In the Mail

This week has been truly a banner week for me in terms of mail. Today I just received the sweetest package from Doodlebug Finery, who runs the "A Little Fabric, A Little Chocolate" swap. I am so grateful and giddy about all of the goodies she sent. I'm breaking my no-sugar vow tomorrow--it's Halloween, after all--and will be digging into the dark chocolate nirvana that is organic, Free Trade Theo chocolate.



What a generous spirit Doodlebug Finery is, and so talented, too. She is one of my Etsy favorite sellers. I love the lavender sachets, baby goodies, and the adorable sock dogs she crafts. Check out her shop soon because she promises to post some bird ornament kits.



I just received the latest issue of Ottobre sewing magazine and Craft (Betz White on the cover!!). My head was spinning when I received both mags on the same day! Be sure to check out the article on eco-friendly craft sources in the Craft magazine.



And here are some items for some future projects--the cutest shrink plastic buttons by artista fabulosa Elsa Mora and two pairs of slipper soles made from repurposed leather. I bought the slipper soles from Etsy seller Stonehenge Clothing Company. They're very reasonably priced and quite sturdy. (Learn more about Tara Morrison, the artist behing Stonehenge here.) I'm planning to use my felted sweaters to make the slippers. I have a special knitted item in mind for the buttons, but that might not take shape until next year. So many projects, so little time!

Have a great weekend!

Winds of Change

"Parents who expect change in themselves as well as in their children, who accept it and find in it the joy as well as the pains of growth, are likely to be the happiest and most confident parents."

"Mister" Fred Rogers, Children's Television Host

My family and I are in the midst of a flurry of changes. Nothing big or earth-shattering. Just the ordinary course corrections that we need to occasionally make as we go through our hectic lives and veer away from how we should be living our lives.

So I can tell you that change is hard. It's tiring and slow. I can definitely see why people resist change--you really have to reject fear and pessimism and embrace hope. Because change is also good--it's what keeps us growing and striving and improving as human beings and, I should add, as a nation. It means we're living our lives as fully as possible.

I've already mentioned that we're in the process of giving up television, mainly so that our youngest can develop a strong sense of self and the ability to entertain himself without the constant background noise of the television. That's actually going quite well, and his imaginative play is getting so much more interesting and involved. Last night after dinner he was "Museum Guy" and took us on a tour of his snake museum. Today he let the snakes go free and introduced me to his dinosaur museum. Contrary to what we feared, he's been able to amuse himself in his room with Legos and puzzles without needing help. He's starting to offer us narrative alternatives to the stories we tell him at night. In short, he's growing and changing.

My older son is so ripe for changes in his life. Just this month he started riding his two-wheeler without training wheels after years of fighting it. He's riding confidently through our neighborhood to his friend's house. And, in his second year of taking viola lessons, he is practicing consistently and with joy. After constant battles with him last year over practicing, I never thought I would hear him utter these words: "When can I practice my viola?" and "I LOVE playing the viola!"

In the same spirit, I'm trying to embrace some changes that I need to make in my life. The biggest one is making healthier choices in what and how much I eat, and that's been an extremely tough change. In the last few weeks I've realized just how much I use food--especially sweets--as a way to muffle negative emotions, so it's been a rocky time for me emotionally, with some pretty wild mood swings. I've found it very tough trying to fit exercise into my schedule, and I'm learning that for me blog reading and writing and strange sleeping patterns are not compatible with getting fit. So I've been trying to limit my time on the computer, which I'm sure has contributed to my mood swings! It's not an easy addiction to give up.

My husband, the more sensible of us, suggested that we follow a more civilized evening routine with the kids. I run kicking and screaming when anyone utters the word "routine," so this has not been an easy change to implement. I'm more into being mellow and letting things happen, but unfortunately I think that was stressing the kids out more than it was helping them relax.

Today was our first day with the new schedule, and the kids responded so well to set homework, dinner, and play times. It made things go so much more smoothly before and after dinner, without some of the usual arguments about snacks or homework or whining about wanting to go to the park, etc. We actually got everything we needed to done and had time for fun stuff. We went to the park after homework was done and while the sun was still out. After dinner, the boys even played together PEACEFULLY while my husband and daughter worked on the computer and I knitted. Amazing, and I hope we can keep it up.

