Happy first day of spring! It’s raining like crazy. What’s up with us, you ask? Lots and not much at the same time, it seems.

Mama’s busy with work—two books are chugging along, hot and heavy. One new one is just starting up. All three feature different tasks and require different portions of my brain, so that’s something to celebrate. I give thanks whenever I get to use rusty brain cells. Alas, these hours spent working mean I take fewer pictures.

We are—at present—all healthy and strong. This is also something to be celebrated! Pardon me while I whoop and holler. Woo hooo! Yippie!

In fact, we’re getting stronger every day. Our workout regimen is paying off for Ian and me (which is something I feel I can finally say out loud in this space). It’s still very hard for me, but I’m doing it—and although I have a hard time being positive about it at 6 a.m., when it’s time to start sweating. It’s much easier to be positive afterward, when the workout is done, and now I can fit back into some of my skinny clothes. I’ve lost approximately 9 pounds. Ian, well, Ian looks and FEELS terrific! And anything that makes my love this happy is worth it—whatever it takes.

Asher gets stronger after every meal, just ask him. He bares his muscles and asks me to feel how they’re growing from all the good food he eats.

Asher’s Dreamland adventures are getting more complex and elaborate. There’s a new character there—James—who hangs with Asher and Kompatchuk. They go out everyday and fight bad guys. Apparently, they are extremely competent at the superhero business. They do ninja moves and kung fu and plenty of magic. Just about any weapon in the world is available to them and they rescue people in dire straits. Asher also does a lot of work there: mostly in factories with systems and equipment and donations. And, oh, the competitions! They are held often, and Asher always wins. Furthermore, in Dreamland there is tons paperwork to deal with, like chapters and grading. Asher works constantly on his computer, programming and energizing and downloading. I haven’t yet heard him use the phrase “leveraging the synergies,” but I expect it’s not long now until I do. Honestly, he can talk 35 minutes nonstop about this stuff.

Lucas is in a really good place most of the time these days. (Creating the triangle prism above out of skewers and string is how he spent part of this morning.) He’s happy at school, learning like crazy, and enjoying life. His only real complaints center around not having enough time to have all the play dates he would like to have, and having to practice his piano. Lucas loves playing the piano, just not practicing. Next week he will perform in his fourth piano recital. He’s been playing less than a year. Lucas would dearly love to start taking martial arts classes. Unfortunately, although I think he’s ready to do it, it’s not presently in our budget.

Asher has formally been accepted into the Red Rose Kindergarten at Sacramento Waldorf School. This is very exciting and wonderful, and is exactly where I want him to be. Now I spend lots of mental cycles worrying about how we’re going to pay for it. But never mind about that. Let’s focus on how he calls me the “Princess of Love” instead, shall we?

Firefly, our special-needs, almost-starved-to-death chick, seems to have made a complete recovery. I have to say, I’m flabbergasted. I thought sure she was a goner, and that we’d be having that kind of teachable moment around here. She is not only walking, but also now runs and flies short distances.

So, yeah. I guess we’re good! One final thing: Thanks, Mom, for the new shoes for the boys, and clothes for Lucas!

Home-raised eggs have yolks that are huge, bright, and orange. Those are commercial eggs on the left and bottom.

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

May your pockets be heavy and your heart light.
May good luck pursue you each morning and night.

Yesterday afternoon, on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, we did some fun things to prepare for the coming of the Leprechauns. Asher and I made brownies together. We happen to know for a fact that Leprechauns LOVE to eat brownies, particularly if you cut them into shamrock shapes!

Then we set about finding natural materials in our yard from which to make a Leprechaun house. Is it hard to see there, up against the “rock” wall of our house? It has a flag on top of the roof.

We found some lovely squarish sections of bark that worked beautifully for walls. Then with short sticks and long pieces of bark found in our garden beds, we roofed the house. Lucas came home with Daddy just in time to help with the construction.

He carefully cleared an area for an outdoor picnic table, and gently placed small stones that Asher gathered to make a cobblestone pathway leading from the door of the Leprechaun house to the picnic area.

Asher especially enjoyed gathering items to use for our project. He gathered stones, spiky balls from our liquidambar tree, flower petals, and clover. He even found a small fairy jewel that we set into the cobblestone path. The spiky balls became a kind of garden fence.

Asher picked lots of “salad” clover for the Leprechauns to eat. We all thought the flower petals gave everything an attractive, magical ambience.

