April?

I'm committing myself to ScriptFrenzy this month (so proud of myself for still being on track here near the end of week two!), but I don't want to let all of April go by without a post. So, here's one courtesy of my own little craft-companion!

The first photo is a drawing Cora made as a pattern for a quilt. Then I asked her to make a list of all the design elements in her pattern and what kind of fabric she would want to use for that item/shape. Then, there was a lot of sorting through my fabric bins, talking about color/texture/shape interactions, and through a combination of seaming, fusible applique, and stitching, we arrived at the last photo.

For the parts that are fused, I had Cora draw the shapes on the fusible and, after I cut them out, she positioned them on the fabric. Then I pressed them in place. It was an excellent collaborative experience, completely led by her own vision.

For example, after looking through the fabric she found a piece of fabric featuring cat heads - she pulled it out and said, "This will be perfect for a cloud!" I wasn't so sure, but it was her design, so we went with it. Turns out she was right. That is one awesome cloud.

An artist

Cora and I have been making things. Fun things. Cool things. She has an amazing hunger for arts and crafts and baking - where does she get that? *ahem*

She's at her little art table now, with paper, scissors, watercolors, google eyes, a very large bottle of glue, glitter glue, ribbon, colorful duct tape, foam stickers and playdough. Earlier, she cut out snowflakes. Then she made me a playdough sculpture with red duct tape and a sparkly foam heat. Before that it was a craft with fabric and fabric markers.

She's standing up, mostly, only sitting down for certain parts of her work. She found last year's one-piece pajamas and they barely fit her, but she is wearing them. Purple with silver flowers. A t-shirt underneath. A ponytail leftover from ballet this morning. She does something on her page - paints something or glues on a google eye or rubs some glitter glue over something - pauses and looks at what she's done, then surveys her table to see what else she has to work with. She makes a decision about what comes next. She works slowly and intently. She knows exactly what she is doing.

I do not have anywhere near enough craft supplies for this girl. We have a pink crate that we keep everything in, and she can easily deplete it in a weekend. I love this of course, but also am still figuring out what to do with it all, how long to keep creations for, which craft supplies are worth keeping a larger stash of, and most of all what I might do to a) find more space for her supplies and b) find a way to keep up with her supply consumption!

But I love seeing her serious face as she does her art, as she puts it. The way she is clearly thinking about the aesthetics of her creation, considering options, pursuing an inner vision. She gets frustrated sometimes when the finished product doesn't match that inner vision - haven't we all be there before? We talk a lot about frustration being a part of the process, a part of being an artist, something that you learn from and use to spur yourself on, not something to spend time feeling bad about or saying mean things to yourself about.

She says she wants to be an artist. I say she already is one.

Goodbye April

The end of the month is here, and I see it has been a long time since I posted. April had its good moments (our trip to Minneapolis, getting the fish quilt underway), but it has also had a large number of steep plummets and it has left me mainly at the bottom in a dispirited heap. I find it hard to post at such times. I am hoping May will be better, or at least offer more reprieves.

Perhaps it has something to do with winter refusing to loosen its holds on North Dakota - in fact, the weather report says we may wake to an inch of snow tomorrow.

We have had a few sunny days in the past week, and some temperatures above 50. And before the temperatures rose we had some sunny mornings with beautiful sun streaming in through the big front window. It was a nice spot to sit and color in.

Cora working on a picture - no photos of the artwork are allowed until she's done.

Artwork from a different day. She drew the pteranadons freehand from a coloring page,
and then filled in the skeleton on her own - could I be more proud?

B-I-N-G-O: a photo essay

Fridays are a good day for art projects at our house. Chris teaches in the morning and Cora and I are home. A good art project can take up that whole stretch of morning between Dinosaur Train and lunch. This past Friday I thought it would be fun to make our own bingo game. I was right.




I found some small pictures on the web and printed them for us to color in.
Then I created a blank card template in Word.



Then we cut apart our grid of pictures and pasted them onto the bingo card templates.
There were 24 squares to fill in on the template and 30 pictures,
so decisions had to be made.

