Paper Flight

For the last two weeks or so these paper planes have been whizzing through the air all around us.  Some time after they make their final descent, they can usually be found under tables, stuck in lighting fixtures, behind furniture, and often on top of most high horizontal surfaces-shelves, refrigerator, kitchen cabinets and other hard to reach places.  I have been watching these planes fly around just above my head (often way too close to my head and even in to my head) thinking they had really summed up my feeling about the holiday season for me- in flight.  I finally feel like we are a bit more grounded around here and it is feeling very very good.

I was also feeling quite content with my little guy running low on his supply of special airplane making paper. The making/folding of these planes is just really darn cute.  I love watching him study the pictures in these books so closely and watching his little hands, that are growing more and more capable everyday, fold up his little flying wonders.  That is all really fantastic.  It's the "test flights" that I find challenging, "Hey mama, watch this one!", and suddenly before there's any time to react an extremely fast moving plane with a rather pointy end is flying towards my eyeballs.  So, it's only for these "test flights" that I have had my eye set quite happily on that dwindling supply of paper.  It was all looking so good for this mama. 

                      Then, that clever little boy of mine found a way to recycle the junk mail.

Needle felting.

 Needle felting has quickly become our favorite craft to do lately.  

It all started the day I let go of, what I believed to be, a reasonable fear of my children gouging their tiny body parts with nasty-sharp serrated needles.   I decided to get over it.  It happened.  They cried.  I cried.  Then they cried more because they thought I wasn't going to let them do it again and then I realized, "hey, what's the fuss all about then?  Let's get back to felting here."  So, we did.  

 It is such a peaceful and personal craft.  Each person has their own felting pad and needle and there is plenty of "community" wool to share.  We can each just hang out, chat and work on our own creations separately, but still very much together.

The best method we have found so far for sparing little fingers from those vicious needles is using wool cutouts from felted sweaters or 100% wool felt used a bit like a canvas so they can "paint" pictures with the wool.  At first I insisted on cutting out nice little rectangles so they would have these perfect backgrounds to use for their work.  Then, after much pleading from my people, they convinced me to relinquish control of the scissors.  They started cutting out their own backgrounds which were, and usually are, much more organic then the somewhat sterile rectangles I had insisted on.  
Once they have their backgrounds ready we pin them down to the felting pad with straight pins to hold them in place.  This way they can add wool over the background, create whatever image they have unfolding behind their wide and focused eyes without really having to hold their hands near the sharp end of the needle.

So far this has yielded many enjoyable afternoons of needle felting 

and oh my, ever so many works of felted art.

Our new pet

A Sweet Gum tree fruit wrapped in wool.

Ba Ba Black Sheep

 This is a little story set I put together for Carmel the other day.  The two of us sat down and set up a special place to put everything.   She was so excited to sing the song and play with it, but she had this odd sort of questioning look on her face the whole time.   When we were finished I asked her if she wanted to play with it alone for a bit.  After a lengthy pause she finally asked me why we were singing Ba Ba Black Sheep when the little black animal she was holding in her hand was clearly, a goat.

This, I could not argue with.  Maybe it would be useful to look at a picture of the animal one is attempting to make instead of guessing, but that's not what I did.  For now, we will just be exercising our imagination.  That's always good to do anyway.

I did end up searching Google images for "black sheep" and found a couple of strange looking sheep that bore a strong resemblance to our goat, pointed at the pictures and said, "Nope, it's a sheep.  See."

"Oohhhhh", she said.

Something Pretty

A felted knitting queen.

Sugaring

Sugaring. It just sounds exciting, doesn't it? It's been talked about around here many times before, but we talk about doing all sorts of things you know. It never really means were going to do any of it. Unless of course a friend stops in and gets tired of hearing talk talk talk and then decides to go out and tap your maple trees.

Forced sugaring! Sometimes a little push is just the thing.

Just four taps. It's a perfectly sweet introduction to something that seems as though it will be a part of our winters for many years to come.

First Aid

Now that most of these are in their new homes I thought I could finally talk about this project. This was one of the most enjoyable "production" projects I have done. Usually when I make something I make one of it and don't ever consider making another. This time I was really excited to see what several somethings would all look like together and I was so happy with the end result.

The project was conceived sometime this summer, July 22nd to be exact. I was sitting outside on the front porch on a warm summer morning sipping my coffee, watching the kids play and reading through this really fantastic book. It showed a picture of an emergency kit that every home should have and I thought how wonderful it would be if Owen and Carmel could have their own kid friendly kit. Their very own first aid kit to help them feel like they have some control over their healing when they get those little cuts, scrapes, bruises and bumps that seem to happen everyday. They will love it, and I guess if I'm going to put one together I should make one for everyone...

Does six months of planning and making seem like too much time? Not for me. I only barely got them finished for the giving season. Which is why it's good for me to know the conception date of this project. Now I know it takes me about six months from conception to completion. No one ever said I was timely. I did manage to get it all done though and I really loved doing it.