What changes are you in the midst of?.

Note: The illustrations above are by George M. Richards and are from Arthur I. Gates and Miriam Blanton Huber, The Work-Play Books, Make and Make-Believe, Third Reader, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1937--another Friends of the Library Sale find.

Mushrooms and Snails

We enjoyed another warm and sunny Fall day here. My sons and I got a chance to take a hike in the woods and enjoy the "leaf rain." We had to be extra quiet so that we could hear the whisper-rustling of the leaves as they fell. At one point we sat in a shelter along the trail and peacefully watched the leaf storms as we shared a snack. What a miracle to get two busy boys to slow down and just sit quietly!

Along the trail we had a treasure hunt of sorts. Our goal was to find three things: mushrooms (to photograph), round rocks, and an egg sculpture. My youngest was the first to spot mushrooms--some polypores growing on a tree. We figure he's a great mushroom-spotter because he's closer to the ground than we are.

I have been reading a bit more about polypores, and they are incredibly diverse in color, shape, and form. They are different from most mushrooms because they have pores instead of gills. If you look closely at the bottom of one, you can see the small pores quite clearly. The bottom of one we saw last weekend looked like shark skin. Rather than being spongy, they feel amazingly like the wood they consume. Most polypores are not poisonous, and some, including the turkey tail, have a range of medicinal uses.

We found the egg sculpture, installed by Andy Goldsworthy. We speculated about its nest and the BIG bird that laid it.

We also revisited some of the mushrooms that we saw on our last walk.

We saw these puffballs (shown above) last month, when they were beautifully cream-colored and smooth. Now that their spores have burst forth into the world, they are slowly rotting.

Unfortunately we didn't find any smooth, round stones small enough to carry away, but we'll find a more likely spot next time.

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Here a few more treasures I found at the Friends of the Library book sale.

A small greeting card by illustrator Jean Pierre De Bernay. You can find a better-quality digital version here. It caught my eye because of the grouping of mushrooms, ferns, and snails. Sound familiar, anyone?
And here's a quote from the book, Odd Pets (by Dorothy Childs Hogner, Scholastic Book Services, 1951), that shows me why the twin fascination with snails and mushrooms isn't so odd after all:

Some land snails are very fond of mushrooms. They will eat almost any kind of mushrooms that grows in the woods or the fields. But if you should pick a pretty mushroom and feed it to your land snail and it agrees with him, do not think that you can eat the mushroom too. Snails can eat some kinds of mushrooms that are deadly poisonous to man and not get a stomach ache.

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My family's quest to have a TV-free household is coming along well, with a few minor bumps. I think we watched about 15 minutes of TV for the whole long weekend, and the kids have even stopped asking about it. The boys are playing together a lot more as a result, and now they call each other best friends--the kind of love-hate best friends, of course. We've been lots more active with the kids, and they are getting more outside time--hiking, biking, and just playing like puppies. My daughter is busy enough with school and extracurricular activities that she hasn't missed the TV a bit. I think it's hardest on the adults, who sometimes just need a few moments to chill at times.

It's hard for me to believe, but this is my 99th post. To celebrate this milestone, and to give something back to the craft blogging community that I feel so happy to be a part of, I'm planning some kind of giveaway for my 100th post. I'm having a hard time figuring out what I have that people might like--books, fabric, papercuts, knitted items, felted creations? I'll be working on that, so you may not see me until next week.

Happy Origami

After a very long work weekend, I rewarded myself with a trip to the local Friends of the Library sale. I was thrilled to find two very sweet origami books in the children's section. Happy Origami: Whale Book (shown above) and Happy Origami: Swallow Book. This series was published in Japan in 1960 by Biken-Sha publishers. The author is Tatsuo Miyawaki. (There is also a third in the series: Happy Origami: Tortoise Book.)

According to the blurb on the back of the book, "Happy Origami is a source of happiness, full of romantic works of integrated manual arts, painting, paper folding, cutting, etc."

These books are so sweet and beautifully constructed. Each main page is like a print and is illustrated with actual origami. Each illustration comes with a tissue-paper overleaf of instructions for folding the origami shapes. The pages are bound together with a cord so that each page can be removed.