The decisions were often difficult. Cora grouped hers into categories.
All the pictures under the "B" were Bad,
under the "G" were Good,
under the "I" were Items.
The "N" and "O" were a little more random.

One of my bingo cards. I made two so we could have a family game later.

Cora's bingo card. After making it, she also used it to tell a story.
The story included everything on the card.
It was a long story. And I loved it.

Next we needed a box to keep the calling pictures in.

Packing tape is great. I also used packing tape to "laminate" the bingo cards.

We cut squares of colored paper for the markers.

And took turns being the caller.

Mittens & Playdough

Cora and I both have been pursuing projects the past couple of days. I tackled my first pair of mittens, which went well. I think they are a little loose, but I haven't blocked them. The mittens have a peasant thumb, or "sore thumb" - it just kind of sticks out on the side. For years I did not understand how to pick up stitches, and had a number of ways of doing it, all wrong and awkward. But, I finally got it figured out and with each thumb I improved.

Then, of course, someone wanted me to knit her some mittens, too. I guessed at the modifications for sizing, and went to work. I finished the first after she went to bed, so I wanted to wait and make sure it fit before I started the other mitten. I also thought this would be a good opportunity to try some basic colorwork, and let her choose two colors for her mittens.

Meanwhile, Cora has alternated between two main activities. One is intensive doll play involving either tea parties or covering a doll with marker so she can be an alien - luckily, washable marker! Then she rubs teh marker off with a wet paper towel, and then creates gowns out of the damp, colored paper towels. The effect is actually remarkably beautiful, as the paper towel takes on a hand-dyed fabric look. But the tea parties has been my favorite, because every once in a while I stumble upon some dolls having a secret tea party in a quiet corner.

She has also been creating playdough scenes.  First it was a sun, flower, and worm. Then this morning while I picked up an extra hour of sleep and Chris did some reading, she made a Halloween scene. She's very precise about what she wants and works with great concentration to make her scene match her idea.

Of course, a girl can only take so much activity before it is time to take a break.

Arts and Crafts

While I have been working on the circle quilt, Cora has been very interested in my progress. I thought it might be fun to give her a project sort of like mine. On Saturday, while Chris was running errands, I asked him to stop by the craft store and pick me up some fusible interfacing (I forgot to say "double-sided," though, so this was not quite as easy as I planned, but that's okay). I fused it to fabric scraps and cut out shapes. Then I cut squares from muslin.

Then, while I sewed my circles, Chris and Cora played with the scraps and squares. When they  had a square done, I sewed the pieces down to the muslin for them. These first two were Chris's, though he had considerable input on what he could and could not do. The pinwheel one is probably the most his.

As you can see, after the sewing down there was some additional decorating done with fabric markers.

This was Cora's first one. In some places there are four layers of fabric! She was especially thrilled with the spiral/maze stitching I did on it. While this one is fairly abstract, her next one was a scene:

Her restaurant, with a table and chair. My favorite part of the restaurant one is actually the back.

Where she drew us, labeled with our initials.

Once this cold spell breaks, I plan to get the other kind of interfacing and try this again. But this time I'll trace seam allowances on the muslin, and maybe make them larger. Like placemat size. We still have a lot of winter left, and it feels good to have some cabin-fever projects lined up!

I am finally posting some socks I made (actually, "Turkish bed socks" from a Churchmouse Classics pattern) that I finished in the first week of the new year. That makes them the first thing I made in 2011, a year that came with the resolution to "Make More"!

Finally, here is my 2011 poster. There's a make-your-own-keep-calm widget out there on the web that I used for this. I have it hanging in a prominent place, of course!

Back to...um...

Well, I didn't go back to school this fall - no more teaching for me until sometime after we move. Yesterday would have been the first day of classes, and it was a day of mopey glumness. But, I am not without something having to do with "back" - as in, back injury, back pain, etc. Nearly two weeks ago I threw out my back (every time I say that I have a mental image of myself standing over the garbage can about to drop in a spine) - "all I did" was lean over in a twisted position and pick up Cora. You know, like I do every day, a couple of times a day. This was the wrong day for it though, and I am still working my way back to normal.

