, and I put them both on my lap, and we slid down and went around and back up, up, up... and a good time was had by all.

Daniel, meanwhile, got caught in the beginnings of a small thunderstorm. After he launched his kite and camera, the wind got so strong he was scared he was not going to get it all back down. If we take this KAP thing (and the KAP experts) seriously, that means investing in another kite for high winds... or else only flying in lighter winds. Fortunately for us, kite and camera came down without any rips, tears, cuts or breakage. And he got some good photos too.

I set up a flickr account to warehouse our from-the-kite photos. I added a flickr badge here to the bottom of my sidebar, which will show our most recent good KAP shots, so I won't have to fill pages of our blog with all our photos. There's some new ones there now, if you want to have a look!

The best thing about flickr so far is that most of our KAP heroes who we've seen online over the past three years are now posting photos there, and they even have a flickr KAP group for discussion and sharing photos -- and they fall all over themselves answering any question you might have. It feels like hanging out with royalty.

I've also been working a bit on my peppermint font--it's almost done, I hope to have it ready to go next Tuesday.

And I've realized that, while I'm entertained and delighted by all the KAP and font-making and crafting and blogging... I'm far, far too busy. I've been running away from my life and from God. While the things I've been doing have been good and even fun, I've been using them to hide from some hard thinking and soul-searching that I don't want to do, don't want to think about... and I've been letting relationships with God and with friends slide. When I try to pray or think, I find myself thinking about kites and fonts and such instead.

So I'm hoping to blog (and KAP, and fontify) a bit less over the next few weeks in order to set some time aside to actually slow down, be quiet, and listen for God's voice.

walking, talking, reading and writing

2005-07-28T14:38:00.000-04:00

Mac is talking!

he's been talking awhile, but now says a few recognizeable words, mostly "Papa" and "Yite" (light.)

Bubbie is walking!

and ain't nobody gonna stop him. He tried to walk right over Mac today. Mac screamed bloody murder, but it didn't even slow Bubbie down.

Chickie's reading!

she still claims she can "read with her eyes closed even" - she's memorized a lot of books - but she now can also read new books with her eyes OPEN.

And BigE's writing!

He had a two-day writing class this week from a local author, and learned about everything from poetry to publishing. Now he's ready to be a writer.

Click on the pictures above to enbiggify them.

I can't believe how fast we're all growing up suddenly. Enough blogging for today, I'm going to go play with my kids while I still have the chance, before they're off to college and married with kids of their own.

Font Tuesday - font foundry (and KAP)

2005-07-26T13:40:00.000-04:00

Well, I have no fonts to show-and-tell for Font Tuesday, but I did set up my Font Foundry on our website. Our website which needs major graphic help... Someday.

I also put my Peppermint font into Type Tool, but it's not worth displaying until I get the letters re-sized to match.

We did indeed our kite in the air last night, and had some more fun taking photos. It really is more guesswork than science for us at this point; even looking at the kite with binoculars we aren't sure exactly where the camera's looking, how high it is, or whether or not the picture will turn out.

In an hour's time Daniel spent ten minutes getting the kite and camera out and launched, twenty minutes shooting 170 pictures (15 of which were photo-worthy, and another 24 were at least interesting) and half an hour getting the kite back down (the wind was stronger today.)

Me? I walked Mac and Bubbie around in the wagon, shot a few of the pictures while Daniel held the kite, talked to a few friends (who also took their turn with the remote control), and then walked the babies some more while Daniel cleated the kite off and took the remainder of the shots.

Even though it's nice to be outside in the sun and the wind, watching the photos on the computer slideshow is probably the most exciting part of the whole venture for both of us.

We're laughing that we took a photo every eight seconds on average when the kite was up, that about 10% of the photos turned out, and that we can't really tell which of us took what photo. I like it that way. It adds to the feeling that KAP is a shared adventure for us.

meditations on KAP

2005-07-25T10:17:00.000-04:00

this past week we're batting 0.00 on our KAP venture, so I'm showing some more of the shots Daniel got when the rest of us were downstate.

