Near the end of the day of the Harvest Faire, Ian was working in the candle dipping room and Lucas was making a candle. Asher and I got to wander a bit through the school farm.

We visited the sheep, llama, chickens, cow, and pony. We watched the American River tumble by where the sheep were grazing.

It was pretty rainy at this point, but the farm didn’t mind so neither did we. We looked at the beautiful crops and flowers growing, and the artwork that graces the fields.

We also wandered back through the school, where the Faire was winding up. Here is the fruit of the paper marbling booth, hanging out to dry. Lucas and Daddy got to do this as their last activity of the day. Aren’t they beautiful? We have to pick Lucas’s paper up at the school office since it was too wet to take home that day.

Here is a pot that the potter threw during a demonstration earlier in the day. There was a huge crowd of children and parents watching him work.

Some more scenes  from our day: the xylophone and candle used during the puppet show; morning glories growing on the farm; and one shot from the horse vaulting demonstration.

This is the mermaid candle decoration I mentioned in my last post. This little girl was very patient to make such a tiny, intricate design.

This boy is making walnut-shell sailboats.

Lucas’s teacher, Ms. D, made this Welcome chalk drawing.

I wish I had photos of Lucas and X shooting bows, but alas I was elsewhere while they were doing that. All in all, it was a perfect day, lacking only blue skies. When we got home we were all exhausted and fulfilled.

We had a marvelous day Saturday at the Sacramento Waldorf School’s Harvest Faire. I was delighted to be asked to shoot photos at the festival. So many amazing and talented people worked tirelessly to pull off this community event and fundraiser. Their dedication and attention to detail is visible in every scene I shot.

Welcome to the Sacramento Waldorf School Harvest Faire!

This is Asher’s dear friend S, who goes to preschool with him. They had such fun in the Kindergarten yard, running and playing follow the leader. We saw two other dear preschool friends there, too. Asher was over the moon!

Asher got to see the puppet play of George and the Dragon, performed in the Kindergarten. It was delightful.

I was so honored to be allowed to take pictures during the puppet show performance. These dedicated women (plus the narrator who is not pictured) are the Kindergarten teachers. They infuse love and light in everything they do.

The Children’s Store was full of inexpensive treasures for the little ones to buy, either for themselves or for their loved ones. Many of the items were handmade.

The Country Store was also full of lovely items, much of them handcrafted. Jams, honey, hats, decorations, toys, games, clothing, artworks, yarns and supplies—you name it. Here’s my Harvest Mother in the foreground, who sold early and for a good price, and the room’s nature table in the background.

The third grade parents offered beeswax candle dipping to Harvest Faire guests. (I got to help with setup on Friday, and Ian did two shifts on Saturday.) Candle dippers walked in a large circle, dipping their candlewicks in warm beeswax and then walking a few paces to let it cool, dipping in cool water, walking a few paces and then repeating. After a while, you have a nice candle that you can decorate. I saw one little girl pressing tiny seed beads into her fresh candle, to make a little mermaid design.

Paints for gourd painting: I’m kind of sorry I didn’t get more shots of this booth, as I’m sure some colorful gourds were made.

There was a whole room dedicated to showing off Waldorf students’ schoolwork. Every grade was represented, including high school subjects like chemistry and humanities.

The vendors were terrific this year and I’m sorry I didn’t have the funds for serious shopping. These carved Halloween gourds are the work of a friend, Miss Katy. They’re boo-tiful.

One booth was decorating a fairy scene. Children could make a little fairy doll and then glue special trinkets like shells, jewels, and tiny pumpkins onto the scene.

Basket of fairy wreaths. You could make your own!

Asher had a wonderful time! He was my little Acorn Boy that day, sporting grandma’s knits.

The ninth grade sold produce from the school farm and other local organic farms—a kind of mini farmers’ market in the Faire.

This is the Festivals Room, which was a display of all the seasons of the year and the various festivals celebrated in Waldorf schools and homes. Some loving volunteers put this together and it was magical.

Autumn scene from the Festivals Room.

Lucas and X got to play tag and be rowdy for a while. These two get along so beautifully. Later, they got to shoot a bow!

There was so much more. I might just indulge in another post.

My son wants to be Harry Potter for Halloween. He’s been adamant about it for several months, and frankly, Harry’s cool, so we’re down with this idea. In early October, much to our surprise, Lucas approached his grandmother and asked, “Grandma, will you please knit me a gray sweater for my Harry Potter costume?”