Why have that happen now? Let's see...loss of our oldest cat, Chris headed back to North Dakota, waiting to see what happens with the house sale, lack of access to standard stress-relieving activities...obviously, my back was a ticking bomb.

But, slow recovery notwithstanding, Friday is still a holy day to Cora because it is a STAY AT HOME day, and there is nothing she loves like a stay at home day. She gets to see some TV shows she doesn't usually, like CSI reruns...just kidding. There are some NickJr and PBS shows that she only gets to watch on Fridays. Also, since Chris's return to the long-distance daddy gig, I've tried to make sure we have some art projects and some cooking projects for Fridays.

But first is the freeform morning role playing. This morning I was a mommy, a baby, a hunter, a circus lady, and a police man. Cora was a daughter, a mommy, a hunting dog, a circus dog, and a police dog. But, here is my favorite conversation from when I was the daughter and she was the mommy:

Cora: Well, darling, now it is time for you to go into the world and live on your own!
Me: Really?
Cora: Yes, darling. Please just go.
Me: How old am I?
Cora (rolling her eyes): Thirteen! Of course!
Me: I think I'm too young.
Cora (in the tone of someone trying to be very patient): No, darling, and if you are lonely, you can adopt a baby who looks just like your mommy. Now, please don't argue with me anymore and just go into the world!

Later we made some paper dolls (really basic dolls) and dresses for them. And here's the shocking part - I finally gave in and got down on the floor so I could color next to her, and once I managed to stand back up, my back felt a lot better. Did it just need to be really pushed to do more? Will I pay an awful price tomorrow morning? Was it the magic of art therapy?

Cora has decided that every time Chris comes home we need to make a welcome home cake. Last week it was a real cake. This week it was gingerbread, which she is looking forward to eating tonight, even though the batter "looks like Arvo's throw up and it smells good AND bad." Then we made pizza dough for dinner tonight.

There's nothing like a kitchen helper who wears an apron, "pearls," and a tiara...and secretly eats flour when she thinks you aren't looking. There's nothing like having someone who thinks your art skills are amazing. There's nothing like being reminded that you are, in fact, always teaching.

No blueberry-picking, but plenty of Snow White and fairy tale musings

But I wish this were a post about blueberry picking - I have read so many blog posts about blueberry picking in the last weeks, seen so many luscious photos of berries in boxes and baskets and pies and jam jars and cakes and ice cream bowls! I have been beset with terrible blueberry-picking envy. I thought of it too late to pull it together, which is a shame. I really love blueberries. Cora and Chris love blueberries, too, and we are certainly eating our share of retail berries. Mostly in cobblers and pancakes and yogurt and just fresh-washed out of a bowl. And now the peaches are threatening to eclipse the blueberries in our hearts. Such is the fickle nature of summer.

I finally got around to downloading the Flip camera. We had movies on there going back to early May. Yikes. But I think perhaps my favorite movies are a two-part sequence of Chris and Cora re-enacting Snow White. I think you will agree that Chris earns his Daddy stripes by participating in this, knowing it would be filmed and (of course!) posted. I only wish I had caught on camera the effort that went into Cora perfecting her technique for the "apple rolling away from my dead hand" move.

Last fall, in class we read fairy tales and academic essays on fairy tales and folklore. I was really surprised that none of my students, all first-year college students, *none* of the 40 students, were at all familiar with any of the more traditional versions of the tales. They knew nothing about red-hot iron dancing shoes, eyes pecked out by doves, walking on knives, etc. None knew the Bluebeard story, even! (I feel like I did pop culture a service by teaching these tales, the oldest and the newer reimaginings.) And over and over what they said was, "Who would let their kid read these?! Who would tell these stories to children?!" They were scandalized as only 18-year-olds can be.

