As promised last Wednesday, here's my latest knitting endeavor. It was my first time to not knit in the round and to change colors. It was also my first knitting project that wasn't going to end up felted afterwards (like my bowls, here). Which meant all my stitches were going to be on display instead of safely tucked away in felted goodness...
This week I'm...
...enjoying the last bounty of our summer garden and trying to remember when exactly one plants for Fall. Will the next week or so be too late? I hope not...
...learning how to adjust projects for little fingers. We had a paper bead project go a bit asunder yesterday. There's a way to adapt it, I just know it.
...painting our spare room that's never quite felt "right."
...thankful that my husband goes along with my deciding to redecorate an entire room during an overwhelmed time.
...giving myself grace to take all week to paint the room instead of my usual habit of staying up all night in a frenzy of activity. It feels strange, but good.
...dreaming about the felting and sewing to be done with the wool roving that just arrived on our doorstep today.
...deciding to take it one project- and one day- at a time.
What are you dreaming of this "middle of the week"?
First of all today, let's take a collective breath, shall we? ((deep breath)) Thanks, I really needed that. Life has not been easy these past few weeks. If I didn't have little ones that require me (in the best of ways) to get out of bed and participate in daily living, then I might have taken a hiatus under the covers and called it a day. My husband has Crohn's- which we've been able to keep under control, and him medicine-free, this past year. Currently that's not the case, and it's taken a lot of energy to keep us moving in a forward direction. Lots of things have been helpful during this time, including writing about our lives here. This space encourages me to continue to bring creativity into our lives and is a wonderful reminder of how important it is for all of us. Wonderful, life-giving creativity that gives us pause and lets us catch our breath. So thank you for being here, for sharing the journey and creativity and everything in-between! One of our latest creative projects was to create masks last week in conjunction with our studies of the letter "M."
The foundation of our mask was a fan given out for free recently at a fair. It worked out well, and I think we'll duplicate it by hot-gluing tongue depressors onto cereal cardboard in the future. I cut out some eyes, then Isia painted it. We decided it needed some flair- so first she glued on ripped up magazine pieces and circles of toilet paper rolls. But it still needed something else... glitter!
The second technique we've tried is only using glitter over a container that can catch (most of) it. In the past we've used baking trays, this time we used an empty cereal box with the top cut off. This even allowed us a place to rest our mask handle- unplanned but useful. All in all, the glitter stayed mostly on the masks. The clean-up was minimal too since we dumped all extra glitter out of the cereal box back into the glitter container and recycled the cereal box afterwards.
Not too long ago, I wasn't sure if we would ever hear the sweet sound of rain again. It had been weeks, and we had let our grass die in efforts to keep our vegetable garden alive. I also had to stop watering my flowers too, trusting them to know what they needed to do. They seemed to hunker down on their haunches and wait, casting off all unnecessary blooms in the meantime. In fact, the whole world seemed to catch its breath during those hot, steamy days and wait- myself included. It was a long wait, even a little scary at times. Surely it had to rain again someday, right? Weeks went by and we caught ourselves holding our breath as storm front after storm front passed overhead without ever more than a few drops of rain. I found myself wondering, how long can you live in a world without rain?
Luckily we never had to find out as a storm front settled in and stayed awhile- bringing life-giving rain with it. And now, a few weeks of steady rain later, it's easy to start to take it for granted again. As we begin to enjoy the familiar pulse of summer once again, I'm trying not to become complacent. To continue to appreciate the wonder of a storm.
For storms cannot be enticed with candy or coaxed with money. They're created by forces beyond our control, coming about on their own volition. And while we can do many things in this wonderful world...
...only Mother Nature can shower us with the gift of rain. And what a sweet gift it is!
"A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember."
(words and inspiration via Soulemama.com)
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(What's one to do when they've ate all their birthday cake? Lick the plate, of course!)
As you can see, I didn't really disguise the fact that they had indeed been toilet paper rolls in a former life. I had considered wrapping them in pretty paper or painting them, but ran out of time. We just stamped little pieces of paper with butterflies instead, and used masking tape to hold them on. You'll want to consider further decoration if you don't want your guests to figure it out. One friend said when she realized, "Wow, you really do use everything don't you?" Yep, guilty.
Take your "cardboard tube" and decorate it as you like on the outside. Fold one side, then put your goodies in before folding the other side. You fold it by...
...indenting one side....
...and then the other. How Easy is that?
They're easy enough for little hands to open and enjoy too. Some of our littlest guests were more interested at first in opening and shutting them than looking inside! At least, until they realized there was food inside. For larger favors, or for gifting artwork, you can also prepare a paper towel tube the same way. You could probably even get away with not decorating it as much (wink).
