Yarn Along and announcing Wool 365

It's been quite a while since I've been on this space and I've missed it.  I think I'm back, but I need to figure out how this is now going to work into our family's rhythm.  It seems like joining in the Yarn Along each week might be a good place to start.  Speaking of rhythm, we need to figure that out again now that the holidays are winding down.

I'm also announcing the start of a new project of mine, Wool 365.  DH and I got a new DSLR camera for Christmas and I figured taking pictures each day would be a good way to learn to use the camera.  I decided to use Wool as my subject.  While working on decluttering this week I realized that I have surrounded our family with wool.  My creativity is largely wool based, with the needle felting, knitting and crocheting that I do.  For me, it seems like a natural subject matter.

This fall was super busy for us. It has also been a really lovely blessed time for our family. We had lots of company over the last few months, which was wonderful.  We've celebrated festivals and holidays and birthdays and maybe if I get around to it I'll share more about that later.  W and I have been attending a weekly Waldorf Play group and we also have our parent-child class at the school once a week.  DH and I are attending bi-weekly parent discussions that are being offered by one of the teachers at the school as well.  The school and the school community have been so wonderful for our family this fall and I am eagerly awaiting the spring term, hoping to get involved in the handwork group etc.

Okay, now to the yarn along.  I'm joining with Ginny of Small Things for this week's yarn along. I've got lots of WIP, but the two I've been working on primarily are the Alice shawl in  Green/Plum Malabrigo sock yarn, and what I am calling the Ranger Cowl for DH to be able to wear to work now that the weather seems to be getting colder finally.  I'm using this Easy Unisex Cowl pattern for it and since DH claims a wool allergy (can you believe I'm married to a man with a wool allergy?) I'm using Lion Brand Wool-Ease that is mostly acrylic.  I don't think that will make him too itchy.  This allergy is probably the reason I don't knit many things for him though.

In terms of reading, I received a Kindle for Christmas and I am loving it.  I just finished reading Philippa Gregory's Lady Rivers on it. Philippa Gregory novels (and others about dead British royals too) are one of my big guilty pleasures! I also have put all the pdf's of patterns I'm knitting onto it which is just wonderful!  DH and I are also working through Simplicity Parenting together for the parent discussions that we have been attending at W's school.

Still around...

It's been too long since I've posted on here yet again.  We've been BUSY!  Apple picking, fall festivals at our previous Waldorf school and our new school, making apple butter, trips to go visit friends, a trip to Williamsburg, trying to establish our autumn rhythm and in my case having one of the worst colds I can remember.  Of course, I've not managed to document most of this because my camera battery is dead and I haven't been able to locate my charger since our vacation out west ( I need to write more about that too, but not tonight).

Today was the fall festival at our new school.  It was a magical day for W and I.  It felt so good to be at the school, surrounded by such a beautiful, caring community, and engaged in lovely activities.  W got to make a bird feeder and a little sachet that he's keeping under his pillow.  He also dug for buried treasure, and played with a beautiful marble run.  We  watched a wonderful puppet play performed by his teacher.  He was also very excited because he was able to sit by her lovely assistant teacher during the performance.  His two favorite things though were a delightful children's musician who let W play the bongos while he sang (my boy LOVES drums) and shucking corn.  Seriously, my thumbs hurt because he wanted me to constantly be shucking the corn too.  We did this for hours at a time!  I wish I had my camera today.  He was just so happy and engaged in his work all day.  I'm thinking I need to be getting some of this corn so he can do this at home too.  His corn bin is getting sparse again and he clearly thinks this is a fantastic activity.

I'm also starting to think about Christmas.  I'd like to do all handmade again this year but I feel like I'm running terribly behind and I'm not totally sure what to do for everyone yet.  Most of my ideas seem to be for W and I'm working to balance them out between for his birthday and Christmas.  I did get one gift completed this week while I tried to rest and recover from this cold.  My mom the other day found a needle-felted nativity on Etsy and loved the idea so much she just could not stop talking about it.  Hint.  Hint.  So I set about starting one for her.  I have made the principal figures of Mary, Joseph and Jesus.  I'm fairly pleased with how these have come out.  I plan on working on additional pieces to add to it in the coming years.  I had initially planned to make the large set all this year, but I would like to have time to make gifts for other people too.

