Truth in advertising

I nearly chose the macro shot of Ur-Oma’s tea set for my Project 365 picture, but it didn’t feel quite true. Homeschooling tea rituals can take on a mythical quality. And our own personal attempts at them can seem so utterly inadequate by comparison.

Macro can lie by omission. Articles and blog postings can lie by omission. Or our own inexplicable minds can distort what we read into a Platonic ideal form.

The table is strewn with Pokemon books, drawings, a bag of papers for rolling coins, art supplies, leftover tools and pins from sewing projects, and all sorts of other bits and bobs. The bio of Mozart? Isn’t in the photo because Tias spilled the tea and it went all over the corner of the table.

That wider shot? It’s the real thing. A mix of sweet tea and crumbs.

Passionate women who are also mothers

“[Mothers can] put their own lives and interests on hold as a sacrifice to their children. As noble as this seems, [it is] a sort of negligence: withholding who she is - the best part of herself - from our children.” Monte and Karen Swan

This quote surfaced in a conversation I was having with one of my best friends this week and it seems particularly poignant this week with oodles of mothering talk in the air. Talk fell to “How do you do it all?”, a perennial favourite, and the answer is that I don’t. I do far more than I thought I ever could and occasionally startle myself when I see myself through the eyes of the old me. I give to others in huge swaths of time and energy, thought and feeling. The secret is that I put myself on that list. My passions, which could easily be denigrated as mere hobbies, are the reason I wake with a joy in the morning, eager to see what the day brings and what I can do within its bounds.

The Swans are homeschooling authors and they were writing particularly about self-sacrificing homeschooling mothers. And it is true that it is a path that tends to lead to that mindset. They make an important point - that homeschooling (and indeed parenting) is a romance of our children’s hearts, and we cannot do that if we are empty.

Don’t be afraid to think of yourself as a woman who also happens to be a mother. When you do this, the vibrancy and passion that you bring to life makes you a better mother. The self that does the self-sacrificing is that much stronger, that much more energized, that much more interesting. Don’t be a Mama. Be a Sarah. Be a Jennifer. Be a Jane. And then let that woman be a mother. You’ll have a far more fascinating self to give.

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Which is something that somehow brings me to the button bender I went on today. I had cleaned, mended, dashed, cooked, and otherwise been useful since 7 am. My father picked the kids up at 4:30 for Sandra’s horse-riding lessons and I suddenly had 90 minutes to myself. My brain froze. What to do? What tasks could I finish? None, answered some part of me. You’ve got nuthin’ left to do them with. I fought it at first, but when I realized that I could take a small chunk of time to go to second-hand stores, I was lost to productivity. You see, a need to have buttons in a button jar has been growing in me. For months it has simmered but in the last few days it has risen to a boil. And so I went…and not just to one store. No, I went on a button bender, and at 5:17 I found a bag stuffed with vintage buttons on yellowing cards which finally slaked my thirst.

I can’t quite say what this is all about. I remember the magic of my grandmother’s button jar and the smaller one my mother had. I remember the sound of them cascading onto the tabletop. I remember sorting them by size, by colour, or by shininess. I wanted a button jar. And today, I desperately wanted to find second-hand buttons. Something within in me rose up and demanded it.

So I sat on the front porch with a mug of tea and a bowl of porridge for my supper, beginning the button jar as the birds sang and the grey rain clouds jostled with the puffy cumulus clouds and life was good.

And now, even though there are many buttons to be liberated from the cards, even though there is cleaning and mending and baking and jogging with the kids - among other things - ahead of me tonight, and now…now I can.

Surface tension holds it together

It is finally raining. We have had the driest spring I can remember and even now the rain is light. But it is rain. The tulips, brave, bold tulips first from the frost, were beaded with drops yesterday morning. I grabbed my camera, thinking, “Surface tension!” I was teaching a small group of kids about surface tension later and it seemed so perfect that my heightened awareness of the concept should pick up on the rain drops.