Imagine their horror when I confessed that not only did I read and tell these stories to my girl, but that she really liked them.

I always go back in my mind to my good memories of tucking myself away in the back (the back-back) of the family station wagon and reading and rereading the volumes of Grimm and Andersen tales on family trips. I so loved those stories (my favorite is "The Goose Girl")! They were pretty accurate old-time translations, too. With the occasional illustration. I especially remember one of the end of a story wherein the evil character was turned into a giant black poodle that was forced to eat hot coals for the rest of its (presumably short) life. That thrill of revulsion and shock was delicious.

I also remember doing a paper on Maurice Sendak and all that he said about children and what adults think is too scary for kids is probably not half as scary as what already exists in the child's mind and fears. I agree with that. I read those tales now, and I think they are scarier for an adult - because as adults, we know that while we would like to think that people don't abandon their children in the woods when times are tough, a casual read through a newspaper will tell you such things do in fact happen today.

I also read something my cousin Traci wrote recently about why she identifies with Ariel from The Little Mermaid (Disney version) - how she feels born to sing (and sings beautifully), but struggles with losing her voice due to recurrent throat health issues. That she is also curious and sometimes naive. And that reminded me again about how we find ourselves in literature. Just as that poor goose girl ended up finally whispering her troubles to an old stove, here I am talking to the internet.

And, finally, at least in fairy tales, we do still get the happy endings we crave after all the trauma and tension.

A good morning

Despite the fact that Cora woke up at 6am, this morning is nice. She laid in bed pretty quietly for another half hour (a bad dream last night sent to my bed at about 10pm, and she seems to finally be grasping the concept of "don't push Mommy off the bed"). Then she played in her room for another half hour. Given that I finally weaned myself off the baby monitor, this was actually restful for me.

Once I got up, we had a tea party. Then she wanted to get dressed. She colored while I made French Toast. She ate four pieces of French toast, a banana, a cheese stick, and drank a cup of juice. Right now she's watching Dinosaur Train ("Our favorite show, Mom!!!") and wearing her Palm Sunday outfit: pink polka dot dress, pink striped pants, rainbow shoes. I'll try to get a photo.

It's the kind of weekend morning that was so rare to have this past fall, and is becoming something more dependable. It's nice. After a couple months of feeling like I am struggling uphill with this girl, now it feels more like we can meet each other on more even ground. Yesterday we were at a birthday party...at a toy store (I know). We had talked in the car about how we weren't going to buy anything, but that fell apart when Cora spotted a ballet bunny play set. And, frankly, if it had been a $5 thing I might have just bought it. But this was $20.95. After about 30 minutes of off and on tears and negotiations, she made the choice to put it back and wait for another time. It was a relief and a surprise. This girl, she is growing up.

I am liking the way age 4 looks from this vantage point: five weeks to go!

That's right, I MADE a dog!

A lot of the dissatisfaction I have been feeling in recent months has had to do with how nearly impossible it has become to find time to *make* something. I made some fingerless gloves for myself around New Year's, with some yarn I had ordered online and then ordered Chris to give me for Christmas. Then I made a pair for Cora, who implied she might die a horribly whiny death if I didn't know her something immediately. Gratifyingly, she wears them almost every day. Then I made a pair for my grandma (which resulted in my mom buying me yarn so I could make her a pair, and my grandma commissioning a pair for an aunt).

When I was visiting my mom recently, I saw an ad in one of her quilting magazines for a book called "Sew Me, Love Me" - the cover appealed to me and I thought it would be good browsing, and my local library had the book, so I picked it up when we got back home. This past Saturday, Cora and I snuggled up on the couch to look through the book. She spotted a dog she especially liked and asked if we could make it.

I was pretty sure I had everything I needed already in-house, including socks I no longer was wearing (heel holes) that could serve as a body. So we headed upstairs and chose our materials. At this point Cora lost interest in the process and while I cut out the pieces, she completely unpacked her dresser and spread her clothes in piles all over her room. This had something to do with a dance performance she was planning, but we never got that far.