Isn’t that a handsome house? We thought it looked very cozy and perfect for little fairy folk.

This is the picnic area, complete with bark table and tablecloth, plenty of salad, and bark benches for sitting on.

Our Leprechaun house is right beside our “shamrock” plant and right where we always leave out treats for the Leprechauns. So we knew they would check that exact spot. We hoped that they’d enjoy the house and have a party there!

Then we feasted on a greenish dinner of sausage and egg wraps (green, spinach tortillas) with green (brown) rice and salad. The boys enjoyed the wraps a lot! Fortunately, the Leprechauns never eat all the brownies, so there were enough for us to enjoy for dessert.

We always give the Leprechauns milk, honey, and a brownie on the night before St. Patrick’s Day. Leprechauns can be so tricky, and we find that if we leave them yummy treats, they don’t pull pranks on us. Usually, they leave gifts in return.

We were pretty confident that they would be nice this year. Doesn’t that venue look inviting?

This morning, Lucas and Asher found GOLD NUGGETS on the cobblestone path. The milk and honey and brownie were all nibbled. Only crumbs and drops remained on the plate outside. But inside! The boys found Leprechaun dolls on their breakfast plates, with new notebooks for writing in! So I guess the Leprechauns liked our treats and the house we made for them. It seems, however, they couldn’t resist being a little bit tricksy after all. We found all of our shoes in a huge pile by the front door!

I figure we got off lucky, though. Leprechauns can cause all manner of mischief. In fact, Lucas was excited to get to school to see what naughty pranks the Leprechauns did there during the night! (I confess, I think they looked around in our messy house and figured, what’s the point? It already looks like a tornado hit this place!)

Tonight we’ll be having an Irish stew for dinner with some Irish deedly-deedly-dee music. We have some fun Leprechaun stories to enjoy after dinner, too. How will you celebrate? How will you invite magic and good luck into your home?

May good luck be with you wherever you go,
and your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow.

I decided I wanted to make a new decoration for St. Patrick’s Day this year, and since Lucas was home sick for a couple of days, I took some time to work on it. Although it’s probably too late for anyone to make this for this year, I’m going to walk you through the steps to make a jolly ring of dancing leprechauns. Because this project has multiple pieces to it, this will be long.

I would say that anyone with a medium amount of needle-felting experience can make one of these, as I consider myself to be an intermediate-level needle-felter. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Materials

* wool roving in plain white and multiple greens and browns; you may also want scarlet (leprechauns in some Irish stories wear scarlet caps or scarlet vests)
* foam base and felting needle (any guage)
* chenille stems for crafts (aka pipe cleaners)
* multiple-needle felting tool (optional)
* carding brushes (optional)

Step 1: Fashion a round mat of white wool. Use your multineedle felting tool if you have one, for it will make the creation of the wool mat faster. You want your mat to be a good 1/2 inch thick, when it’s firmly felted.

Step 2: Now add thin layers of colored wool in any arrangement you like to the top of your white mat. I used a mix of greens and browns to create a realistic patch of earth.

You’ll get more realism if you card some greens and browns together to create a blend of colored wool for your mat. Occasionally lift your round mat off the foam felting pad and needle it from the back for a while. Flip it again, working the wool from both sides to felt the fibers together.

Keep felting until the whole mat is fairly firm and holds together when you lift it up. Here’s how my mat looked when I felt it was done.

Step 3: Begin your first leprechaun. Bend one whole chenille stem (I like to use white) in half gently. Now hold it about an inch down from the top bend and twist the top using your other hand. You’ve just created a loop at the top. Open it out into an oval shape of wire. Cut another chenile stem in half. This will be your figure’s arms. Just where the neck is, twist your small chenille stem so that it anchors onto the neck like you see in the photo below. Now you have a wire skeleton. Bend over the ends where the feet and hands are a tiny bit so that there’s no pointy wire sticking out. Roll a small ball of wool and place it inside the wire oval. Begin felting it into a nice head shape.

Step 4: Now begin wrapping your skeleton with small bands of wool roving, needling it down into place so that it stays together by attaching the fibers. Wrap more and more wool and continue needling until your Leprechaun has a “body” of white wool. The hands are the trickiest part, in my opinion. You have to wrap them enough so that the chenille stem is invisible, but not so much that you have big, puffy hands.

