We’ve been working today, getting ready for Asher’s birthday tomorrow. The bunting I made is hung, the pillowcase I sewed for him is done, the birthday crown I decided just yesterday to make for him is done but for the final fitting and seam. The cake is baked and cooling, and it will be ready for decorating tomorrow morning.
I took a ton of photos today, but here are a few of my favorites.
It’s Friday and I’m jumpy—like excited about I-don’t-know-what and wishing I were doing something fun, but then it’s also kind of nice to bounce around in my house (and head) and feel fragmented and free. I should be working… but I don’t know on what. I have a call with an author in a little while. There are some lovely angels cleaning my house at the moment and I never really know what to do with myself while they are here.
My class is going well, I guess. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing with that other than rereading a novel I’ll be analyzing as my “manuscript.” I don’t know if I can sit here and read a paperback novel while Betty and Christina clean my house. Angst.
Oh. I could be busy finding the perfect cake recipe for Asher’s birthday cake. Or I could be working on the pillowcase I started sewing. But I’m having trouble figuring out French seams. Or I could be wrapping the big box that arrived today—Asher’s final present. (I wrapped the others yesterday.) Or I could be finishing his birthday letter. Or I could prune the rosebushes.
Lucas and Asher’s buddy X is staying with us tonight. I wonder what we’ll feed them?
Whee! It’s kind of nutty in my head right now. Some days just have too much Possibility.
The sun is out! This is kind of electrifying after all the rain we’ve had this month.
I made a new contact at a big company that provides publishing services to many publishers today. He had already found an editor for his project, but I was able to send him my info and résumé and ask him to keep me in mind for future projects. It was a pleasant exchange and I’m fairly optimistic something might come of it. They do a lot of publishing for K-12 and that’s a new area I’d be interested in, and one for which my experience would be well suited, I think.
I’m looking forward to being able to point such potential clients at my new biz website and say, “Hey, check me out.”
I’ve got other irons in the fire now, too, and I’m kind of wondering if any of them will result in work. One possibility is that they all will, all at once. That’s a sobering thought, but also a happy one. I’m enjoying a tiny lull right now and spent part of the day invoicing.
The school fundraiser auction is coming up and I’m wondering what I might want to make and donate. Last year I needle felted some fairy folk and donated them along with a book of stories. One idea might be to sew another birthday bunting that might be included in a bigger “birthday package”-type auction item. But I’ve always wanted to needle-felt some seasonal dolls. Must think on this some more.
Tiptoes Lightly, Pepper Pot, and Pine Cone by moi
I’ve been working on a project that I learned about through Amanda Soule’s SouleMama blog and her book The Creative Family. It was the perfect project to allow me to practice with all the awesome new tools I got for Christmas.
What is it, you ask?
It’s a bunting for decorating. Some might call it a banner. It’s reusable, unlike crepe paper. I thought it would be nice to use this to decorate for Asher’s upcoming birthday party. I’ve never done anything like this before and I’m pretty stoked about how it turned out!
First, I bought fat quarters and spent entirely too much money. (If I were already a sewer with lots of useful fabric scraps lying about, this wouldn’t have been necessary.) To cut out the triangles I used the Fiskars rotary cutter and self-healing cutting mat my mother gave to me for Christmas. I also used the little Gingher embroidery shears that Lucas and Asher gave me and the Singer “Prélude” sewing machine from Mom and Dad.
That rotary cutter is an amazing and beautiful tool. Cutting took only a fraction of the time I thought it would take.
Isn’t my Singer pretty?
Over several short sessions, I sewed the triangles closed. Today I sewed the bunting all together using wide bias tape. It went very smoothly. I am still debating about whether to pink all the triangle edges.
I think it’s very festive! The bunting is six yards long and I have enough triangles to make another of probably the same size. I think I will, since I’m not sure what I’d do with all these leftover triangles. I suppose I could try to make a quilt, but I think I’m not really ready for that yet.
Lucas recently painted his first canvas. A local craft and fabric store is having a sale on artists’ canvases. We bought a 12 by 12 in canvas for Lucas for something like $2.87. He used my craft acrylics—nothing very fancy. It was such an exciting treat to paint on a new surface! Alien art is cute.
This was a good reminder that I had lots of plans to paint. Hmmm … must get to that sometime soon.
Our first batch of plum jam was made on December 4th with Papa. Last night we made another big batch and we’ll have to see later tonight whether it’s gelled properly. The jam is low in sugar, sweet-tart, and full of pulpy goodness. I hope it’s delicious.
