One Inch World

I am lost deep in the black hole of moving hell. Okay, perhaps not quite that bad. But I swear I haven’t done anything other than unpack boxes and buy bookshelves for the last three weeks. The light is starting to come out though, Saturday we finally unpacked the paints, and yesterday I cleared enough space to dust off my ancient Singer Featherweight. (I’ve been borrowing my ex-housemates modern sewing machine for the last 6 years…) She still runs, her name is Elizabeth, and she was my mother’s in college. I think I need to get her serviced pretty badly though, she’s sounding kind of chattery, and I think I’m missing a screw from the bobbin assembly…

Anyhow, here are some awful pictures of Rebecca’s sewing, from two months ago. The next several posts will all be things several months old, before moving took over my life!

Rebecca has been sewing felt recently. For Christmas D-Pa got her a stack of craft felt of her very own. This is a heart that one of us cut out, can’t remember. I think she cut it out… it was for Daddy, went something like: “This heart is for Daddy.” “You’re cutting a hole in it?” “Daddy has a hole in his heart and all the blood is coming out.” “Oh?” “Now I’m taping it up.” “Mom, make a needle for me, I want to sew it to my skirt.” “Oh sure, why not.” “Now Daddy’s heart is stuck to my skirt, and I’ll show everyone at school tomorrow.” Two months and it’s still on there.

Yes, the color on this is awful. We did this at Nenny & D-Pa’s house over winter vacation. Rebecca said she wanted to make a donut, so I cut out two teal circles for her. Yes, she chose the color. First she sewed around the ring in the middle, then she said she wanted to put strawberries on it. So I cut out some strawberries, and she randomly stitched everything together. Then she wanted to stuff it. Sweetie, that’s really the wrong order to do things in, but who’s fault is that really? Sigh. Okay. So I started forcing stuffing in between the front and back between the strawberry stitching, holding the edges shut so that Rebecca could whip stitch around the edges. It ended up plumping up reasonably, luckily she wasn’t very thorough about sewing down the strawberries, because Mama’s always have to make these things work out, right?

By next week maybe I will have unpacked her felt and she can get back to work again. Actually, the biggest stumbling block to that right now: I bought a second hand wood bookcase for craft supplies, sight unseen, or in this case un-sniffed. It reeks of either perfume, incense or ill conceived fake teak scent. Any ideas how to get rid of it? I’m afraid the scent is somehow embedded in the finish and I’m very upset about the whole thing. It looks very nice, but the smell is making my throat raw.

I wanted Rebecca to be involved in making the valentines for her classmates tomorrow, which is challenging, since we have to make 26ish of them, and that takes some stamina. At first I was planning on doing some stenciling, I cut out some hearts, and I wanted her to use the spray bottles of liquid water colors we have to paint hearts onto watercolor paper. But. For some reason when the girls use these they feel that they have to hold them really close to the paper, and anything other than fully covering to a drippy mess is unacceptable. So the first stencil was filled to overflowing with red watercolor paint. You can guess it didn’t come out looking like a heart. We moved on to plan 2!

On each piece of watercolor paper I drew a secret heart picture, nothing complicated, and Rebecca sprayed and painted watercolors over the top until she could see the whole picture. And yes, I did use a moving box as my backdrop, my house is covered in them! Should I be packing right now? Yes…

This project was inspired by Richard Shilling’s Land Art, via 5 Orange Potatoes. After looking at Richard Shilling’s inspiring gallery of work we gathered a big bag of leaves, a pile of Monterey Pine needles, some scissors and got to work.

There was some arguing about who got to use the blue scissors (vs green), and who wanted to sit in the pink chair, but there was a lot of leaf cutting and stabbing with pine needles. Dunno about the kids, but the moms had a lot of fun!

This is probably three weeks old. I am going crazy packing boxes! Monday is the move, I’m sad I’m missing all the great valentines day crafting I could be doing.

Yes, I realize that the winter holidays are so last month! And frankly, we did this last month, but there you go, right now my house is full of moving boxes and not so full of exciting crafts! Two weeks to go.

The pine cones were a Friday Art Group project, we painted them white and then sprinkled them with kosher salt – it comes in larger flakes than table salt, but not so large as rock salt, and makes reasonable glitter substitute. We have no glitter in our house. Okay, we have one bottle of clear plastic glitter somewhere, but I don’t know where, and if I did I might not say.

The mini tree is a dead bonsai tree my husband gave me… We stuck it in some flour play dough and baked it. Somehow the tree wicked up the salt (maybe it was salt dough, honestly I don’t remember, it keeps a disgracefully long time.) and turned whiter than it was to start with, kinda cool. We hung lots of little mini ornaments on it with tweezers and fingers. It was a great fine motor activity, and lots of fun. The mini ornaments consist mostly of plastic beads and sequins in various arrangements strung on earring wires from the craft store. I have them from years ago, but next year I should find more earring wires (just short wires with a flat bump at the end – you could just twist a loop instead) and let Rebecca make the ornaments. I don’t think that tree is going to make it to next year, maybe we will have to use one of the still-living bonsai, it would be much sturdier too, even if it wouldn’t give as much of the ‘winter’ aspect.

I was throwing out all my old makeup – I never wear makeup anymore, and besides, old makeup is gross – and I thought, being sadly unable to throw *anything* away, that the twisty mechanism was a good thing to put into some kind of Montessori-esq tactile activity. So I cleaned them out, and then they twisted, but there wasn’t anything left to show that they went up and down, clearly they needed something inside them, and hey, wouldn’t it be cool if it was a crayon?? At first I was thinking of hot glueing in some regular crayons, but then I realized that fat crayons were more lipstick sized. They were too big to fit though, so I started whitling them down with a butter knife, until I could cram them into the little veined cups, and they stayed in just fine!

And they twist up and down, and they draw, and they are so cute! So, now we have four lipstick crayons, and I’ve only found *one* in the washing machine so far…

Once we were done making them we used the wax shavings – yes yes, couldn’t just throw them away – to make sun catchers. I’m sure that’s why it’s been raining for the last two weeks…

So, I’m sure, being moms, that you have some lipstick languishing in a drawer somewhere that would be so much happier as a crayon!

Basic Instructions:
Clean out lipstick with a paper towel, and maybe a q-tip. They don’t need to be washed, just mostly clean.
Take half a fat crayon, and whittle it down until you can jam it into the lipstick holder. You shouldn’t have to hammer it in, but it should be tight.
Done!

I think these would make great little valentines day presents too!

Look at that absorbed concentration! Present your child with some halved avocados, a spoon, a bowl, a masher, and an open jar of salsa and they can make guacamole for dinner for you. Or at least start it. Important and appreciated work for the family. Also great fine motor work and strengthening with all that scooping.

Notice the haircut? That was a christmas morning present. She’s been wanting that consistently for quite a while, and now that it’s done I like it too, surprisingly enough! (I’m firmly in the long hair camp myself.) She slouched quite a lot when I was cutting off her ponytail, when it was off and she straightened up I was rather shocked at how short she had managed to get it without my noticing! Chin length in front, but up above her hairline in back. And so she ended up with a reverse bob, because that was what happened, and it was practically instantly exactly the haircut that she should have had, no getting used to it period, no who’s child are you? And I would have had no idea how to get there if it hadn’t happened by accident!