Here’s my lady Leprechaun in progress. She is just about ready for clothing. The more you needle your figure, the denser the wool will become. By focusing on certain parts, you can sculpt the wool to be dense and narrow where you want it to be, such as at the figure’s neck and arms.

Below is a male Leprechaun in progress. For male figures (or female figures wearing trousers), you have a choice: You can fashion the legs together (just like you would for a skirt for a female form) and then create the impression of separate legs by needling a line down the front of the figure, or you can wrap each leg separately. The advantage to creating separate legs is that your Leprechaun will look more like he’s dancing. The disadvantage is that it’s much harder to get the Leprechaun to stand upright and not fall over. (More about that later.) If you intend for children to handle or play with your Leprechauns, you should create a sturdy base by keeping the legs together.

Step 5: Dress your Leprechaun with bits of colored wool, needled down into the white body. I decided my Leprechauns would all wear greens, but in my reading about Leprechauns, I’ve found a number of stories that refer to little men in scarlet caps or red vests, too. Obviously, if you are making gnomes or fairies rather than Leprechauns, your “clothing” can be in any colors you wish to reflect their characters.

Step 6: Now give your figure some hair and/or a beard. My Leprechaun men didn’t look complete to me until I gave them caps for their heads also. It’s easy to create elaborate hairstyles for your lady Leprechauns, if you want. If you prefer your soft sculpture dolls to be in the Waldorf style, then leave their faces blank. Your child’s and your imaginations will fill in their features. If you’d rather give your Leprechauns faces, feel free to do so. Your needle can even sculpt delicate or bulbous noses, eyes, mouths, and eyebrows, if you like. Hmmm … I wonder what color eyes Leprechauns have.

Step 7: Repeat steps 3 through 6 until you have as many Leprechauns as you want! I managed to make four, two men and two women. I think I’d like to craft two Leprechaun children to add to my group, but I ran out of time this year.

Step 8: Now arrange your Leprechauns in a ring on your needle-felted mat, and begin needling their feet into the mat. You may have to do this a long time to get them to stand, especially if you made the male Leprechauns with separated legs. Mine wanted to fall over a lot (that’s the disadvantage I mentioned earlier). I opted to place “ribbons” or cords in their hands, to help complete the ring. My son Lucas enjoyed braiding bits of roving to create the cords for the figures to hold. If there were more than four figures, I don’t think the ribbons would be necessary. Once you get them balanced, you may want to leave them be! Will your Leprechauns face outward or face into the ring?

Here’s my finished Leprechaun ring. I also took a shot of them dancing around a pot of gold.

Now put on some Irish music and dance like your Leprechauns! Please let me know if this tutorial is helpful to you.

They’re getting big, aren’t they? These photos were taken last Sunday, or Day 25 of our chick rearing adventure.

We moved the chicks out of the house and set them up in a bigger pen in the garage. It’s raining pretty heavily and I’m a tad worried that they’re cold. They still have the heat lamp for warmth, and they’re feathering out nicely, so we think they’ll be fine out there. They are birds, after all!

Now that they’ve moved, I miss their sweet chirps in my office. Frankly, apart from the dust, it was lovely having them in here while I worked.

This is Dawn, an Ameraucana. Dawn will most likely lay bluish or green eggs when she’s an adult.

This is Buttercup. The other Buff Orpington chick like her, Sunshine, is looking … well, I wonder if Sunshine might be a cockerel. We’ll see …

This Barred Rock, the black one, is very docile compared to the others. In fact, I’d say that now that Firefly is separate from the other chicks, the two Barred Rocks are at the bottom of the pecking order. I’m going to keep my eye on them to make sure they aren’t being mistreated by the others.

Firefly is still with us and is stronger. Saturday she actually flew up and out of her box! I found her on the floor of my office closet.  She did the same thing on Monday morning when I came near. She is walking with a limp and prefers to rest more than walk, but she is able to stand and move about. She’s eating still, so I take that as a good sign. She will stay in the house for a while longer at least. I would like to see her fatten up and grow some more. Reintroducing her to the others may be a difficult prospect.

Here are two needle-felted tapestries that Lucas recently made to give as gifts. The above tapestry was given to Aunt Kellie for her birthday. These were both wholly conceived and executed by my darling almost-9-year-old. Both are about six inches in diameter.

