There be treasure there, matey

The Crazy Towhead has been enamored of pirates and maps for quite some time. Any proof you need can be found in her Halloween costume two years ago, her insane love of the books How I Became a Pirate and Pirates Don’t Change Diapers, and the box she keeps filled with a map (of France), a compass, and a magnifying glass.

We recently rented Disney’s Peter Pan, and this seemed to ignite her adventurous spirit and take her back to the days when we taught her how to put a hand over one eye and growl,  “Arg! I’m a pirate!” It all started thus:

I was working on the computer at the kitchen table. She was drawing pictures on her easel. Lines turn into shapes; shapes resemble letters; and soon she was calling to me. “Mama, look! A “D.” And a’ “X.”

“Yup,” I said. “X marks the spot.”

“I need to draw a map,” she said. “With an X on it. For the pirates.”

“Are we burying treasure?” I ask.

“And for Caleb. He needs it to find his skunk.”

“Oh?”

Well one thing led to another. I got excited (I love treasure hunts). We found a plastic sheet that came with a set of jungle animal toys. We discussed the journey, how treasure maps work, what obstacles the seekers might face, and what the treasure might be.

The consensus was that the seekers had to go along the mountain tops, past the bear cave, and onto the plains. Once there they had to split up by gender: girls go north where they must find and put on a pink dress with blue tights. Boys head west, where they must don a purple coat and two rings if they want to proceed. They meet up and journey on until they find the box of stickers, which will detail how to navigate the swamp of snakes and worms.

At the Shark lagoon . . . well, there’s a whole story about what happens in the shark lagoon, but I’m not sure I remember enough to give you all the details. Anyway, the treasure, which used to be in the shark lagoon has since drifted up onto the plains. And that’s where the treasure lies!

On the back of the map CT titled the map, and we wrote our names in code. The map has mostly been shoved in this or that purse since then, just waiting for the moment when the adventurous spirit strikes us again and we wander into the mountains to find that treasure.

We So Crafty: Summer Activites and Fall Art

Summer has been a busy but fantastic time. As it nears an end we’ve been trying to cram in as much as we can before the weather gets cold and the typical fall activities take over.

I love fall. It’s one of my favorite seasons. And every year it ends up jam packed with events. We’ve made a point of NOT planning anything for October in particular because it inevitably, and usually at the last minute, there are tons of things to see and do. This year, even with trying to keep things scaled back, we’ve still managed to fill every weekend between now and November.

As tired as I am I know that the warm days are disappearing, and we all want to make the most of the opportunites we have left. So we’ve been camping and canoeing quite a bit. It has left us with bug bites and a mudroom full of camping gear, sleeping bags, and swim suits strung all over. And though the mess is hard to deal with, the memories are worth all of it.

We have one, maybe two, more camping trips planned with friends in late September and mid-October. Towhead has been a busy little girl, and she seems to love camping, especially when there are toads involved!

As fall approaches though, I’m beginning to check out my favorite craft sites for things we can do on weekends and rainy days when playing on the swing set is not longer an option in the evenings. I’ve been a fan of The Crafty Crow for awhile. There are so many project ideas! When my imagination is running thin (which it frequently does) I have a never ending source of ideas. And I love how the whole thing is themed – one of my favorite was all the projects you can do with toilet paper rolls. In the interests of reducing, reusing and recycling we keep all our rolls and quite a few boxes (cereal, cracker, etc). But after awhile they pile up!

Here’s one of the projects inspired by a listing on the site that now decorates the walls of CT’s room. It involves taking her paintings and showcasing them by creating stencils that we then arranged and framed. The original idea uses only one animal per frame, but CT had so many animals she wanted to create that we decided to group them by theme – earth, sea, and sky.

And here’s a robot we made from all those saved boxes. Another idea inspired by the Crafty Crow that was a lots of fun on a rainy summer day.

More than anything though I think the idea of a collective like this one creates a sense of community of imaginative ideas – something I support whole-heartedly. It has been the best source I have found thus far and I can never thank Lynnie at Way Up High in the Monkey Bread Tree for turning me onto it. I mention this primarily because The Crafty Crow is having a giveaway for fall kids’ clothes that is well worth checking out. I also have my eye on a project we may try out as a potential Christmas gift – if you like the Recycled Paper Beads you see here let me know and I’ll put you on our list!

