Terrible/Perfect

Ho Ho D'oh

I'm a real sucker for a miniature village. I think they're delightful. We had one when I was a kid, and it was something I loved setting up and kind of carefully messing around with, like we did with the nativity we had. I've wanted to start one, but it's an investment...the really nice ones are expensive, and for the village to look good you do need a decent collection of buildings.

I found these at Goodwill today, and budget be damned I went ahead and bought them at all of $11 for the three. I'm so pleased. They're just my style.

I'll have to get some of that sparkly fake snow, or a big piece of felt to put underneath. Maybe I'll go by the hobby store downtown and get some bottle brush trees.

Next year I'd like to get ahold of the Flanderseseses' house. 742 Evergreen Terrace should have some neighborinos.

What to Get Your Concrete Operational Child

Do you have or know a six to eleven year-old child? Congratulations! I have been told that this is a bit of a grace period between the complementary turbulences of very young childhood and early adolescence.

I have one of these fairly reasonable little people in my home, and I have found that Christmas this year has a very different tenor to years past. She has expressed a desire for a toy or two, but, like other children of her age group,  she has become quite keenly interested in complex making, doing and learning, so her requests are more aimed at having more or better supplies.

At this age, I think it's well and proper that kids have a few beloved collections that can be added to very selectively, but their growing interest in manipulating materials and ideas ought to be well fed- and the things that help them develop those interests might not be the closest to mind or hand when their associated grown-ups are out Christmas shopping.

Want some ideas for the older kid you know? Here's a short list of some general categories of gifts that I think would be especially appealing to this age group.

 

1. How-to books

I don't know a single child in this age band who does not want to spend some significant portion of his or her time figuring out how to make or do something. For my own child, it's fiber handwork (needle and thread kind of stuff) and cooking, but off the top of my head I can think of a kid who loves tying knots, one who is very patient with his drawing and coloring practice, and one who likes making things out of wood. There are some most excellent books out there that walk children through age-appropriate projects. I highlight Sewing School, one of the gifts I'm giving to my daughter this year, because it's extremely thorough and the example projects in the book have been worked by actual children- my daughter feels intimidated by work that is finished to adult standards, so it's nice to see all the unrefined cutting and finishing that is normal to kids her age on prominant display.

 

2. Wonderful books

Whether your six-to-eleven year-old is reading yet or not, children at this age love complex, rich stories. Audiobooks are always a treat, regardless of a child's technical reading skills, but nothing beats a world-class novel or richly illustrated tome in the hand. I especially wish to encourage those of you who have young friends or loved-ones of this age to consider buying them heirloom editions of great books. Trade paperbacks have their place (and that place is in a hot bath, with a cup of tea) but I think every child should have a few really beautiful books that feel substantial to hold, withstand hours of awed perusing, and are precious enough to hold onto into adulthood (and be passed down to the next generation). The W. W. Norton annotated classics (The Annotated Wizard of Oz pictured above) are pretty fantastic.And don't forget the nonfiction! Some of my favorite books growing up were massive album-sized glossy nonfiction books about sea animals. Mesmerizing hours, I tell you.

 

 

3. Real supplies (Indoor Edition)

I am not a fan of most packaged craft kits*, and I'll tell you why: they are typically rather closed-ended, and the materials are not nice to work with. As someone who has some kind of plant or animal fiber in my hands every day (that sounds kind of horrible, doesn't it?) I don't see why any child would want to work with materials that I don't want to work with: cheap thread that breaks, crappy scissors, pilly, ugly plastic yarn, etc. The same goes for any kind of indoor creative pursuit, whether it's playing music, drawing or painting, or conducting observations with a microscope, I think rather than a bunch of inexpensive plastic "play" tools, having a small selection of quality real tools invites a child to become engrossed and view their work-play as actual skill development. The above children's sewing kit looks phenomenal (heads up to the Grammas and Grampas we know and love!), as do the other activity supplies offered by Imagine Childhood. Other indoor making and doing supplies I can think of are real kitchen tools (still no sharp knives, though!), high-quality colored pencils, paints, and art papers, a sturdy camera, building supplies like small hammers, nails and hand-cranked drills, and good-quality scientific equipment like telescopes, binoculars, microscopes, specimen slides, etc. As children approach 12 years-old or so, I think these tools can and should become quite sophisticated, depending on individual passions. *One family of kits that gets two thumbs WAY up from us are the Eye Can Art kits; the kits teach sophisticated art techniques and the materials are best-quality .