This one of tropical fish is a belated birthday gift for another family member. We still have to give it, though, so I won’t say who the recipient will be.

I’ve been crafting a bit myself in fits and spurts, but I’m not ready to show my creations yet. I also have a big fat book edit going on now and it’s eating up my time. I am grateful for my glorious weekend spent among friends; I am trying hard to let it buoy me up this week.

I don’t have many words right now. I’m shocked and grieving for the people of Japan, and I wish I had resources to send.

Doctors Without Borders is taking donations here.

The American Red Cross is accepting donations here.

Our littlest chick, Firefly, hasn’t been well at all this week. She has been so weak and unable to stand since Sunday morning. Every evening for three days I said good night to her, fully expecting to find her dead in the morning (I even cried a bit).

It now seems Firefly may have other plans.

She has been standing a lot more today. When she’s resting, she seems to have her feet under her, as though she has better control of her legs. I thought before it was her left side that was weakest, but now I’m seeing weakness in her right leg, so maybe I was wrong before? She is eating a lot of food, and appears to me to be stronger for it. I’ve seen her stand when I put my hand toward her, but also when I’m not close by. She’s been on her feet rather a lot for a dying bird, I think. I held her for a while today and she perched on my hand and flapped her wings— something she hadn’t been strong enough to do in days. She’s even preening her feathers a little.

The fact that she seems to be improving has me wondering if the other, bigger chicks were keeping her from the food. I hear that chickens will do that sometimes to a little bird, and Firefly is definitely the “runt” of the flock. In fact, while they have grown tremendously, she remains tiny. Perhaps she was just being starved to death, and now that she’s eating she’s gaining back some strength. (If this was the case, I’m sorry I didn’t notice sooner!)

I wonder if she might make it. Then I wonder if we’ll end up with a hen that can’t be with the others and that needs lots of extra care. I have to admit, I’m rooting for her.

The other chicks are huge now. They seem nearly three times the size they were when we first brought them home. They look like proper BIRDS now, and act like them too. Pecking, scratching, flying, leaping, perching, jostling to be higher than the others—they do it all now. Their favorite game seems to be Jump on Your Head, in which one chick will literally jump on top of another. That chick in turn will jump on the head of the next chick, and so on. They make quite a racket doing this.

They still sleep in a pile, which is really funny and kind of sweet. And I thought human babies were light sleepers! The chicks take many naps during the day, but often the naps are only five or ten minutes long. And once one chick disturbs the pile, they all wake up and jostle about. I’ve watched the same chicks fall asleep and be awakened over and over again in just a short time.

Buttercup is eyeing me through the wire in this photo. They pay intense attention to me when I come near, which I do fairly often to feed them and check/freshen their water.

Three chicks stand out as the most active, most dominant of all: Chestnut, Sunshine, and Lightning. They are three different breeds and they each have a “sister” of the same breed who is more docile. I’m wondering if any of these three might end up being roosters. I sure hope not.

All are scenes I found while walking in my neighborhood. Welcome, spring!

I’m not sure what happened, but our littlest chick, Firefly, is not doing well. I first noticed this morning when I came in to change the chicks’ water. I easily counted nine chicks. Where was the other one? The chicks were all crowding into one corner and I moved them away from it with my hand. At the bottom of the pile of chicks was Firefly. They had been standing on her. (See her down low in the right back corner? I didn’t yet realize she was being trodden on when I took this photo.)

Her left leg appears to be injured, but I can see no obvious wound. She can’t put any weight on it, and seems to have only enough strength to kind of flop about a little. We have isolated her in a small box with her own food and water. I’ve watched her move about her box, and eat and drink many times today. She is sleeping often. I’m more concerned that she’s getting adequate water than I am about her eating. With other animals, eating is a sign of not yet being finished, but dehydration kills quickly.

She appears to be more comfortable now, but who knows? She is an 18- or 19-day-old chicken. And we are inexperienced at raising chicks. While she has slept today,  she has at times appeared dead, with limbs akimbo and neck splayed out on the litter. (But even healthy chicks sometimes look dead when they’re sleeping.) At least we know that if she is indeed on her way out of this world, she can pass in peace; she won’t be tormented by her flock. Chickens aren’t at all compassionate toward other chickens with weakness or injury.

I wonder what happened to her. I keep trying to figure out how she was hurt. I wish she weren’t Lucas’s favorite. I don’t really expect to find her still living in the morning.