New additions to the color wheel

I have so many things to write about and update people on. I keep bookmarking things in my head, or composing blog entries as I get ready for bed. The schedule at work has kept me running for two weeks now with no time to fit in much of anything besides sleeping, eating, and the occasional instance where we put on a movie and pile the entire family and dog on the couch for some much-needed cuddles, relaxation, and long sighful breaths at the end of the day.

The tidalwave will abate . . . just in time for our over-scheduled family vacation. In spite of all this, I am happy – busy, tired, excited, with a very long to-do list – but still happy. In times like this it seems that after a period of stress and short tempers, Mr. A and I take notice of it all and even though the stress may not have diminished, we make an extra effort to laugh, hug, talk, and care for each other in a way that makes the chaos more manageable. Mr. A is unparalleled at making me not take life or myself too seriously (at least when he’s not super stressed himself).

This weekend a heavy thunderstorm left us in a humid and cool house with no chance at working on the yard. So the Towhead and I worked on an art project I’ve been wanting to try for awhile. (I’ll take pictures once it’s done.)We also added two new descriptors to the artists color wheel: purply and pinkable. Towhead was in fine form. I have to get a tape recorder in addition to a camera – her stories and quoteable quotes these days are hilarious.

Knitted Together, or Stitch n’ Bitch by Mail

When I lived in Reno, there was a group of us that used to meet every Friday afternoon at a coffee shop to enjoy a cup of coffee or tea and each other’s company, and to knit.  Whether it was girls, or co-ed (yes, we did have a couple male knitters) we all sat around knitting (or crocheting, or embroidering, or sewing ripped clothes) and talked about life – good, bad, past & present. Some called it our knitting circle. Personally, I prefer the term the term used by the friend who taught me how to knit: stitch n’ bitch. It’s the most honest descriptor I’ve heard.  Because really that’s what we did.

Some weeks there were only two of us, sometimes 6-8; sometimes the conversation was light-hearted, sometimes it was a vent seesion where we, well, bitched about our week. I think it appealed to the multi-tasker in me. I could talk to friends, and have something to show for it at the end – a hat, a scarf, a stuffed animal for my niece. As cliche as it sounds I always left that group feeling more relaxed and nurtured than I did when I walked in the door. In essence, it was a weekly meeting of friends that left me smiling.

Eventually, our meetings faded away. And later I moved. But this last November, Chris, one of the women from this group, emailed me and told me about a neat idea she’d had: a Scarf Exchange. She had contacted knitters she knew and asked each of us to knit a hat or scarf and send it to her with details about the person who knitted it, the yarn used, etc.  Chris promised to photograph and then redistribute the goods. I thought she would just lay them out on a sheet and take pictures. I had no idea that she planned to take them outside and present them in such an artisitc way (see above). In some of her photos, scarves are hung like snakes, wrapped and dangling from branches. The look almost alive! I should have expected no less from such a creative and caring woman who specializes in examining the relationships between nature and culture. It was a neat way to reconnect with people. I get all warm and fuzzy thinking about it. And when I put the hat on too.

Stick to What you Know

OK, so I haven’t quite kept up with my promise to blog more often. The truth is there are tons of things I’m interested in and want to comment on: the tragedy of Afghan girls being sprayed with acid for trying to attend school, the idiocy of Fox News reporters who compared global warming to their thyriod problem, my outrage at doctors who help a single mom give birth to 8 more kids she can’t support while we admonish developing nations like India to hand out birth control and reign in their rampant population growth. I’m at no loss of things to say, but I lack the time for  the research and reflection I want to back up my opinion. So I’ve decided instead of feeling inadequate that I cannot add political commentator to my already long list of jobs, I’ll write more about what I’ve been occupying my time doing, learning, and refining these past few months. Yep, you guessed it: domestic shit. But hey, aren’t we all domestic beings at one time or another?

I’ll start with crafts. For Christmas I decided to make lacing cards for my niece and CT. They were surprising easy. I pasted pictures onto a lightweight cardboard, put contact paper on both sides, and punched holes in the card. Plastic tapestry needles tied to a long bit of yarn were the finishing touch.

We had some cloth bags in the closet that our sheets came in. These worked great to keep everything contained.