We tried to take photos downstate: not enough wind. We tried to take some more photos at the school football field and they were watering the grass... and later that evening the wind died. Daniel took the kite and rig out to work one evening and forgot to bring the camera, which I had borrowed to take pictures of the kids. Last night we went out again, with kite AND camera AND rig AND new batteries AND wind.... but somehow when the camera got jarred on takeoff, it shut itself off. We took a hundred pictures, all with the camera off. And after we discovered it, the wind wasn't enough to get the kite back off the ground. Sigh.

Each of these losses feels like a real loss; we can still envision the pictures we might have taken. The sunset shot over the inner bay. Our local downtown on a bright Sunday afternoon, looking over the tops of the houses out into the water. The top view of 120 college students ambling out of the meeting house after a night of worship and singing and learning from the Bible. The over-the-trees picture of the cookout that's taking place in the next bay over. The slightly foggy view across 'our' bay. We might get another chance for some of these pictures, and we might not. Tonight we're going to try again; we're meeting Daniel at work at 5:01 PM with kite in hand.

I realized what I like about our kite aerial photography (KAP) has less to do with aesthetics than with seeing a place I love from a new point of view. It's like finding a candid picture of your parents when they were dating, before you were born. It's at once familiar and different. It's something you look at time and time again, not because it's a beautiful photo--it may or may not be beautiful--but because it's the same familiar thing, but seen through different eyes. Probably people who do not recognize the locations in our photos are not so drawn to them.

There are KAP photographers who do stunning artistic work, but we are not them (at least not yet!) But I can look at these photos for hours, saying "yes, this is where I wrecked the propeller on the old Floating Bear, when I had 20 junior high campers aboard. This is where the wild strawberries grow. This is the cabin that my sister and her friends stayed at, when we all did rubberstamping. I had no idea that this road curved to the left. Look, you can see where the water stays shallow for 50 yards out and then suddenly gets deep."

One of the best things about KAP is that it has reminded me what a beautiful place we live in. Over the past ten years we have had to cut a number of trees down - some at home and some where Daniel works - and many of them we have mourned. It has felt like our corner of nature is going from looking like a state forest, to looking like the KOA campgrounds of my youth, which we stayed at when there were no other camping options - an empty sunburned grassy field with wood posts holding up the electric boxes, ready to be filled with tents or (more likely) Winnebagos and fifth-wheel campers.

It's not. Seeing our world from a hundred feet up reminds me that spruce trees are a different color of green than cedar trees. I see how tall the very few pine trees are--remnants from the logging days 125 years ago. I see how many of the houses aren't even visible from a hundred feet up. I see how blue the water is, and how green the trees are (and how many still remain.) I see how much we still have to thank God for.

I also get very anxious to try again, to see more of my world from the sky. But meanwhile, laundry and dishes and children who need a mid-morning snack are reminding me that my life - this very life the kite photos has reminded me to be thankful for - is still very much here on earth.

painted shoes

2005-07-23T10:20:00.000-04:00

I have painted a number of canvas shoes in my life, mostly for children. I've painted them to look like hot rods (above.) And, less successfully, like garbage trucks (below.) I've painted apples and math problems for a teacher, and I've painted herb plants for the owner of an herb store. I've painted cats, rainbows, spiders, alphabets, butterflies and who knows what else. I've lost track of how many shoes I've painted.

My own personal favorite is painting random designs and getting to use the colors I want to use. I used to paint a lot of baby shoes like the ones below - until I had babies of my own, and realized how impractical baby shoes are. Now I prefer to paint shoes for young children instead.

I use acrylic paint on canvas shoes, and prefer the "artist's" tube acrylics such as Liquitex (though I have to water them down slightly) because they have a shiny finish and are more likely to bend with the shoe instead of cracking. But craft acrylics such as Plaid work fairly well too, and not having to mix all your own colors (nor dilute the paint) is definitely a time-saver.

One of the fringe benefits of the acrylic paint is that it waterproofs the shoe a fair amount. One of the drawbacks is that it stiffens the shoe and makes it harder to get on your foot. It also makes the shoe less breathable.

