Rebecca is 4, which means that she gets to pick out the birthday presents for her friends, and while I may retain some veto power, and can provide suggestions, it’s really her show. But sometimes *I* want in on the fun too! So I made this barrette for one of her fashion conscious friends who was turning 3.

As usual I was planning an extravagant set of six barrettes, some leaves, flowers, an apple, an ‘A’, but reality set in, and I only ended up making one, which with all the hand stitching took me at least an hour, possibly two. I’m really not very fast with my hand sewing I guess. Too much of a perfectionist. When I was gathering the lace for the back I carefully took a stitch in the 2nd and 4th holes of the lace, pulled them together with the 0th and then tacked it down with a back stitch. Please, I’m gathering lace to the back of a barrette, not counting cross stitch, but I have a really hard time going fast. I find slow and precise relaxing, but frustrating at the same time.

To make this barrette cover I traced the barrette, cut two, clipped a hole for the back prong of the barrette, and with the barrette in the center sewed them together with a running stitch. Then I whip stitched the monogram/lace stack to the edges of the barrette.

I have been doing a ridiculous amount of cooking and fermenting and sprouting rather than blogging recently. I think I have 4-5 containers of various ginger ferments, 3 jars of somewhat suspicious pickles, I made crackers and quinoa milk today for heaven’s sake. I idly think about blogging as I’m cooking, and sometimes take pictures, but I don’t really think I should diversify this blog any further, it’s already gotten pretty unfocused from where I started! And sometimes that bothers me, but not enough to do anything about it yet. Would you like my blog better if it was my crafts only or children’s activities only?

We have lots of dried out markers. We *had* lots of dried out markers. I bet you do to. I’ve tried soaking them in water, which sort of works, but what *really* works is soaking them in liquid watercolors. They aren’t the most common craft supply, but if you have some they are perfect for recharging your markers. If you don’t have any you can probably justify the cost by saying they will save you the price of buying a new set of markers every year.

To recharge your markers just put a little liquid watercolor in a paint tray or small jar and stick your markers in them, they will slowly soak them up and be ready to draw like new. Keep an eye on them, and if they suck up all the dye, add more. For a really dry marker you may have to leave it overnight with a good supply. Our liquid watercolors are washable (like most), so our finished markers stay washable, very important! Also, if you think your old colors are boring, you can even give them a long soak in a new made up color. Which brings us to activity two:

Have you seen those Crayola color mixing markers? They are basically just two markers that snap together point to point, and mix their colors through diffusion, then when you draw, the color gradually fades from the mixed color back to the original color as the dye is sucked out of the tip of the marker by the paper. Well, you can buy special markers to do this (which we technically did, my husband and daughter came home from the craft store with them, which is how I even know what they are…) but you don’t need to, you can just dip the regular old markers that you have into your liquid watercolors and get the same effect. Cool! You can do all kinds of neat washes and color fades. So go get mixy with those markers!

While we were in Vermont one of our favorite haunts on Nenny and D.Pa’s property was Hemlock Brook. On one walk there we counted twenty eight Salamanders. And Rebecca had to touch each and every one. Some of them ran away, but she got her finger on most of them. They are poisonous, so they tend to hold still and say “Hey, I’m red. It would be a really bad idea to eat me, right? Right? You know that, right?” Near the end of our visit we researched the salamanders, made a terrarium, and kept one to watch for a day before setting it loose again.

Hemlock Brook is a lovely place, with enough water to make pools to splash around in, although not big enough to swim in, lots of big rocks and sticks to move around, diverting the water, making damns, deepening pools, mucking around in the mud. Lots of wonderful moss covered fallen logs to sit and walk on too, and little waterfalls and tunnels. I really wish we could have brought it home with us. The water around us in the South SF Bay Area isn’t nearly as clean, many of the streams are contaminated by mercury from natural sources and mining in the coastal mountains. Ick.

Penelope’s favorite thing to do at Hemlock Brook was eat mud. In case you were wondering, and I know I was, the brook gets it’s name from Hemlock the tree, not Hemlock the poisonous shrub. No relation. But still, my husband and I have an ongoing debate, how much mud should you let your children eat? How much mud do you let your children eat?

‘Your picture is smaller than my hand, and a sunflower seed is smaller than a word, but I remember: you were taller than everyone. When the winter sky shivers with icy stars, I remember how hard you worked, to be like the sun.’ – to be like the SUN, by Susan Marie Swanson & Margaret Chodos-Irvine.

I love sunflowers, don’t you?

Sometimes you just need a different canvas.