Happy Michaelmas!

Our family finally celebrated Michaelmas this evening.  Things have seemed a little unorganized and chaotic this year since we've had a couple of different illnesses floating around here the past few weeks.  I think our celebration was still quite lovely even if I never did find our wooden dragon for the nature table and  we ended up with blackberry crumble instead of pie due to time constraints.

It has been really fun celebrating with W this year though.  W and I have been singing Michaelmas songs and verses all week and at school W's teacher told us the most lovely Michaelmas story about a boy named George who picks apples and puts one on the family table for Michaelmas.  She has been doing a little puppet story of this for a few weeks now and W has loved it!  After his first class, we went to a thrift store and he found a basket "to pick apples like George".  We actually ended up with two such baskets and used them when we went apple picking as a family (more on that another time).  For our table setting this evening W chose one of the apples that we picked and polished it and put it on the table under our dragon candle.

W also decided that his St. George doll would be a good addition to our table decor, so George joined us for Michaelmas dinner  this year.  I thought it was quite fitting.  We also picked some wild asters today to put on the table.  We were hoping to find some actual Michaelmas daisies in our neighborhood, but had to settle for some small white and purple flowers instead.  They were still a lovely addition to the table.  Of course W and I also really enjoyed working together to roll and decorate our dragon candle for this year and make our annual dragon bread.  

One other Michaelmas preparation was to dye some golden playsilks with turmeric.  We did a trial run this week and will be making some more next week with friends, continuing our Michaelmas celebration for a little while.  Just before dinner, I presented W with one of the silks as a cape.  The other we place on our dining room table under the centerpiece.

You might have guessed that someone was getting a little tired and hungry at this point.

In the past I've written about our traditional Michaelmas meal of Cornish hens, carrots and onion stuffing.  As I mentioned before we also had dragon bread and blackberry crisp with the meal.  The blackberry crisp actually worked out pretty well since W is not partial to pie in general.

I've been trying to focus on some inner work as well this week...choosing my personal dragons to conquer and subdue this year.  One of the big ones is to work on my will and spend more time keeping my home up and less time on the computer.  I've been trying to work on it this week, limiting computer time during W's waking hours to quickly pulling up a recipe or project directions and trying to save the majority of my computer usage to in the morning before he wakes up, during nap time and after bedtime.  

Another of my personal dragons is being in the moment and working on maintaining my clam throughout the day; being a gentle, but authoritative (not authoritarian) presence as we go about our daily tasks and rhythm.  It's not always the easiest thing for me, but I when I am mindful about it, as I have tried to be this week, it is very successful.  I will say that W's teacher and her assistant set beautiful example of this and I have been paying very close attention to their interactions with him at school.  Watching them this week, something has clicked in my brain and I get it in a way I did not previously.  As long as I am mindful, and gently redirect (often physically turning him to something else) and use not just a more gentle tone, but fewer words as well, I am successful.  One day this week in particular, I attempted to not talk as much and especially not when W was getting into things that were not okay, physically redirecting first.  Sometimes it took a couple of times redirecting him to a toy or activity on the other side of the room, but we ended up having so many fewer power struggles and no yelling from either of us.  What a difference...but it requires being mindful and in the moment!  I guess you could say that my dragons this year are  really one dragon of being distracted by outside stuff that keeps me from being mindful and in the moment.  I think this is a big dragon for me to tackle this year, but oh, so needed.

Wishing you all light, courage and strength in this glorious autumn season.

HAPPY MICHAELMAS!

W goes West...Part I

I can't believe that September is practically gone and Michaelmas is here.  I'm a bit under the weather so we are delaying our family celebration for a day or two and next week we will dye golden playsilks with friends.  September has flown by for our family. This is largely because we spent one week of this past month preparing for travel, two on the road to Oklahoma and back and the past week trying to recover and battling post vacation illnesses.

Our trip was wonderful.  We traveled through 12 states taking a northern route on the way there and a southern route on the way home and were able to stop in most states to do a little sight seeing along the way.  My parents came from Oklahoma to meet us in Missouri before we all went on to their house.