Mother’s Day and homeschool science are all mashed together in my thoughts today. How many drops of water can you fit on a penny? How busy can a family be? What holds things together? Surface tension is an attractive force between molecules, a skin that does its best to hold things together.

Our family is busy these days, full of spring outdoor play and pre-sabbatical errands, yet something is holding us together. Love is like gravity in that it centers us. Love is like surface tension in that it tries to hold us all together against rather astonishing forces.

Surface tension can do all sorts of flashy things, like make ‘fireworks’ in milk and food colouring when you add a little dishsoap, or float a needle on the water, or let bugs walk along the pond with dry feet. Love can’t make you apparently defy the laws of physics, but it certainly can be wonderous.  For Mother’s Day I received a running jacket (so I no longer have to borrow one of Rainer’s) and a gift of adventure: a family trip to my parents, a 9 km (5.5 mile) trip, with the kids on their bikes as Rainer and I ran behind them. It was magnificent.  We were together and active and making the story of our own lives. I also received a 2×4, carved with hearts and swirls and doodles and a reversed ‘love’ so that I can make my own woodblock prints.  The kids spent the last few days banging at it with hammers and screwdrivers, earnestly concocting a secret in the backyard.

Knitting

My first real lace project. At least, the first one off the needles, for there is that languishing lace scarf of blue heathered lace-weight alpaca in a bag…haven’t worked on it in a year, for shame.

Project: Lace Ribbon Scarf free from Knitty.com

Yarn: Garnstudio Silke Tweed colour 21

I had only 100g of this, and it knit up just around 5 feet. It’s a great length for a scarf - enough to wrap once and drape nicely. I can’t say enough about this pattern - love the structured, more architectural lace; love the ease of understanding the pattern (and therefore not needing the pattern); loved that it was knit with fingering weight rather than lace-weight.

This Project Spectrum project was perfect for this yarn, two hanks of which Rainer bought for me last year while he was at a conference. He has a great history of visiting yarn shops and finding incredible yarns when he’s off on his own. Once he even mailed them to me so that, even though he’d be back already, I’d have the pleasure of Good Mail. He persuaded the yarn store owner to address the envelope so I wouldn’t recognize his handwriting. He’s a constant happiness in my life.

My other knitting, alas, is still secret. We hand-make a gift for one family member for our family reunion. A long tradition, and seeing what people have come up with over the years is the highlight of the weekend. Hopefully I’ll remember to take photos once the project has been safely delivered.

Busy just before it gets busier

We’re at an awkward place. Right before all the excitement, just before the big rush of important tasks…the place where you can see the work that needs to be done but can’t do very much of it just yet. The nerve-wracking time. I’ve been coping by tackling a whole lot of creative work. Some of it are projects that I have planned for Germany, so they help me feel like I’m contributing to the forward motion. Others take care of prior commitments. Still others are just plain impulsive.

There is the project that really needed doing before we left:

Inspired by the OAmyOAmy pen pouches, I realized I was annoyed by always having to think about what supplies to take and then scrounging them up as I head out the door each time.  And I really, really want to make my life, particularly my artistic life, as easy as possible in Europe.  So I sewed up a lined bag, using a great tutorial on sewing zippered bags from twelve22.   I didn’t add the nifty elastic that Amy does, and I didn’t make it quite tall enough to fit my brush tube (oops), but it is still great.  I had no plan for the embellishments, and so the flower stem is leaning and the French knots on top are a bit pointless, and yet, it is mine and I made it.  That means a lot.

It fits a surprising amount: my Winsor & Newton Travel set, my pencil, eraser, marker, stencils, glue stick, empty slide mount (for composing pictures), a few blank ATCs, an empty film canister (for tiny watercolour needs…works really well).  There’s still room, hopefully enough for my watercolour pencils if I feel like taking them.  What I still need to find is a larger container for water for plein air painting.  But for now I’ll keep on using whatever plastic container is on hand.