Nine days and three yarn shops later (looking for the right gray yarn), Grandma Sydney showed up with this gem. How’s that for grandmotherly love and kickass knitting skillz? If only Harry himself were so lucky as to have such a grandma.

Ian found this super Gryffindor House tie at a thrift shop and it goes perfectly. We still have more work to do on this costume, but this is a magnificent start!

I made a few other goodies for the Waldorf school’s Harvest Faire this Saturday. The mice and gnomes are intended for the Children’s Store, which is a shop full of small treasures and handmade lovlies intended to fit a child’s budget. Only children younger than about 10 are allowed to shop there and I believe the highest price they would pay is $2. I’m told my needle-felted mice have been a big hit in years past.

I left the knitted cat in the basket for the Country Store, which is open to shopping adults and sells crafts and handmade items of all types. I hear my friends’ honey will be sold there this year and I’m hoping to snag some.

This is my best work to date. I made this needle-felted Harvest Mother as a donation for our school’s Country Store fundraiser, part of Sacramento Waldorf School’s Harvest Faire, which is being held this Saturday, October 23. Now that’s she’s done, I’m kind of sorry to have to give her up. She took about four hours to make, spread over several evenings. She is about 9 inches tall and the widest part of her skirt is about 7 inches across.

I tried to gently stripe the colors to suggest agricultural rows. I tried to suggest that from her body flows all good things: crops of pumpkins, cabbages, and greens. I tried to use colors that bring to mind dried-up summer grains and tired fields ready for resting. I tried to suggest that she is the goddess of foods gathered in and the growing foods that will nourish us in time, in a never-ending cycle. I hope you can see the wind in her hair.

I admit, that’s a lot to suggest with a bunch of fluff!

It’s amazing what a little needle can do! She is holding a cornucopia in her arms, can you tell?

These are two details of her earthy skirt, with various crops growing on it. I love the pumpkin vines the most. I would have loved to make grapes and wheat, but I couldn’t seem to make the wool cooperate in that way for superfine details.

I’m ridiculously proud of this doll! I don’t really want to give her up, but she is going for a good cause. I just hope they sell her for a decent amount and that the person who buys her loves her as much as I do.

This past Saturday I got to attend two wonderful handwork classes taught by fiber artist/teacher extraordinaire and homeschooling consultant Jennifer Tan of Syrendell. The classes were free and offered by the Friends of the Fair Oaks Library. (Thank you, Friends! Thank you, Jennifer!) The morning class was beginning crochet and the afternoon class was spinning. I had the pleasure of taking a spinning class from Jennifer earlier this year, too. Oh my, this stuff is challenging and fun! It’s supposed to become relaxing and even therapeutic once you get comfortable and good at it.

Jennifer’s display of handspun yarns, crochet hooks of many sizes, a fiber batt, niddy-noddies, and drop spindles. I think the tools are gorgeous.

My classmate R’s lovely crochet

The left photo is yarn spun by a 9-year-old girl; Jennifer Tan is in the middle; the right is yarn spun by our lovely Youth Librarian, Stephanie. It is thanks to her and the Friends of the Library that this class was offered.

My crochet! My hands made this!

Basket of colorful roving and some handspun yarns made by Jennifer and her family, all of whom are tremendous fiber artists

Drop spindles

My yarn. We started with a lovely brown wool and moved on to some colors; mine has brown, red, navy, and a dark orange.

I crocheted this wee pumpkin, which is small enough to fit in my tightly cupped hand! I finished it at home and improvised a stem of sorts. My boys think I should sew a jack-o’-lantern face on it.

And this is my attempt to apply what I learned at home without my patient teacher to correct me. I seem to have remembered how to start a circle and how to increase enough to keep it flat. This is a crummy acrylic yarn leftover from our Solstice sun project. It might become a Halloween decoration. I also practiced more on that green square—alas, it is definitely a triangle now.

The Fair Oaks Library is hosting two more handwork classes taught by Jennifer next Saturday, October 23. They are beginning crochet and Tunisian crochet, and both are free. Registration is required though. I would happily take those as well, but for the conflict with our school’s Harvest Faire.

Think wisely,
Speak well,
Stand upright
And St. Michael
Will lead you
from darkness
to Light.

Yesterday afternoon, after school, the boys and I pulled down some Crayola modeling “clay” (in exciting day-glo colors) that we had on hand and sculpted dragons in honor of Michaelmas. We spent a happy 30 to 40 minutes sculpting, with each of us working on our own dragon.