Here's a beautiful page from the Whale Book:

I've scanned in the instruction sheet so that you can fold your own mushrooms, squirrel, and crow to create your own forest scene.

Have a great week!

Untangling the Knots

I just started knitting a year ago, and I haven't produced a whole lot: one scarf, two trees, and a whole lot of swatches. I love the act of knitting, how delicate stitches improbably weave together from the loops of yarn that I pull from the needles. It's a completely centering activity. And even though I haven't produced many finished items, I have realized that the practice of knitting has benefited me and my family in several ways.

I've recently discovered knitting as a parenting strategy: it keeps my hands busy so that I don't get over-involved and meddle with my kids as they work out their own issues. Picture this. I knit quietly. Meanwhile, my son practices his viola or does homework. I knit quietly. My sons negotiate the sometimes tricky business of playing together without fighting. I knit quietly. My daughter tells me about her day. While knitting quietly, I am reassuring my kids that I am present for them and listening. At the same time, I am sending the message that I am involved with my own activity and am not going to take control of what they are doing. They are not on their own, but they are in control of what they are doing.

In addition to giving me a strategy for relating to my kids, knitting also gives me metaphors for my life. As you can see from the photo above, I am quite good at getting skeins of yarn tied into a tangle of knots. I don't always have the patience to fish the end of the yarn out of the middle of the skein, and I end up with what you see above. Over the course of a few weeks, stealing a few minutes of free time here and there, I managed to untangle that ball of purple cotton yarn. It was obsessive of me--I even took it to a dentist appointment and pulled it out while waiting to get a procedure done--but I patiently worked out all the knots and ended up with a smooth ball of yarn.

That's the metaphor for what I've been doing in the last month--patiently trying to unravel the mass of knots that arise from the complications of daily life.

And let me just throw in another knitting metaphor for good measure. Since I started knitting I have begun to notice handmade items and can appreciate the skills and time that they took to create. Recently I admired the shawl that a friend had knitted, and after chatting about knitting for a while, we got to talking about how little time we have for the craft. I was complaining about how many projects I had on my list to make and how little time I had to even start on the first one. And she replied, in her sensible and inspiring way, that yes, but wasn't it nice to have something so beautiful and tangible to look forward to doing? What a healthy perspective with which to view a very full life that sometimes seems overwhelming to me!

Getting outside to enjoy nature and fit in some much-needed exercise and play time has also been my focus in the last month.

This past weekend I spent some one-on-one time hiking in the woods with my middle child. It was interesting to see what things caught his attention:

A leaf bigger than his head;

a bucket snagged on a branch in a dry creek bed;

a cracked retaining wall being overtaken by nature.

Meanwhile, various fungi and other natural sculptures caught my eye:

the sedimentary-like layers of a polypore, or bracket fungus;

the natural twining of fallen branches;

an orange mushroom growing on the bank of the dry creek.

Part of my play therapy has involved making the most of the gorgeous fall weather and getting out to the country to enjoy the leaves and take part in the many fall festivals. Last weekend we went to an apple festival, and it was so soul-lifting to see my children's wonder and hear their laughter at the simplest things:

a barrel of apples ready to be pressed into fresh cider;

liquid sweetness pouring out of the press;

pure joy while playing with a simple wooden toy . . .

and feeding the goats leaf after crunchy leaf.

We have just started on a brave new undertaking for our family, and one that's upending the routines that we have practiced for quite some time. We are in the process of eliminating television from our lives, and limiting access to other media as well. After dinner tonight we were actually all together as a family in our living room instead of dispersed throughout the house hooked up to our various electronic devices. My husband and daughter played the guitar together. My older son read a book. And, after collapsing on the couch for a while, I was persuaded to do two puzzles with my youngest.

Nature, play, undistracted family time--these are some of the strands that we're weaving into our lives as we slowly untangle them. I'll let you know how it goes.

Talking Leaves

The leaves are talking right now. They are telling us that the days are growing shorter, the nights longer.

They are saying: Spin crazily in the breeze now, because the sunshine will soon be scarce.

Shed your normal coloring and dress yourself in your most vibrant hues. Mix crazily with your friends in tangled piles.
Let raindrop orbs settle on your skin.
And spread out flat to catch the waning rays, filling veins with precious life.