 

I also spent quite a bit of time over the holidays knitting. I made scarf for Mr. A’s sister. I learned how to knit from a wonderful friend of mine in early 2005.  At the time I was on fire; I couldn’t sit still. There was so much I wanted to do and to accomplish. Mr. A was out in the field, tracking sage grouse, and I had made an abitious list of goals to keep my mind off the fact that I missed him. It backfired. I ended up with a sinus infection, but even then I couldn’t stop. I barely had the energy to walk from the sofa to the kitchen, but I remember setting a lawnchair next to the garden so I could weed and plant for a couple minutes at a time.  I felt like an old woman who was determined to live with a vengance even though my body couldn’t keep up. Knitting saved me. It gave me something to focus on while my body was allowed to rest. I’m normally not that driven; I know when to rest. But that point in time was an anomoly.

My knitting hasn’t progressed much beyond hats and scarves. More complicated pieces are hard with a kid running around. But it still helps me relax. And I guess I just like making things – whether it’s writing, cooking, drawing, or crafty stuff, I like to create. Anyway, this is the latest completed project.

 

For the next post I’ll probably be in the kitchen, the place my research, our lifestyle, and our stomachs keep leading me back to.

Compact Christmas

Delayed though this may be I thought it still worth posting. It was written awhile ago but I’ve been busy crafting and baking and shopping. What can I say?

Christmas is here! Actually the Christmas season started before Halloween this year according to the store shelves. It has always driven me nuts when I see lights and ornaments adorning shelves when I’m still in harvest season/ Halloween/ apple cider mode. Be patient people! is all I can think. Let me enjoy this season before you move onto the next one. Christmas is so commercialized as it is. Being a stay at home mom, and immersed in a life where everything takes three times as long to accomplish as it did before I had kids, I must admit that I was more ok with the early shopping thing this year. But it still bugs me that Christmas seems to be one big consumption craze. I see a lot of people scaling back this year, our immediate and extended family included. But, especially with kids, it’s hard to avoid the pull of “I want, I want.” I’m victim to it myself. Once you open the door of “what do you want?” the void seems to extend on and on.

In the interests of saving green, ie the environment and our cash, I’m trying some new things this year. I want to use recycled wrapping materials (paper bags, or cool scrap cloth for those hard to wrap things), reusable containers instead of throw-away boxes, and keep the gift buying to a minimum. This means a lot of extra work making things but I think it’s worth the effort.

So far I’ve made a set of lacing cards for my niece, a scarf for my sister-in law, and haven’t bought a roll of wrapping paper or a gift bag yet. Though I’ve cheated a bit and used up almost all the wrapping paper I had left over from previous years. It feels good to do something different like this. More personal somehow. It’s hard to find the time to make gifts for everyone, but at least not buying things like wrapping paper that I know are going to get thrown away feels good . . . less wasteful, efficient, like the energy I put into the gift is more than just trash? Maybe all this is silly, like my hubbie likes to point out. Maybe it is just something I do for me. But maybe it’s the beginning of a shift to a less consumption driven holiday. I figure it can’t hurt.

In looking for ideas I came across a group that is truly defying the consumer-driven mentality. It’s a group called The Compact. The idea is to buy nothing new for a year. The only things you are allowed to buy new are food and basic necessities needed for health and safety. Can you imagine? It would be hard, but it seems an admirable and worthwhile experiment with or without kids. A way to teach yourself that you really don’t need as much as you desire. That there are ways of maintaining your lifestyle that don’t involve as much waste. There is more about the group, originally started in the San Francisco area but now with groups all over the nation, in this article.

Although it has a number of detractors, the group has gotten publicity in a number of newspapers and magazines (I saw it in Sunset). “There is no dogma,” says Rachel Kesel, a Compact member. “No one is out to chide you for not being perfect. We’re not out to be environmental martyrs. We’re just a group of folks looking to consciously reduce our consumption and keep trash out of the landfills.” It sounds wonderful but I’m not sure I could do it. I like shopping and finding stuff on craigslist and Freecycle can be challenging and time-consuming on a good day. But what a way to change your life, your thought patterns, your assumptions and your ideas about what you need and where it comes from. How much different would Christmas be if you couldn’t buy anything new? Wow! Talk about a culture shift.