In short, I made a stuffed doggy this weekend, and while I can see the ways I would do it differently next time, and have some other ideas, I like this little dog. I think she's pretty cute. And, considering I have not attempted a stuffed creature in quite a few years (I think jr. high was the last time), I'm also pretty proud.

I read a number of blogs by creative, crafty people, and often I have envied their "I wanted to make this so I looked around and found the stuff and did it!" capabilities. Making this little pup brought me some delight of a kind I've been missing. It felt good to realize I had everything I needed. It felt good to realize I certainly had the sewing skills to do this quickly. It felt good to watch the dog take shape. It even felt good to do it all by hand!

And, does she like her new doggy? After about 36 hours of deliberation, she named her Alyssa.

Thoughts on reading and picture books

Last night, after stories and songs and settling Cora into bed, I came downstairs and turned the monitor on. All was quiet, her bedtime music faint in the background, for about 15 minutes. Then, some stirring. Then, she said loudly, "I am tired of your tricks! I am coming down the chimney to eat you up!"

We've been reading various versions of The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. We've read the original story, we've read The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark, and we've read the particularly delightful The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. Now the original, you might remember, has the wolf actually gobbling up the first two pigs, coming down the third pig's chimney and falling into a pot of boiling soup, and being eaten up in turn by the third pig. The other two revision versions do not feature much gobbling of anyone - the little fishes escape, the little wolves all live together and the pig learns to be nice.

A friend asked me the other day how I handle scary things in stories with Cora - things like wolves swallowing little girls whole, wolves gobbling little pigs and then being cooked, stepmothers demanding the lungs and liver of beautiful girls, and the ever-popular red-hot-iron-dancing shoes. Scary stuff indeed, and stuff I absolutely gobbled up as a child myself. I mostly handle it through these multiple versions, showing that stories can change and be changed - this removes some of the power of authority from the originals, and gives some of that power to Cora. She can choose which version to hear, or to think about, or she can create a new one that is somewhere in between (she is a big fan of having the wolf vomit up Little Red and Grandma - not, I think, a version you will find in a picture book anytime soon). So, I told my friend about this.

Then, another friend who was there mentioned that in the Waldorf philosophy - the educational world her children were raised in - there is a bias against picture books, even for very young children. As my friend explained it, the idea is that you only read aloud to your child without showing the pictures, or from books that have no pictures. This approach, the philosophy says, allows your child to create his or her own pictures and learn to rely on and exercise her imagination.

"I don't think my daughter would stand for that," my friend replied.

I didn't really say anything at the time, because I was surprised at how horrified I felt! On the one hand, I see the Waldorf point. On the other hand, I don't see Cora's imagination being fenced in by the pictures she sees. She likes it when we get to the end of a book and there's a picture of the person who wrote the story and the person who drew and colored the pictures. She likes studying the pictures and talking about them - we both like the books where there are things happening in the pictures that aren't part of the text. A recurrent element for example, like the chipmunk in each picture of When Will It Be Spring?, always doing something different, always near the main character Alfie, a small bear cub. Or the details of a dress, a castle, the way the only color in the Olivia books is red, and so on.

And I think that when it comes to scary things, illustrations can help to make the scary manageable - it delineates it, the same way talking about fear puts it in a linguistic container, instead of letting it spill all over your mind. One of the pages Cora particularly likes to look at in the three pigs book is a close up of the wolf's slavering face - she sits and traces his teeth with her finger and stares into his eyes. Then she closes him up in the book. Safe. And then she pretends to be the Big Bad Wolf, and tells me how much she loves him.*

Right now I'm reading a new book by Maria Tatar called Enchanted Hunters: the Power of Stories in Childhood. In this book she explores "how literature touches us when we are young, moving and transforming us with its intoxicating, enthralling, and occasionally terrifying energy." She writes mainly about the books we read to ourselves as children, but also about picture books and the stories that are read to us.