 

 

4. Real supplies (Outdoor Edition)

There is so much to do outdoors! While I happen to believe that the only essential items a healthy child needs to spend countless engrossing hours outdoors are several full-body layers of soft wool, there are many, many wonderful outdoor tools and toys to be enjoyed. This is a category where I think the supplies are a little harder to adulterate; a cheap plastic sled is still A FREAKING SLED! WOO HOO! That being said, nothing beats a good pair of binoculars or a real garden spade. I have yet to meet a child who is not delighted by tree swings, insect observation tools, sleds, kites, garden tools, seeds, magnifying glasses, compasses, and hammocks. We're bird watchers here; the birdhouse kit above is a classic, and the window bird feeder looks delightful.

Whew!

Happy gathering and making for your kiddos this season!

What to Get Your Needleworker

"If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: 

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

-William Morris

Stephanie over at Yarn Harlot has a really useful list going (I think she makes one every year) of what to get your knitter for Christmas. You may or may not personally have a knitter, but chances are you know one, and may at some point wish to give them something. Her list is great.

Reading it brought to mind that during my mother's last visit with us, she said that I'm difficult to buy for. At the time I thought it was an odd perception. I mean, like anyone else, I want tons of things. Obviously! Things can be so nice! 

What I think my mother meant to express is that my tastes and habits of acquisition are a bit outside the mainstream. I tend to like things that are somewhat hard to come by; for example, I rarely, if ever, see something that I want in a shopping mall. No insult meant to malls or what may be purchased in them, but in the main, those goods don't reflect my taste. 

I love vintage. I love books. I love exquisitely made useful things. 

I love craft.

In the same impishly helpful spirit of Stephanie's post, I thought I'd list a few objects of desire that, in my opinion, any crafting person who agrees with the words of Mr. Morris up there would appreciate.

1. Just about anything from Maison Sajou

I'm a bit of a Francophile*, but I can objectively say that Sajou makes beautiful, useful things, including scissors (handmade in a small family-owned workshop in France), that make my heart skip. Exceptional embroidery thread, wooden vintage-style tubes of needles, patterns, fabric books, you name it, it's all special. The little kit above would be an incredibly thoughtful gift to present to a very young sewist.

2. American-grown and milled yarns from Brooklyn Tweed.

I am super excited by the revival of small-scale production, and I am super excited to try this yarn. I feel discomforted by the dubious origins of the vast majority of the goods that are out there to buy, so a gorgeous, high-quality yarn like this, entirely produced in the U.S.A., and made by passionate knitters for passionate knitters, is thrilling to me. If you want to give your knitter a very thoughtful gift indeed, buy one of Brooklyn Tweed's patterns along with the yardage of wool needed to make it, in a color your knitter would love.

3. Gera! cross stitch patterns

I adore, adore, adore these. I have one of the Alice in Wonderland patterns, but I so wish the baby sampler had been around when I was having babies. I have no love whatsoever for the cross stitch patterns sold at large craft supply stores, so I'm grateful to know that there are some fantastic designers, particularly out of Japan, doing modern, interesting work. Gera! is by far my favorite.

4. Lantern Moon knitting supplies

In particular, Lantern Moon's knitting cases seem to be more elegantly designed than others I've seen. My top pick is the Knit Aid Case, designed to hold the knitting-specific tools all of us knitters have in our work bags. I have their cable needles, which are little treasures, and intend to replace my lost repair hook with one from them.

5. Fancy stitch markers

Your knitter will never have enough stitch markers, especially if he or she knits a lot of lace. The ones above (and their photograph!) come from Etsy seller The Raveler's Roost. Do a search on Etsy for these, and you can buy your knitter stitch markers that are beautiful, uniquely useful, or that relate to their other passions or interests, whether cheese, avocados, matryoshka dolls, or sock monkeys.

6. Books

Does your crafter have a wishlist through some kind of bookstore? Ask. Or, do a search for books about your crafter's niche, then have someone intimate with him sneak around his bookshelf to make sure you're not getting him something he already has. There are a ton of incredibly interesting and useful books about crafts out there right now, besides pattern books. Ones that have caught my eye in recent years are The Knitter's Book of Wool, 200 Fair Isle Motifs, and The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt. Books on the history or some particular fine point of your crafter's favorite pastime are probably welcome; most of us are a bit obsessive.

That's it for now!

*I reeeeeeally want to learn to speak French, but it seems less useful than, say, Spanish. Maybe I'll do it anyway.

O, Pseudotsuga menziesii

We got our tree this weekend. Perhaps that ought to be an exclamatory statement: We got our tree this weekend!

But it's declarative: We got our tree this weekend.

There were sleepless children, way beyond exhausted parents, fussing, clinging, screaming, spinning around in circles and knocking things over. Lots of yelling.

We got a small Douglas fir with super weak branches. I didn't notice until we got it home. The kids would not stop asking when they could decorate it while we were getting it set up. Our longest string of lights is burned out. The little one wanted to play with all the fragile ornaments.

It was a total horror show.