My mom and I also planned a trip to Kansas while we were at my parents house to visit the Little House on the Prairie museum.  All along our road trip we prepared Will to go visit "Laura's House".  We've been reading the My First Little House books for a few months now so he was very excited by this!  As we started out in the car he got a stuffed animal Bull-dog which he promptly and aptly named Jack. He also got a large brimmed straw "farmer hat" as he calls it and he was set to go. I had one or two "Little House" surprises for him each day along the way including a farmer and farmer's wife dollhouse dolls which he decided were Laura and Almonzo, a laminated sticker book of pioneer farm life, his own copies of some of the My First Little House books (we'd been borrowing them from the library) including Prairie Day and A Little Prairie House  , since we were headed towards the prairie, and a tin cup. I also gave W one of these little wagons at some point during the trip. During the ride we played Little House in the Big Woods, Farmer Boy and Little House on the Prairie audio books which DH and I really enjoyed.   Little did I realize that wagons would become a theme for much of the trip

Okay, before I tell you of our adventures I should probably mention that DH is a Park Ranger for the National Park Service, so our vacations tend to include lots and lots of national park sites.

.  Our first stop was at the Cumberland visitors center of the C&O canal.  DH worked on the Canal down in Georgetown before W was born so he wanted to see the 184.5 mile marker up at Cumberland.  Cumberland is a sweet little town in the hills of Western Maryland.  It holds additional significance to me as that is where my grandfather purchased the wedding rings for my grandmother.  When DH and I got married on my grandparents wedding anniversary, my grandmothers rings were the ones he gave me.

Our next stop was at Fort Necessity National Battlefield in Pennsylvania.  The site deals with the start of the French and Indian War as well as the National Road.  In general we felt the history of Ft. Necessity was probably a bit much for a toddler, but we were delighted that the park had this covered wagon playground.  DH and I took turns going through the visitor center exhibits while the other played with W outside.

Then we took a family walk out to the fort.  

 We thought this patch of mushrooms was especially fun!

 The next day we went to Dayton Ohio.  I grew up just outside of Dayton, so this was a really special day for me.  We started out visiting the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park which was established a year after my family moved away from the area.  Many of the sites within the park are places I grew up visiting as a child.  I remembered many visits to Carillon Park with my mom as a child.  It is set up as a little village of buildings important to the history of the Dayton area and includes part of the National Park site with the Wright Flyer III in one of it's buildings.  Will especially enjoyed the school house....

...and the Wright Flyer III...

 ...and riding on this amazing carousel of Dayton Innovation with Daddy.

We also visited The Wright Brothers' Memorial which is another Dayton Aviation site.   As we drove up the hill I remembered my mom and I taking picnic lunches there and making little teacups and saucers from the acorns  under the trees there.  Such beautiful childhood memories came back to me in that spot.

We also visited the visitors center museum and Wright  Brothers Bicycle shop downtown which was a new experience for me.

 We had hoped to visit the Paul Lawrence Dunbar house as well, but that will have to wait for a future visit.

We then went to the neighborhood where I grew up.  Somehow we didn't take any pictures there.  As we were driving down the street where I grew up, I saw one of our former neighbors working outside in his driveway.  I shouted for DH to stop the car and jumped out.  He had gone back in the house by the time I got there, but we were able to have a delightful, visit with them and they were able to meet W.  There's something very powerful in going back to where you grew up and seeing old neighbors again for the first time after twenty-odd years.  That neighborhood and those neighbors had a profound effect on me growing up and a large impact on the person I am today.  Such a dear place and such dear folks.  They contributed significantly to my interest in the natural world around me, and taught me to be interested in the wider world and other cultures, and were just significant loving parts of my "village" as I grew up.

The next day took us to St. Louis.  DH also worked at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial otherwise known as the Arch.  DH did one of his early  seasons with the Park Service there so he was able to catch up with some old friends and colleagues there.  He and W went up to the top of the arch.  I preferred to stay down in the museum and find things that I specifically wanted to point out to W (I'm not big on heights or enclosed spaces).  W LOVED the arch.  He claims that he now works there sometimes like  his daddy.

This covered wagon was W's favorite part of the museum, though he also really enjoyed seeing the iron spider skillet like Ma cooks in, in Prairie Day.

That's probably enough of our trip for now.  I'll do one or two more posts in the coming days about the rest of it.