This was my first time trying a zipper, and I made some mistakes.  I still have a mini-skirt I want to sew for wearing in Germany, and this was supposed to be a bit of a zipper trial. Trial was right. I think I need to read more in my machine’s manual (to be sure I had the right foot) and online for zipper tips.

Impulsive project:

Turning Tias’ drawing into a shirt using freezer paper stencils.  I said these were addictive, didn’t I? It was important to me that I choose one of his to do first, since Sandra gets so much validation for her artwork. I don’t know if he’s noticed that aspect of it, but it’s about the cumulative weight of the messages we send, right? As for me, I absolutely adore walking around with this shirt on…it’s energy and wackiness make me happy.  Roar. Rar.  Grrr.

Clearing up prior commitments:

ATCs for the Project Spectrum swap at Swap-bot. These are my first non-paper ATCs, and I had a moment of panic when I contemplated finishing them. I hadn’t left much room around them on the cloth and I worried that I wasn’t going to have enough to make sewing on a backing possible. I squeaked through, and am a wiser woman now.

I also completed some knitting.  I know, I know.  I’ll blog those tomorrow and go work to furiously pricing items for the garage sale.  Big projects still to do before we leave: garage sale, family reunion, sew skirt, run 10k race.  Then there’s all that packing and cleaning stuff…Like I said, I’d better go work. Less than 3 weeks.

Why Birds?

You may have noticed the birds. They’re everywhere, it seems. I don’t think this is simply a case of seeing what’s on my mind. Browse Etsy, watch the craft blogs, look at fabric collections, look at scrapbook stores and tshirts and, and, and…

And I will admit this bugs me. It’s the anti-establishment reflex I have. It’s the punk in me. “It’s a trend, ” she gasped, shaking herself out of a jaded reverie, “Run the other way!”

Because I am drawn to the birds. I want the felted bird brooches and the distressed tshirts and the stamps and the paintings and the embroidery… I like the primitive birds, the whimsical birds, the realistic birds. Watercolour, acrylic, stamped, cut, stuffed, or beaded, I want to buy them all. I also like to make them.

So why birds? Why am I in the grip of flock of feathered muses? Why is the craftysphere right there with me? Here are my explanations/theories/wild guesses:

General reasons:

Birds are wild. They are an anecdote to our urban lives. Right there, outside your commuter bus and my window, are wild creatures. With personalities. With sounds that sweeten the air.

They are also proof that the world is bigger than just the humans. Bigger than the drama of your life. They rebuke us and encourage us by living unconcerned by the problems of our days. And, as we sit mired in contemplation of our problems, birds outside the window can fly away. Yes, they can fly, and that is no small part of their charm.

Birds are sweet. They neither slither nor creep. They have no slime nor do they have more than four legs. Ants and beetles and snakes may also be of the urban wild, but they’re not as endearing.

My reasons:

I’m eternally curious. Homeschooling is supposed to be for the kids? Oops! I thought it was so that I could have all the time I wanted to answer all my questions. Oh, alright, I do know it’s for the kids, and one of the coolest ways to spend time with kids you love is through nature studies; walking, observing, drawing, reading - seeing the world around you through your kids’ eyes is a gift beyond words.

I also have a growing desire to know the things around me, like the constellations and the kinds of trees in our neighbourhood. I am no longer content to just float through my space like an unconnected thing. I want to know, to name, to recognize, to tell the stories of all the things around me.

Craftysphere reasons:

Birds are multi-leveled. They are easy for beginners to create. When you’re just beginning, creating a simple shape can be discouraging whether it’s a human or a house or a dog. But a bird seems to look charming no matter how you manage it. That’s good for the creative ego. Yet non-beginners find a lot to work on when portraying birds. There’s a rich tradition of birds - whether you have a taste for doodling or realism or folk-art or tattooing, there is a bird precedent for you.

