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.

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!

Merry Christmas from Vermont, (vacationing with the in-laws, much more satisfying than California!)

I wanted to coat dried leaves with mod podge (originally from here I guess) to play with my daughter, because it sounded like lots of fun – it makes the leaves soft again. But there, that makes the leaves soft again – but glues are often plastics, and that sounds like plastic softeners, doesn’t it? Which sounds like phthalates (phthalates are plastic softeners). So I try to figure it out, and it seems by looking at the patent (3,616,005 – listed on the bottle) that Mod Podge likely has dibutyl phthalate in it as the softener. (In addition to the MSDS (material safety data sheet) listing vinyl acetate which is somewhat carcinogenic.)

And yet, it has the “AP nontoxic” seal on it, because all nontoxic means is unlikely to cause problems if used according to label. It does NOT mean it is okay if your kids eat it. The MSDS sheet even says: “INGESTION: Not an anticipated route of exposure. Small amounts are not anticipated to be harmful.” Comforting.

So now I’m trying to figure out what exactly is in the other kinds of white glue. Seems white glue is usually some form of polyvinyl acetate. Which Wikipedia says cross-links in the presence of boron compounds like borax, to make gak. I’m learning things today. There may be other chemicals that borax makes crosslink to form gak, but all my gak forming white washable school glue is probably mainly polyvinyl acetate, and it probably all has di-butyl phthalate in it, because that is the cheap way to do things.

I hate our synthetic chemical world. (Not that there aren’t plenty of natural poisons, like many houseplants our kiddies could be eating.)

But now I’ll go try to get over my panic attack and go to bed…

I was going to do a giveaway, but I decided to start a December Giving drive instead. Not really giving money, but loaning it. Micro loans specifically, with Kiva.

World poverty is an unfathomably large problem. But if everyone reaches out to give a hand to another person, well, we would be somewhere better. I’m not feeling very allegorical I guess!

Here, go read How We Can Help Alleviate World Poverty in Three Easy Steps. Feeling more inspired now? So I’m taking part in the Blog with Heart Challenge, not because I want to win something, but because I want to give, and Kiva seems like a really good way to make a difference.

I’ve started by loaning $50 to a craftswomen in Peru to buy wool. Wouldn’t you like to do something like that?

The Blog with Heart Challenge is about getting blogging communities together to make a difference, and encouraging each other. So I’m encouraging you to fund a micro loan with Kiva, and join the One Inch World team. (Current balance zero, because I made my first loan before I started the team… oops.)

how you can join the challenge – (it only takes two minutes)

Step #1 Register: Go to www.kiva.org and register.

Step #2 Join the One Inch World lending team Scroll down and push the ‘JOIN TEAM’ button.

Step #3 Lend: Click on LEND in the navigation bar. Choose a group or person you would like to lend to, read about them, and click on the LEND NOW button.

Step #4 Boost your team: On the ‘My Basket’ page. In the upper right hand part it says: “Count towards team:” put the name of your blog team in the box below.

Step #5 Pay: Click on ‘CONTINUE’ and you’ll be taken to the secure payment page.

You don’t have to add your loan to my blog portfolio, but if you do, I’ll send you a copy of the pattern I just finished, Soft Linkable Car Pattern. Fun, right?

I’ll be funding micro loans and reminding you all month, but you know you’re so excited about helping that you’re going to go to www.kiva.org and fund a loan right now!

Finally finally finally! This is what I’ve been working on for the last month besides my 2007 photo book. And suddenly I find I have nothing to say… I think the pattern came out nicely though, this time I decided to illustrate it instead of photographing it. I like how it looks, it isn’t overloaded with pictures for each tiny step, and I think the illustrations are easier to understand. I wanted to get this done further before the holidays, but it’s pretty easy to make, so maybe I’ll get some adventurous takers.

I think finding wheels is a little intimidating, so I put some sets of those up for sale in my shop too, although I really don’t want to get into the business of selling wheels. If I was a business major I’m sure I’d think it was great and call it something like horizontal productization or leveraged diversification or something, but there’s a reason I’m not a business major, and I don’t run a store. Because I want to make things, not resell them. Except, now I have a store. Hrm.

On a separate note, Thanksgiving was really low key at our house this year. We were going to go over to a friends for a group shindig, but Rebecca got sick Tuesday night. Thursday it got to be time to cook dinner, well, 20 minutes until dinner is supposed to be ready is a little late to start, and I felt lame that we didn’t have anything Thanksgiving-ish. So in 40 minutes I managed to cook elbow noodles (Rebecca survives half on whole wheat noodles and half on milk and fruit), sour cranberry relish, biscuit wrapped chicken sausage bits, and roasted chestnuts. And the biscuits didn’t come out of a pop-tube either. We opened a bottle of wine, and had the chocolate cream pie Jesse made for the party for dessert ourselves. I was quite pleased with my adrenaline fueled speed cooking session. It brought back the days when we used to have Iron Chef cooking parties at our house.

I should probably have some kind of giveaway now, shouldn’t I? Maybe tomorrow.