Lucas’s sculpture was ambitious! He sculpted the Archangel Michael battling the dragon within a ring of fire! He is justifiably pleased with the result. He certainly remembered the story well.

Asher got to use a plastic knife! Big fun.

Here is my dragon posing next to Asher’s dragon, which morphed a lot during our crafting, just as you would expect for a 3-year-old. His dragon also got lots of lovely dragon play.

Here is a needle-felted dragon I made last Sunday. I had some time in the company of some of my favorite people in the world and my hands happily worked on this while we were visiting. I think he needs some fiery breath!

Some of my research into Michaelmas has brought me to these lovely resources, which I gladly share. I am actually still debating about whether to cook a Michaelmas meal today or save it for Friday, when our school will celebrate this festival.

Waldorf Library

The Parenting Passageway

Rockin Granola

Rudolf Steiner Archive

Mama Roots Branching Out

You might have gathered that I get kind of excited about seasonal holidays. I love Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter, of course, but I especially love them within their context of their seasons. When I look at our cultural holidays from the perspective of how the turning of the wheel influenced/influences people’s lives and consciousness, I’m overjoyed to participate. These things hold great meaning for me, much more so than any store gift.

When we became a Waldorf family (which may have been before our first child was born, depending on how you look at it) we quickly adopted the nature table as a means of expressing our appreciation for nature and the changing seasons. OK, maybe it was me more than Ian. But still. It dovetailed so nicely with my own inclination toward nature religions that it was almost automatic. Now that we have Waldorf, I don’t have to go into the awkward conversations about my unconventional spiritual tendencies, I can just say, “It’s a Waldorf nature table,” and be done with it. Of course, nobody ever asks me.

I’m not entirely sure whether the children even notice this seasonal display. Occasionally they will bring in something from outdoors and we will place it on the nature table.  My mushroom family makes its debut on the table this fall.

Spent seed pods from our day lilies, needle-felted gnomes, a knitted cat, a big black rock from the Black Rock desert, rocks Lucas painted, and a decoupaged candle holder that the children made last for last year’s autumn equinox. In the background, we have Daniela Drescher’s In the Land of Elves picture book opened to the autumn page. (Drescher makes gorgeous books, by the way!)

We have on this side wheat and preserved autumn leaves from a craft store, more gnomes, and a cut geode candle holder. Everything rests on gold and orange play silks.

By the way, this is the ONLY clean and beautiful space in my home at present. Chaos reigns around here most of the time.

Happy Equinox! Happy Mabon! Happy Last Day of Summer!

It was a busy day. I had originally planned to celebrate the equinox on the 23rd, but when I looked closer at the exact time of the equinox, I decided it couldn’t wait till tomorrow. (Tomorrow we can celebrate the First Day of Autumn!)

We’ve been watching for signs of Autumn around here. Mama’s been scoping out all the garden plants with a project in mind….

After a quick, $9 trip to the craft store today, we came home with a flat twig wreath base, some floral picks (wooden picks with a small amount of wire on one end), and some green floral twine, which we ended up not using. We wandered around our front and back yards and clipped little snippets off trees and shrubs, including liquidambar leaves (still green), flowering plum leaves (purple), mallow, Chinese elm, Japanese maple (purple and green), redwood sprigs, pittosporum, and lantana berries, heavenly bamboo fruits, rose hips, lavender flowers, and the spiky flowers from some ornamental grass. We also walked up the street a little ways and gathered fallen bits of live oak leaves.

While the vegetable soup was cooking I tried to get the kids interested in making the wreath with me. At first they couldn’t be bothered because they were too busy chasing around the backyard. But after I got the first layer on the wreath base, it caught Lucas’s eye and he came to help me. He did a great job of adding to the wreath, and especially enjoyed using the floral picks to wire items without strong stems into the wreath.

We pulled some deep orange/bronze seed lanterns off our goldenrain tree, plucked a touch of dusty miller, and added some rosemary from our herb patch. We added in a few acorns we had gathered from the neighborhood yesterday. Basically, if it was interesting and sturdy enough to be stabbed into our wreath, we used it. I’m delighted with all the colors our wreath has! I had feared that not enough foliage had begun to turn fall colors yet, and that it would be bland.