I've discovered you can resuscitate dirty or stained sneakers fairly well, but there's nothing you can do (with paint anyways) to prolong the life of well-worn favorite sneakers.

Many people have asked me why I don't sell painted shoes for a living. I have been tempted. But I treat the shoes like works of art; even small ones generally take me 20 hours or more. I couldn't stand to sell them for $200 and up. Perhaps there are people who would spend that on a child's shoe, but none of my friends would (or, generally, could.) Nor could I stand to turn the process into a quicker and less satisfying mass-produced craft. So I give them as gifts.

For awhile I tried to paint the shoe laces to match. But even with very thinned-down paint, the shoelaces get too stiff from the paint to tie well. If I want a colored shoelace for a particular shoe, I buy it. Painting on the rubber part of the shoes (toes or bottom edge of sides) doesn't work much better - the paint rubs off after very little wearing. I haven't tried painting on leather or fake-leather sneakers.

Every time I ask the kids their favorite way to have their shoes painted, their answer is always the same: "I'd like to paint them myself." As you can see from the photo below, it's been awhile. Lately Chickie, my artist child, has been asking when we could paint shoes again. Hmm. Well, summer's canvas sneakers ought to be hitting the sale tables at K-mart now...

all God's critters

2005-07-21T07:43:00.000-04:00

I set out to take pictures of my garden flowers, but instead got pictures of...

a spider on my black-eyed susan,

a bee on my bee balm,

a tiny caterpillar on my marguerites,

...and a monarch butterfly on my milkweed.

No more blogging about death: my yard and garden are more alive than I ever realized.

We have red baneberries and red currants fruiting, soon to have wild raspberries as well.

New garden flowers are bee balm, elfin thyme, nasturtiums, and showy evening primrose.

New wildflowers include goldenrod, mullein, pearly everlasting, shinleaf, and white sweet clover. (There's probably more, but I haven't been out to really look in awhile.)

Font Tuesday.... er, Wednesday

2005-07-20T08:21:00.000-04:00

I didn't get to post about fonts yesterday. I did manage to get something done... though it was nothing on my list. I got frustrated with the stuffed animal font because some of the letters are quite simple (like the 'A') and some have a lot of detail (like the 'G') and I can't decide where I'm going with the font. So I'm putting Stuffed Animal on hold for awhile.

Instead, here is a novelty handwriting font I'm calling Peppermint. I got it all inked and scanned last evening. Still have to import it to ScanFont, use that utility to smooth the letters enough-but-not-too-much, and then make the letters all the same size. (As you can see, my letters get bigger and bigger as I write them. That is my usual problem.) After resizing and some clean-up, I'll generate the font and try it out.

Look how many times I tried the 'M'. It just wouldn't work. I'm still not 100% satisfied, but I'll probably be able to stretch the curves of one of them in TypeTool to where I'm happy. Looking at it now the next morning, that's probably true of a bunch more letters as well.

I can't stand fonts that don't have a full set of punctuation and 'extras', so I'm adding lots of stars and other goodies.

What I'm excited to try this time is to see if I can make a black font from this outline font. Daniel observed with another font I was trying to ink that it should be easier doing it this way than the other way 'round - both easier to ink an outline, and also easier to delete existing inside curves to make a black font rather than generating them to create an outline from a black font. I'm still not sure how Daniel manages to figure these things out so quickly, but he's absolutely right.

Time with Poppie

2005-07-18T12:32:00.000-04:00

We didn't get any aerial photos downstate, as there wasn't enough wind to launch the kite and camera. (see Kim's blog for story and photos of the attempt!) Nonetheless it was a good trip. We accomplished our two goals: going to Splash Park and meeting the new baby (now eleven weeks old already!)

One of the many highlights of our trip downstate was time spent with my dad, Poppie. We get a lot more Moogie time than Poppie time, as Poppie often has business or church things to work on. When he spends time with any of his ten grandchildren, he never fails to notice their individual genius - particularly of the babies. Since I didn't have a camera, I didn't get any pictures downstate this time, so I'm substituting photos from this past month.