One of the things I enjoyed was being able to extend the life of an old hand stitched quilt that we had laying around our house. It was getting to hard to use as a blanket and Andy had very kindly asked many times for it to be taken out of circulation. After having his arm pop through the tired stitching or hearing it gain another long tear through the middle, unable to part with it entirely, I finally agreed to pull it from our blanket bin and find another use for it. Many portions of that old quilt have found a new life in the shape of eye pillows and cold compresses. I couldn't be happier with extending its life in this way.

The other part I loved was making the healing salve. It felt like I was in chemistry class except I got to concoct something that would actually be fun and safe to use. I know I will come back to this sort of making again and again. Only the next time I make something with beeswax I will be sure to have one of these around to use exclusively for beeswaxy sorts of things. Andy got a hold of the pots I used to make the healing salve to clean it and apparently, ahem...I am told...it is not easy to remove beeswax from cookware. It can take a very very VERY long time, he patiently explained. Who knew?

And now, with the pots in the kitchen all dewaxed, it has been nothing but a pleasure to watch these sweet little people of ours show such loving tenderness to all things living or stuffed that need their care.

Mitts and stuff

A few days ago (before everyone was sick) Andy and Owen went out hiking and my husband walked home with a tree. A tree! Who goes out for a little hike and then comes home with a tree?Well, now I know.

So, as I watch him carry this tree through our yard I wonder what on earth does he need, or want, with this tree. The hand tools come out of the shed and I watch as this tree becomes smaller and smaller.

What is he making? I would love to tell you but I think it would be more fun if you guessed.

As for me, I am getting ready to cast on for these sweet little mitts. They look just perfect for spring weather (not that I'm anxious for spring or anything). The pattern can be found for free in the sidebar section of the blog My Photographic Life . I'm pretty sure we all need some of these because really, don't you think Andy's hands look cold in that picture? Besides he would look just smashing in those mitts while wielding that sharp thingy he has there. Don't you think?

President's Day

I thought we should gear up for the holiday so it could be properly observed. Owen is pretty happy with his new T-shirt.

Happy President's Day!

Valentine's Preparations

Where we've been: Part 2

There was the sweater I couldn't put down long enough to do a post, but then there was also this whole project that came up sometime around the left arm portion of my sweater. This left arm portion was what I liked to call the last leg, the final bit, the home stretch. I was so very nearly done when suddenly there was a refinance emergency. This emergency brought on by no one other than my silly self now with a very new long list of things to do.

Including...

1.) Pull rug out from under happy holiday sweater knitting in front of fire.

2.) Make many calls to loan originator.

3.) (And now seriously dragging Andy into it.) Finish all projects on our house in a week.

4.) Hurry!

Check.

Check.

Check. Check.

And that is mostly where we have been these last many weeks. Right now it is feeling so very very good to sit in front of the fire with so many things finished that have needed to be done for so long just relaxing and enjoying each other.

And look, my sweater is still there waiting for me with just one arm to go.

Where we've been: Part 1

Where on earth have we been? I feel like I should apologize for being away so long. I'm sorry! I wish I could say that it was the busy holiday rush that kept me from posting here for over a month, but we really don't have a busy holiday rush at our house, so that wasn't it. I can say, however, with a fair amount of certainty that it all began with this (free pattern) sweater and several skeins of yarn I brought home from our wool gathering this fall. Once I started in I couldn't pull myself away from it. It was all about knitting all the time breakfast, lunch, dinner, and stop lights. More on that later.

As the holiday's moved in we found ourselves at a local tree farm searching for the perfect tree.

We found it and said hello to some reindeer. We brought our tree home and commenced the decoration creation process with only a slight bit of popcorn breaking needle poking frustration. All frustration soon forgotten however once those lovely bits of garland were hung. Carmel continues to enjoy the garland even into the new year. She thinks it's delicious.

Cool Bike

Andy and Owen were both in awe over this bicycle. Oh how I have seen those gears turn in my husbands head before....scary. Seriously, scary. I have been imagining Andy with these two tiny preschooler-sized bicycles laying around him in pieces with sparks from a welder flying through the air. "Here you go Owen....only a few more joints to weld up. Your new bike is almost ready....papa is just putting the training wheels back on this bottom portion here son and you'll be all set to ride," he says to Owen as my little boy looks around excitedly for his foot stool to climb up on his new bike.

It really doesn't sound too far off now does it?

Gasp!

The Workbench

It has been a few weeks ago now that I first noticed Andy's gears starting to turn while he was watching Owen work with his new saw.  Certainly, he must have been thinking that these just weren't good working conditions for his boy.  Now I say "certainly" because all of this watching and head shaking was what had originally led to me finding various miniature workbench sketches laying all about the yard. And so...

Old working conditions:

New working conditions:

Much better.

Much loved.

Somem's goin' on here.

Little sketches here and there.  Power tools spread across the lawn.  Clamps.  Squares.  Saws. Little bits of mutilated lumber laying helplessly all around.

Yes.  I get the distinct feeling that my guys, both the big one and the small one, are up to something.  

I am certainly looking forward to the finished project, but watching the whole process is sure a lot of fun too.