Step 1: Scrounge around on trash day, someone will have tree trimmings out to be collected. Free is good.
Step 2: Slice. We used our handy dandy bandsaw, but a hand saw would work fine.
Step 3: Paint. We didn’t do any sanding, it’s all about the process! Besides, the wavy saw marks gave it some interesting texture.

The girls also used these for stamping on their paper, monoprints (or tri-prints) of painted wood. The texture and irregular shape made these fun printing blocks.

Once you are done decorating them you can add them to your block collection too! Or they can be doors for hobbit-fairy houses. There are so many things you can do with flat rounds of wood!

Sometimes you just need to take two things that you like to play with and put them together. Like rocks and blocks. This time it was water and LEGOs. Take one large plastic storage container filled with water, some LEGOs, and mix. Or the bathtub. LEGOs are great with water, because when you snap them together they capture air, which makes them buoyant. Rebecca and her friend Samuel did need to do some experimenting with base size vs height though, Rebecca’s first attempt at a boat was three times as high as it was wide, so it tipped right over which she found very concerning!

After the LEGOs, all sorts of things ended up in the water. This is a boat too, can you see the passenger?

If you put out squeeze bottles of paint, for filling up trays, or for using for painting, it seems that inevitably they are squeezed and squeezed and squeezed into a giant puddle until they are empty. So sometimes when that seems to be happening quite a lot, we make up paint just for squeezing. Mostly flour and water, with some paint for color, it is very cheap, somewhat thick, and very satisfying to squeeze out of old food containers like this old honey bear.

One of the benefits of accidentally buying student tempera instead of washable tempera is that there is so much pigment in them that a tiny bit was enough to dye the flour paint quite brightly. I was actually trying to make pink as one of our colors, so I added just a little red, but I got red. I was quite surprised, as I remember trying to get red with our old washable paints and ending up with pink after what seemed like a ridiculous amount of paint. I’ve tried making the student tempera washable by cutting it 50/50 with castile soap, which sort of works, perhaps I need to go more like 10/90! And add corn starch. Or something. Anyway, squeezing paint is great fun!

[This second picture is mostly regular paint. It may be a giant puddle, but isn't it pretty? ]

Have you done this before? Have you squeezed paint onto anything other than paper before? I think there are probably some good ideas around this and I’d like to hear them!

Do you have a cheap glue gun that doesn’t stand up on its lame little stand? I do. Let’s fix them. I want my glue gun to stay where I put it, and not tip over, slide around, leak glue everywhere, and burn me or my daughters. Lame!

This is not a beautiful or complicated project, but I find it extremely helpful. Take a rough 12″x12″ piece of cardboard, and a large empty spool. (If you don’t have any empty spools you could probably use an empty spice jar or toilet paper tube in a pinch. I save thread spools for my daughters to use as threading beads, so I just raided one of those.) Use your glue gun to hot glue the the spool, on its side, into the middle of the cardboard. Cut a deep notch in the cardboard behind the spool for the cord, this is the important part, cheap glue guns always try to stand on their cords which is most of what tips them over. The notch channels the cord’s disruptive energy into extra stability. Take that, cord!

To stand your glue gun up slide the cord into the notch and stand your glue gun on the spool. Woo Hoo!

We are visiting my inlaws in Vermont for several weeks, and in addition to an immense forest to play in they have several enormously happy and productive lavender plants which are all spewing flowers. This doll is one of the things I came up with to do with them. She is loosely inspired by Grandma Nenny’s sweet grass dolls.

Things you will need:
Fresh lavender – fresh enough to bend in half without snapping.
A wooden bead, or something round with a hole through it for the head.
String for hair and shirt
Scissors, craft glue and something to draw a face with.

First draw your face, or draw your face last, or perhaps sometime in the middle, possibly never. There are many long traditions of faceless dolls, although sometimes I think they are a bit creepy. Besides, whenever I don’t put a face on a doll Rebecca always asks and asks and asks until I put a face on them. So draw the face.

Cut some hair by looping the yarn around your hand about seven times, depending on the size of the head and the hole in it, and cut the loops. Or, you know, don’t. If you have any roving that makes lovely hair. Moss does too. And daisy hats are always in style.

Take a lavender stem, fold it in half around the middle of the hair and thread the stem down through the head.

Pull the hair down halfway through the head. If it feels quite stuck then perfect, you’ve used the right amount of hair, nevermind how it covers the fairy’s head. If it feels loose, but you don’t want to add more, you can pull it out again, put a drop of glue down the hole and pull it in again. If it doesn’t fit, you’ll just have to figure something out, probably involving either glue or knots.