But, you know. You roll with these things. Have a laugh. Move on.

Christmas sewing and knitting is humming along.

I'm getting the place tidied up today, going to the library, watching my friend's children in the afternoon. The kids are performing the Nutcracker ballet in the living room. One of them keeps falling over on her rear end and screaming. Not the one you might think.

I hope to buy one or two more scientists each year*. I want to fill up the tree with them. They look incredible hung up. Simple and warm. I think I might rub them with some beeswax. I love them so much. 

I have my eye on Nicola Tesla and Jane Goodall for this year.

I wonder if they'd make a Sally Ride if I asked?

Probably. I love handmade.

*We have six of these. Mr. Terrible has Carl Sagan at work, for some reason. I told him he has to come back.

Winter fair

I get the impression...I feel...that Christmas will never be quite as special at any point in my life as it is right now while my children are very young. Some of these things that feel like they are forever, good and bad, are just part of one flickering moment. In these years, there is a very great deal to love about this season. Just being with them, really. They're wound up, and warm. 

In these years I especially love taking the girls to the winter fair at a Waldorf school near us. It was quite cold today and much of the activity that goes on at the fair (and at the school, I believe) is outdoors. We were all bundled up in handknits (except Mr. Terrible; I need to make him a hat, scarf, gloves), freezing the tips of our noses and shoving our hands down in our pockets, huddled into ourselves but comfortable. I like that feeling.

The big girl did the crafts and the little one mostly played. I made a gnome. The Last Gnome. It was the last stick they had available at the gnome-making craft station, marked up already where the face is supposed to go, so I made him bangs and a little low-down face. I stitched up his hat, too, and put a wee bell on it. His head is big. 

I had to sneak him away from the big kid's bedside to take a picture of him.

He seems like someone I'd want close by me. A good friend.

Thrifty Tuesday: Wednesday Edition

I wasn't entirely sure there was going to be an advent calendar this year, since the chocolate kind causes Serious Trouble in my little universe, and the paper and toy versions are comparatively quite expensive, but we went to Goodwill looking for something entirely different yesterday and I found a delightful one:

ZOOM! It was tumbling around down in the bottom of the Goodwill Christmas hullabaloo, but it caught my eye, a steal (if you ask me, but I advise you not to) at 99 cents.

It's kind of crazy. Joseph looks like Elrond, and I suspect Mary probably didn't look like the Swiss Miss. But you never know.

I assume this was made in the 1960s.

Eventually I think it makes sense for us to do something re-usable and still free of sweets, like a felt calendar, but the paper ones are really cool, too. We'll keep them. They make lovely decorations, even once they're opened. I found the Tasha Tudor advent book (thrifted!) last year, and I imagine those images will be fun to rediscover every year. 

I don't shop much with my children at all these days, but when we do it's oddly special (even if it's secondhand), meandering with them, talking out the whats and whys of the things we were going to take home. I found a much-desired advent calendar, the firstborn found a Christmas Barbie she could buy with her pocket money, the little one found a nice Christmas book and we shared a bag of Brown & Haley factory seconds, all for $4. Good times.

I'm so, so happy with this calendar. I have no idea what's going to be behind the doors. But it was made in Denmark, so I'm hoping for a gnome. Come on, door #17! Be a gnome.

HSSS

We had a great Halloween. It's wonderful to finally live in a neighborhood that we can trick-or-treat in, or more importantly (for the adults in our house) that people come to for trick-or-treating. People were highly complimentary of our pumpkins and took pictures, which made me enormously happy, that such a silly little thing that we enjoyed doing could make other people smile. I had never really thought of that sort of thing as being community-minded but it really is. We will definitely be doing up our house and making fancy pumpkins next year.

The big kid made this really unexpected last-minute decision to be Dracula(!?), I think because library story time was monster-centric, so we had a really long conversation about literary monsters, and she'd just gotten a set of plastic vampire teeth as a party favor. I painted fake blood on my sweet-faced baby, I'm certain not for the last time. Big sigh. Baby doesn't like wearing costumes, so I didn't bother to buy or make her anything. I wasn't even sure she would consent to wearing one out, but her sister/stylist decided on a Minnie Mouse dress and Mousketeer ears from the costume box. It was very cute, and then somewhere along the way Big Kid decided to start hissing at everyone, because that's what vampires do, so Baby started doing the same. I don't know if you've ever been hissed at by a very small child dressed as Minnie Mouse but it is a singular experience. She was bumbling down the street after her sister saying "Weer SKEEERY! HSSS! HSSS! Weeer TRICKR TRRREEDIN!"

Yeah. You're really, really scary.

This morning she got up and said "Arright, Mama, lesss go trickr treedin."

Then she found a stray box of Nerds and poured it over her waffle.

On into November we go rolling, rolling.