Here is the finished wreath, sans baby toes and with a few sticks we had gathered and displayed last spring. Ian helped us hang our equinox wreath above our nature table (which is really the top of our upright piano) in our great room. Since these plants are largely fresh, our wreath will wither and wilt over time. It may begin to fall apart, which in itself will be symbolic of the seasonal changes. I’m interested to see how well or poorly it lasts. I’ve never made one of these before.

Lucas then chopped our “finger salad,” mere raw zucchini rounds into halves, symbolizing that today the day and night are perfectly equal. While he did, Ian asked him math questions, which was fun.

Our backyard equinox table setting (blue plates for night, yellow plates for day, of course). I didn’t take a photo of our yummy vegetable lentil quinoa soup. (I’m no food photographer!) We ate homemade bread and soup and zucchini halves, and talked about what summer things we were thankful for (swimming lessons, swim team, Waldorf summer camp, play dates, our anniversary trip to Seattle, Burning Man—particularly because we came home with four noses, eight eyes, eight ears, 16 limbs, and 80 digits!).

We finished our celebration with pumpkin pie! Asher helped with making the pie crust and Lucas mixed up the filling and helped me roll out the crust.

And now, the holiday is done and I’m beat! Good night, and may the many blessings of the season be yours.

I am not sure how to start except to say I’m kind of flabbergasted. A switch in Lucas’s mind flipped this week; or perhaps someone installed new drivers overnight. I’m pretty sure that now, just about a month before his half birthday, we are seeing the first signs of the 9 year change.

This in itself isn’t unexpected. (We were given a handout by Lucas’s teacher last spring when many of his older classmates were already going through it.)

Nor is the timing particularly surprising now that I think about it further. For me, this time around the autumn equinox is always rife (fetid?) with turmoil and change. I’ve written about this before, particularly in the context of the Waldorf myth of St. Michael, whose festival we’ll be celebrating this year on October 1 at school.

So it’s the time of year to excavate and uncover, to face our dragons and look at life and ourselves with new eyes, to ask ourselves if we like what we see, or if it’s time to take our swords and cut away the elements that are no longer serving us, that keep us from feeling right in the world. These challenges are opportunities, right? They help us grow.

This year I’m reflecting on Lucas’s dragons, for I feel he has his own now. His dreamy innocence is falling off him, little by little. His mind is sharp and becoming more critical by the day. He is now becoming an individual who is finally all the way in the world and looking about. He won’t like everything he sees. He won’t like everything he is.

This change of consciousness during the ninth year is challenging for child and parent alike, I am told. The payoff is that this is how a child naturally separates himself from his parents and develops his own individual character. It’s part of his learning to think critically, make choices, and become his own person—all fantastic stuff!

Admittedly, it is somewhat alarming to hear his brand-new self-loathing: “I hate myself. I’m the dumbest! I shouldn’t even exist!” His criticism should  fall squarely on his parents before too long.

Really, this is just the beginning of a phase that we all have to get through, and who knows what will happen. I would not have guessed that one of his first declarations of independence would be to “challenge himself” to stay awake the whole night last night!

Lucas came to tell us several times (10 p.m., 11:15 p.m.) that he couldn’t sleep. We gently but firmly sent him back to bed with an extra hug and the advice that one cannot fall asleep if one doesn’t still one’s body. We went to sleep. Asher, who is sick and was barking and coughing, woke up around 2:30 needing a drink of water. When I took Asher  back to bed, I realized that Lucas wasn’t in his bed. He wasn’t in Asher’s bed either. (I’m not the sharpest at 2:30 a.m. so I was confused.) Then I started to get scared and went looking through the house for Lucas. I found him asleep in the comfy armchair in the living room. I tried to slow my pounding heart and ultimately decided to leave him asleep in the chair. I went back to bed myself but had trouble going back to sleep. I kept worrying about him, wondering what he had on his mind that had caused his insomnia. What nightmare did he have that drove him from his bed? Oh, we weren’t gentle enough with him when he told us he couldn’t sleep earlier, and he was too afraid of our wrath to come to us when he needed us!

Nope. None of that. This morning he revealed he had deliberately tried to stay awake all night. He had played while the rest of us slept. He had spent a bunch of time finger-knitting a long rope. Ian and I sipped our morning coffee and tried to figure out which part of Lucas’s story was the lie. We told him that he isn’t to do that anymore: When we put him in bed for the night, we expect him to stay there! (I guess I should be glad that he didn’t leave the house!)

Natural consequences are tough. He was TIRED today at school. And bedtime came mighty early tonight.