Perhaps most importantly, there is a definite explosion of creativity. We want to buy local, we want to know that a human has touched a product, and we want to make. Creativity creates mindfulness and awareness. It wakes you up to the inspiration that lays all about us. As you open yourself to inspiration, birds are so easy to notice. There they are: chirping and flying around in your field of vision. “Of course!” you think, “Birds!” So creativity = awareness = birds.

But what of trendiness?

Am I part of a trend? Am I following a trend? Is there a problem with a trend?

Here’s my thinking: if it arises out of my process, then it’s my inspiration, my voice. I may be part of a trend, but only as part of a great upswing in delighting in creativity and awareness. However, if I am trying to make a product, to recreate something I’ve seen and want to have, and I’m not creating something because my creative voice compels me, that’s different. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. It just means I’m creating in the same spirit I’d go shopping. Being aware of the difference has helped to calm my inner punk with her knee-jerk reaction to popular things.

Besides, what a fool I’d be to let a little something like popularity keep me from loving the sweet, wild strength of the birds!

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if
no birds sang there except those that sang best.
Henry Van Dyke

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to
heaven.
Emily Dickinson

Speaking of books to read…

Early morning two days ago, completely out of the blue:
“Mom, since you last saw me, I have read 6 pages in Chamber of Secrets.”

Heard early yesterday after a shower:
“Mom, this is my favourite page in Chamber of Secrets. It’s funny.”

Thanks to years of listening to the audio book - while playing, while dancing, while tidying, while falling asleep, while sleeping, while bathing - she’s able to read this book even though it is much harder than the Josephina books she’s reading aloud to me each day. She even wears her reading glasses, because the print is small.

Rainer’s away, and the kids always hop in bed with me for snuggly nights when he’s gone. As we lay in bed Sandra was reading and she said, “I don’t know what to do…I’m so tired my eyes want to close but I want to keep reading.”

Music to my ears. Balm for my homeschooling heart. Encouragement for those of you who have struggling readers.

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Make your own book to read, after you write in it, draw in it, glue recipes in it, etc:

Photojojo has a nifty tutorial on making your own journal using your photos.

It looks like a great recycling project, a great project for kids for their writings, or for a family journal of a vacation. Think of adding old maps, lined paper, blank paper, graph paper, etc.

Book to read

If you haven’t already fallen in love with Meerkat Mail, we’d like you to consider racing to your local store and buying it. If the ‘brown paper packages tied up with string’ cover doesn’t win you over, the great illustrations and the wonderful storytelling will.  The postcards Sunny sends home, however, will push you over the edge into a world of adoration and wonderment.  How funny to watch the address change as Sunny longs more and more for home.  How amusing to see the stamps and the postal marks change.  How absolutely astonishing how the tiny print on the postcard turns the book from fiction to non-fiction.  Our favourite storytime books are books that are sweet teachers…plot plus facts.  The way that Gravett has worked the non-fiction bits in to it through the structure of the postcards is just so endearing.

I thought I’d included a link in the last post.  Sorry.  Directions for the freezer paper stencils here.  SouleMama even links to an online video of herself demonstrating the process, guaranteed to fire you with enthusiasm and fill you with wonder at the the ease of it all.

Marvy!

What a project! Inpsired by SouleMama.

Tias made the green. Sandra made the red. Looking for a simple handmade gift that the kids can make but will make the recipient happy beyond the “Oh, that’s sweet that they made something for me” reaction? Try this. But beware, it’s addictive. I covered a stain on a shirt of mine, and now I want to plaster bold graphics all over the place.

Everywhere I look, I see shapes and colours that would just sing on a denim skirt, or a striped tshirt, or a tote bag.  It’s wonderful to be inspired and visually alive like this.  A new project always means new eyes.

A different kind of training

“Mom, triathletes don’t need to learn how to read, do they?”

“Yep.”

“Really?”

“Yep. They need to be able to read their plane tickets to get from city to city. They need to be able to read training books and books on nutrition.”

…

“Oh.”