One Inch World

Want to practice your cranking? Rebecca is fascinated by both baby food and the food mill. She wants her own bowl of baby rice cereal at meal times. It wouldn’t have occurred to me, but here she is, working on grinding up a quarter of a peanut butter and jam sandwich… Mmmm… She ate that quarter and then ground another one. Whatever floats their boats, right? (Still old pre-move projects.)

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.

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.

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!

We needed something to do, so we made this clothes line out of a pipe cleaner and some cardboard triangles, and some paper clothes to hang up. I cut out the clothes and Rebecca drew on them, then hung them on the clothes line with mini clothes pins. To get the clothes line to stay up we had to put some rocks in the cardboard triangles, maybe someone has a better idea for how to make a clothes line? This one is pretty simple.

Today, through Kiva.org, I loaned $50 to a sweet maker in Mexico. Join me in my December drive to give a helping hand to people in poverty.

We like playing with Gak. We make the borax and glue kind, which is kind of like silly putty, but ours is a little closer to the jello/snot end of the spectrum than putty. You can blow bubbles in it, break it, bounce it, stretch it, let it drip off the table… and apparently you can cut it with scissors. Not my idea…

Filling it with tinsel also wasn’t my idea… But I fully accept that it was very interesting. We could have made more, but I had more fun dripping it out of the tinsel.

Here is the recipe we use, we got it from the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose:
1. Mix 1 cup hot water and 1 1/2 tsp. of Borax until dissolved. Set aside.
2. Mix 2 cups of clear glue and 2 cups of warm water together in a plastic bowl. (We use 1 cup hot water and 1 cup of washable tempera paint for color, and a glass bowl.)
3. Using a metal spoon, slowly pour Borax mixture into glue mixture while stirring quickly. Stir until the mixture leaves the side of the bowl. Gak will be sticky.
4. Knead until Gak is not sticky. The more you work with it the easier it will be.

We leave ours on the kitchen counter (in a plastic container so it doesn’t dry out) for months. If you use washable tempera in the mixture eventually (after a couple months) it goes runny and you have to make more. If you just use water it eventually gets solid, or sticky, I can’t remember, our friend made it that way. But in anycase, it lasts a good long time, probably it will be full of dust and hair before it goes bad.

Gak is fun, but remember that Borax is a poison, you don’t want to inhale the powder, and you don’t want to eat it. So if you think your children might eat this I wouldn’t really recommend making it. We first played with it in the Discovery Museum’s under 5 room, so I’m not sure what to think.

Today, through Kiva.org, I loaned $25 to a woman in Tanzania to support her used clothing store. Join me in my December drive to give a helping hand to people in poverty.