At one point she quotes the poet Dana Gioia as saying, "The books we read are no different from the people we meet and the cities we visit. Some books, people, or places hardly matter, others change our lives, and still others plant some idea or sentiment that influences our future."

At the end of the introduction she says something I really love: "Words have not just the astonishing capacity to banish boredom and create wonders. They also enable contact with the lives of others and with story worlds, arousing endless curiosity about ourselves and the places we inhabit." I believe this is also true of art, of the stories visually told.

*I admit to being particularly pleased about her affection for the Big Bad Wolf, as he was my invisible friend for much of my childhood.

Mini Makeover for Cora's Room

Before she was born, we painted Cora's room yellow - well, actually, long before she was even an idea we painted that room yellow, back when it was my sewing and writing room (and reading and sulking and evading writing room). And when it was transformed into a nursery we left it yellow. One wall has two very nice prints on it, one has a framed State Fair poster from the year Cora was conceived, one has a window, and above the crib it has always been blank. We've always wanted to have something there, and on the two weird triangular walls created by the dormer, but never got around to it.

Until today! Because this week I found something wonderful! Now her walls look like this:

Wisdom from the Queen

One of the (library!) books I've been reading this month is Margaret Atwood's Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 1983-2005. I love Atwood's writing in any genre - novels, stories, poems - and one thing that always impresses me is that she can be so witty and entertaining no matter what she is writing. Her voice is so distinctive, such a pleasure. So often, when I read her nonfiction writing, I find her saying exactly what I needed to hear.

Here is an example, from the essay "Nine Beginnings":

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. Think of it as the altar of the Muse Oblivion, to whom you sacrifice your botched first drafts, the tokens of your human imperfection. She is the tenth Muse, the one without whom none of the others can function. The gift she offers you is the freedom of the second chance. Or as many chances as you'll take.

It's a beautiful paragraph, but what I really love is this idea of the tenth Muse, Oblivion, who might sound forboding, but is perhaps the most generous of muses. And while I have certainly made many, many sacrifices to her, I would say I have not made enough. I'm not saying that I think I need to cast my work into the wastebasket. I'm saying I don't think I've taken as many chances as I'm offered. I haven't failed as often as I could have....because I haven't tried as often as I could have.

I've written about this before, about how I am trying to change this. I picked a difficult time of year for this, with the sickness cycle and the sudden return to harsh midwestern winters, but I also know that it doesn't matter. There will always be a dozen readymade excuses for not doing something. As the fog of FluFest 2008 lifts, I'm ready to jump back in.

Just above the paragraph I quoted is this: "Girls should be allowed to play in the mud. They should be released from the obligations of perfection. Some of your writing, at least, should be as evanescent as play."

Squishy Art Project

A while ago I got a terrific book of art projects for toddlers out of the library. I rediscovered the joys of the library about a year and a half ago and have been a steady patron ever since. Of course, the problem with the library is that you always have to give the books back! So, last fall I bought my own copy of MaryAnn Kohl's First Art. Last weekend I did one of the "squishy art" projects with Cora. It was a day when nothing seemed to hold her interest, she was squirmy and whiny and frankly a pain in the family neck. It seemed like she needed something new, something very different, something amazingly fun. And perhaps just the slightest bit educational. (I know. I just can't help it.)

Luckily, I had the requisite packets of unflavored gelatin in the cupboard. So I made the gelatine, a bowl of red, a bowl of blue, a bowl of yellow. Chilled them (it took a little longer than the book suggested, but Elmo helped us out with the waiting time). And then with (seriously) the last three sturdy two-zip ziploc bags, I made up the squishies. You can guess how the colors were paired up.

And then Cora and I sat at her table and squished away, every once in a while holding a bag up to the window for a different look. Chris snapped away with the camera.

It was like magic. She calmed down, she sat as still as a baby can (i.e. not very, but that's okay), she laughed and had fun. We did this for probably about 20 minutes, which proved long enough to break the scary downward spiral we'd begun earlier in the day, and the evening was much more pleasant for having done this small activity.