After the hot and humid weekend downstate Bubbie (above) blows air, making a fww, fww, fww sound, for the word "fan." Poppie remarks how impressed he is that Bubbie has learned the art of abstraction: he imitates what the fan does for the word "fan". The fact that Bubbie recognizes and responds to pictures of himself and people he knows also shows how good Bubbie is at abstraction.

Mac (above), as Poppie observes, is a ham. Mac knows how to make people smile. Mac is more of an extrovert than Bubbie. He also got carried around a lot, as Poppie delighted him with pointing to the lights and saying "light", handing him a large maple leaf and saying "leaf", giving him a ball and saying "ball"... then a crabapple leaf with "leaf" so that Mac can learn to generalize. Poppie not only recognizes their genius, he actively encourages it.

Today when I put Mac down on my bed while I folded some laundry, Mac flopped on his back, pointed at the light and said "yi. dite. Ite." This is not unusual. Mac babbles a lot. But Poppie would be convinced that he really is trying to say "light". I'm starting to think he is right.

If I take Poppie's word for it, then Mac has been talking for awhile (as has Bubbie.) The first word that I think I recognized was several weeks ago, and it was not Mama or Papa or light... it was "Tigger", pronounced variously along the lines of "tidi" or "dididid" or "giggit." Tigger is painted in the babies' room right next to the changing table. Mac doesn't repeat it on command, or pronounce it the same way twice - but he does light up when I say "Tigger" after his tigger-sounding comments.

here are the youngest geniuses fixing the lawnmower.

And Bubbie, after a weekend of Poppie's coaching, is starting to try to parrot any simple words we say to him.

Or maybe it wasn't Poppie coaching Bubbie and Mac. Maybe it's Poppie coaching me to be a better observer of my own children.

fun above, fun below

2005-07-16T14:21:00.000-04:00

I don't have to blog about the fun we had at Splash Park yesterday, since my sister wrote a great photodocumentary of it late last night.

So instead I'll post some great pictures Daniel took in my absence last evening with our new kite. He says the new kite (and the remote-controlled camera) is my birthday present. At this rate I'm guessing I won't need any birthday presents for the next 20 to 25 years!

Regular blogging should resume around Monday.

While below* I scanned in some different leaves for my leaf font, and discovered my grandmother's handwriting in an old address book which I'm going to fontify someday. And possibly enough of my grandfather's handwriting to do his font as well, I'll have to see... after the snow flies and I'm done with leaves and kites and gardening. Good thing, I wouldn't want to be bored all winter :-)

*below: that's how Yoopers say "south of the Mackinac bridge"

Mmm... cumin

2005-07-14T16:29:00.000-04:00

We arrived downstate... without a camera, because we decided to send the camera and kite rig with Daniel to the kite store on the way back home (he drove us all the way to my parents' house for our vacation on his only day off, what a nice guy!) Daniel is shopping for a new bigger kite for us and is going to bring our rig and hopefully a new bigger kite down to us on Sunday.

Meanwhile, without my camera I'll write about something different:

If it was not for my needing about 8000 calories a day just to survive*, I would probably eat this all summer long:

cucumber salsa.

It's a recipe from my sister, adapted to what's available in our local mini-supermarket.

1/2 cup cider vinegar
1 Tbsp Jalapeno Tabasco (the green Tabasco)
1 tsp celery salt
1 Tbsp minced garlic (or 1 tsp garlic powder)
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper, or to taste

2 medium cucumbers, peeled and diced
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 medium yellow bell pepper, finely chopped (or use any color but green)

mix vinegar with salt and spices. Add veggies and stir. Let sit two hours or more until flavors combine.

It's also excellent wrapped in whole wheat tortillas, though it doesn't photograph as well that way.

*there are some fringe benefits to nursing twins...

it's Font Tuesday - but it's really about KAP

2005-07-12T08:29:00.000-04:00

I'd been so busy with our Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) I'd almost forgotten about my fonts. Here are the stuffed animal G, K and V. (A,B,C,D here and E, F,J here.) I realized with not a little sadness that my font-every-ten-weeks plan only works for fonts with 26 letters: no lowercase, no punctuation, no numbers. That's all I planned for the stuffed animals, but the other fonts will take a fair bit longer.