Hold the hair up and put glue around the hole in a C, leaving a gap for the face.

Pull the hair down into the glue strand by strand to create an even layer all around. If you think fairies should have bangs, don’t leave a gap in the glue for the face. Or also if you think fairies should look like Cousin It. No reason to keep it all one color either, pink in front, blue in the back, or maybe striped orange and black like a tiger lilly.

On to the body, the dancing skirt, the home of the heart. Gather your lavender into a bundle, the tips of the blossoms all at the same height. You will want somewhere between 6-12 stems of lavender depending on their size and the size of the doll. This is art, not science!

Tie a knot to hold the bunch together, leaving a two inch tail on one side, and several feet or the whole ball uncut on the other. If you are thinking about proportions, the knot will be just below the finished dolls arms. The dolls I like the best have had the knot just above the top of the highest bud. The one in the picture is a bit high I think.

Bend 2-3 stalks straight out to either side just above the knot. Decide on an arm length, then bend the stalks back double and trim them 1/4″ to 1/2″ past the central stalk, so they go behind the sticking up stems and overlap the other arm a bit.

Trim the unbent stalks off at half a head height above the shoulders. So if your head is 1″ in diameter, trim the stalks off about 1/2″. The stalks should give you a little bit of neck, then go into the head and rest against the hair stuffed down the bead shaft.

Attach the head next. It’s a bit fiddly. If you like glue put a bit in the bottom of the head. Then thread the lavender stalk coming out of the head down through the knot holding the body bundle of lavender together. Keep pushing the head down and feed all of the neck lavender stalks into the neck hole of the head. Pull the body knot tight if it’s come loose. There’s nothing holding the arms bent at this point except my finger, don’t worry if they are waving wildly around, just gather them up again once the head is on.

From now to the end tuck the short tail of the yarn down with the skirt, we will want it to finish the knot at the end, so don’t loose it, just keep it out of the way. Tie two half hitches, (does that make it a full hitch?) around each shoulder to hold the arms together. Just tie two on one side, pull the yarn around behind the shoulders and tie the other two for the other arm.

At this point the doll is structurally done, and how you wrap or knot the shirt is a matter of taste. First, before you start wrapping though, give her a kiss for her heart!

For the shirt I like to wrap the yarn from the shoulder down the arm for a sleeve, then wrap back to the shoulder, cross over the body, wrap down the other arm and back up to the shoulder for the other sleeve. But leave her sleeveless if you want. Then for the body I alternate wrapping around the waist/chest once, up over one shoulder, down and around the waist, up over the other shoulder and back to the waist and around. Do that a handful of times and it will create a woven ‘V’ front. When you are done wrapping the body tie a square knot, with the original tail you’ve been saving, over her hip, in the middle, or wherever you like it. Trim the ends.

Then make another one so they can be friends. Once I finished this one I had to make a baby for her. Hugs! And now I’m feeling a strange urge to sew a felt kimono for her…

Why do tutorials always take 10 times longer than you originally think? This really is a pretty simple doll, and exactly how you do the steps doesn’t much matter, so don’t worry, go out and pick some lavender. Or grass, or some weeds. Hmm. Next I will make her a friend ‘clover’! Let me know what happens with you!

Do you think this design is cute? Then you should go vote for it (and whatever else you like) at the Spoonflower weekly fabric design contest. I designed it. I’m having fun with their themes. I don’t think I’m going to enter next week, but the collage theme after that sounds like fun.

In other news, we had a great Vermont day today. It started with my waking up at 5am. That’s okay, I probably fell asleep around 9, and Penelope only wakes me up 3 times at night now instead of 5 or something. Those first four hours are the really important ones for not being a zombie, so I’m grateful. I got sidetracked.

We dropped Grandma/Nenny off at work, then went and played in the river for 45 minutes. It’s a lovely wide shallow river, so we waded out into the middle where there was a huge rock to climb on. Rebecca got soaking wet of course, and ended up in her underwear. Then we went to a happy cafe for morning snack. Then we went to a bigger-on-the-inside-than-the-outside antique store, where we bought Jesse’s sister some willow ware for her collection. Then we had a lovely lunch and Jesse had a beer sampler at the Long Trail brewery, sitting right next to the same beautiful river. One more antique store, the grocery store, and we picked up Nenny and went home.

Rebecca, D-Pa and Nenny went out to an evening concert and ice cream on the village green, but mom and dad and Penelope were too tired!

Don’t forget to vote for my fabric design!