The plums we used were frozen from last year’s harvest, when Dad and I picked way more than we could process in three jam-making sessions. It was a difficult time then, full of anxiety (and flat-out fear on my part) about Dad’s upcoming heart surgery, and making jam together was our bonding activity. It was special and sweet, the first time we had ever made jam together, and laced with uncomfortable overtones of, “what if.”
The jamming has been different this year. More of a celebration. More an act of thanksgiving for me. Dad is well, perhaps not fully recovered, but nevertheless doing great despite a lot of stress and caring for his 89-year-old mother and 96-year-old aunt. He would say he’s all better now. I know he still tires easily.
I would be very pleased if I could be making plum jam with my dad for another 15 years.
I’m working on being both reasonable and flexible this holiday season—reasonable about what I can accomplish and flexible when circumstances change and obstacles arise.
I had high hopes that we could go up to the foothills this year to hunt for our Christmas tree, but the rainy weather on Saturday and limited time made the trip impossible. We always have such fun visiting the craft fairs and enjoying a slice of apple pie. Instead, we went to Lucas’s school and bought a beautiful tree. Our money will help the school and a group of girls who have formed a eurhythmy troop. We were back home with our tree in less than 30 minutes, which meant that we got the whole thing decorated in a day, instead of it taking all weekend (a day in the foothills, and a day to decorate the tree).
It’s wacky that so many of our ornaments have memories attached to them. I often know where they came from—who gave this one to us, what year I bought that one, which ones are handmade, where Mom and Dad were traveling when they picked up those two, what this one meant to me when I received it. I have ornaments that have been on my family’s Christmas tree since I was in preschool. And if that’s not sentimental, I don’t know what is.
Lucas, after the Santa Lucia walk through 11 grades and the school office. The children braved the cold and rain to deliver their message of light and the coming of Christmas, and buns for everyone!
As the youngest boy in the class, he carried a lantern and wore a special outfit, including grandma’s sweater and a hat I made.
When I told Lucas the other day that his name and Lucia both mean light, he smiled really big.
I wish I could say I am the picture of calm. I often am not. Today I had both kids home “sick,” although they don’t look very sick to me. In some ways it was good to spend my time thinking about things other than my textbook deadlines. I tried really hard to be the domestic goddess. I sewed, cooked, cleaned, laundered, and baked—with yeast. I have been successful. I also have lost my cool several times.
And now that it is 4:53 p.m., I would like to walk out the door wearing high heels and not come back until tomorrow morning. I would like, for a while, to be a dancing, on-my-own, free-as-a-bird goddess.
Just saying.
Instead, let’s talk about Santa Lucia and the festival that we’ve been preparing for this week. Lucas’s class will be visiting all the grades in the school, singing songs and delivering Santa Lucia buns to every student and teacher in the school. Lucia was a pious girl who ended up tortured and suffering. She is thought to have brought food and drink to poor people in Sweden and the Swedes love her. (When Ian lived in Sweden, he participated in a Santa Lucia festival and sang songs to his college profs wearing a pointy Star Boy hat.)
But I digress.
The traditional Lucia festival was held on the 13th of December, which the Internet tells me was the winter solstice during the middle ages. The festival is, at heart, a festival of light designed to honor the darkest moment of the year in the hopes that by doing so we can encourage the light to return. In Sweden, the oldest girl in the family rises early, bakes Lucia buns, wears a crown of lighted candles, and with her siblings, serves her parents buns and sings traditional songs.
Lucas has a special role to play in the Lucia festival. He is the youngest boy in his class, so he will be dressed as a gnome, in an all-red gnome outfit with a pointy hat. The hat I made from scratch out of wool felt. I sewed a little gold star on it for a decoration. Then I went hunting for red sweatpants. Target, K-Mart, Penny’s, and even Wal-Mart do not have red sweatpants. I went to the thrift store and found some that were rather too big, but, for $1.98, possibly not too, too big. I chopped off the extra length on the legs, hemmed them, and then doubled the waistband an inch or so in the back, and stitched it together. I had hoped I might be able to open the elastic waist, cut it, and cinch it tighter, but it was stitched down all the way around. Still, I think now they won’t fall off him.
I volunteered to bake Santa Lucia buns, so that was today’s major project. I am happy to say they are edible! I’m not a big bread-maker. I don’t know how many years it’s been since I made a yeast bread. The kids helped and when they were done, we sampled a couple. Pretty tasty. But it seemed to me the dough did not rise as much as it should have. I probably should have practiced before baking for reals.