On the KAP front, we had a semi-successful venture in the local football field on Sunday, where it seemed like there ought to be enough wind for it to work but it just really didn't. BigE is manning the controls, above. If the photo wasn't so blurry (or shrunk) you could see the huge grin on his face.

Daniel did some online research and discovered that our kite, a five-foot delta conyne, is considered too small to launch a 'real' rig like ours, which is two or more pounds weight between the camera, servos, servo battery, gears and frame.

That's right; when I bought the camera I was thinking we'd build a cheap-and-easy rig with a wind-up timer hitting the shutter on a disposable camera... but I guess the plan just sort of grew in our heads over the three years we discussed it before building it. So it looks like we might be in the market for a bigger kite in the near future. (We're still well below the $500 limit we imposed on ourselves, so I need to stop wringing my hands now.)

And when I was going through the football field photos I discovered another 'keeper' from our first trip out, below. It's not even blurry! What a happy surprise!

The kids and I are hoping to go downstate to visit my parents and sister and her family this weekend. We're bringing the kite and the KAP rig, and if there's enough wind and enough luck (and a large enough grownup-to-kid ratio), I might have some photos to share next week...

but even with the best of intentions I'll probably forget all about my fonts. KAP is just too exciting. Oh well, the fonts will give me something to do (and blog about) this winter.

Summer and death

2005-07-11T12:45:00.000-04:00

new garden flowers blooming now: Bachelors Button, Coreopsis 'Moonbeam', Cosmos, Cranberries, Marguerite, Oregano Thyme, Poppies.

new wildflowers blooming now: Black-eyed Susan, Bull Thistle, Cinquefoil, Milkweed, Pineapple Weed, Queen Anne's Lace, St. John's Wort, and some purple thing that sounds similar to Fireweed. must get another wildflower guide...

Gardens and roadsides now are lovely, despite how dry everything is. Everything is in bloom, even annuals grown from seed.

...it's the time of the year when I start thinking about death again.

The solstice has passed, the days are getting shorter, and already the 'new' flowers blooming are the ones that signal "late summer" to me.... Summer is half over. I start to notice seed pods, and seeds and fruits as often as I do flowers. One one level it's silly to start worrying about winter and death right now in the middle of summer and life.

But life and death are always intertwined on earth. Joy and sorrow are always joined together here, until Heaven. The challenge is not to ignore winter or pretend it isn't coming. It's not to try to hold winter off or prevent it. The challenge is to know and accept that winter is just around the corner, and to still celebrate summer to the fullest. To use the reminder of winter to remind me that summer is fleeting and that I should enjoy every minute of it; I should store up all the sunshine and flowers and growth and joy for the winter. I guess it's the spiritual and emotional version of freezing and canning and drying the fruits and vegetables of the summer.

I'm glad there's still a lot of summer to harvest!

liftoff!

2005-07-09T20:29:00.000-04:00

Last evening Daniel finished our Picavet and other small pieces of remote control work for our kite-mounted camera.

Last night Bubbie and Mac and I were hit with the stomach flu. Daniel got it this morning as well.

Nonetheless, we packed a picnic supper and met Daniel after work to fly the kite and the camera. (Yes, I was THAT excited.)

There wasn't a lot of wind. It took nearly an hour to get the kite aloft, and there wasn't enough wind to hold the camera up in the air for long. But we managed to do it!

Among the 46 shots we managed to get, 20 of them looked like the one above.

I'm still getting used to the 'tilt' feature, and when I thought the camera was looking at the horizon, it was looking at a 45 degree angle down. Most of the time I had the camera pointed nearly straight down.

BUT... we got one slightly blurry winner (below, shrunk down so the blurriness disappears) as well as the obligatory from-the-kite self-portrait (at the beginning of this post, though I didn't manage to get Daniel in the shot.)

AND... no equipment was dropped or dunked in the making of these photos. So we're calling it a successful maiden voyage.

Now we can go to bed and dream about all the pictures we'll take from the sky when there's more wind... and when our tummies feel better.