Yep. I made another one—my second knitted cat. This one is going to live elsewhere as soon as she’s old enough.

Last Friday night I had a feverish dream inspired by a blog I just discovered: Twig and Toadstool (http://twigandtoadstool.blogspot.com/), where they spent a lot of time preparing for and celebrating the Summer Solstice. I was feverish because I was ill with a virus, but the inspiration worked its way into my dreams all night long. All night I wove a sun; each time I woke and fell asleep again, I slipped right back into the weaving. I could feel the yarn in my fingers, the sticks, the wool. And so, when I awoke, I knew we had to MAKE this thing I had dreamed about.

I gathered some sticks from the local schoolyard and supplies from home, and did some shopping on Monday. I fastened the center together by wrapping it with floral wire. I also wired the edges in an effort to keep the sticks from shifting during the weaving. I think it worked well.

And then before and after our Solstice dinner outdoors, Lucas and I worked on our giant sunburst, which is a lot like a Ojo de Dios (God’s eye), but has eight rays and not four.

Lucas was a big help with weaving the center, especially. Isn’t it beautiful?

We took a break to eat my yummy corn salad, spinach salad, and Daddy’s amazing tri tip.

Sunshiny squashes, organic tomatoes, and iced tea graced our table. Must be summer!

Here comes the SUN! The art project took all evening, but we finished before the sun went down. Lucas held it up high in the sky so I could photograph it. Then we hung our sunburst on our house, where we can see it from the patio. We spend a lot of time there when it’s warm, and our boring beige paint looks better with some colorful art.

We used $1 ribbon spools in red and orange, a bit of mama’s thick cotton rug yarn, raffia, yellow fabric scraps (with rocket ship pattern that you can’t see) tied into a long strip, and acrylic yarns in yellows, gold, and orange. I wish I had had an excess of yellow or gold wool roving on hand to use in our sunburst, but I didn’t. We also had on hand several colors of nylon twine (including safety orange) but elected not to use them.

Honeydew melon with mint and lemon sorbet served as a delicious dessert. I don’t know how that watermelon ball sneaked in there. Chef Daddy deserves the credit, I presume. He’s brilliant, as always.

Asher didn’t care for the art project much, but enjoyed snipping bits and pieces of yarn with scissors, and running around with sticks (guns/weapons/swords/knives. Can’t stop him despite my pacifist leanings!) Besides preparing dinner, Ian made a finger-woven chain to add to our sunburst, but for a while, it was “Action Inja” Asher’s headband.

So, welcome Summer! May it be full of frolicking, fun, fiestas, and good fortune. May it be full of right action, deep breathing, generosity, and abundance. May it be patient, low-stress, and l a z y -good. Blessed Be.

This knitted kitty I made is far simpler than the knitted donkey I made a couple of weeks ago. Seriously, it’s all rectangles and all garter stitch. Easy, even for me.

My cat is about 2 inches high and 3 inches long. The pattern I used is from Toymaking with Children by Freya Jaffke, but all you have to do to make this little cat is to knit a rectangle that’s almost a square (for the body). Then cast on half as many stitches as you used for the body to make a head, which you will knit until it is a long rectangle (almost three times as long as wide). Last, cast on less than half as many stitches as you used to make the head, to make a tail. Knit about the same number of rows as you knit for the head rectangle. Then sew up the tail into a long tube. If your cat will be small like mine, then no stuffing of the tail will be necessary. If your cat will be bigger, you might have to stuff the tail with wool roving. Fold your head piece in half, sew up three sides, stuff it with wool, and sew up the final side. You may wish to make a few stitches to accentuate the ears. For the body, pinch a corner of your rectangle and sew it into a cone (leg), then move to the next corner and do the same thing. Repeat for all four corners to make for legs. Stuff all of the legs and body and sew up the body at the cat’s tummy. Now attach head and tail in a way that looks appropriately catlike. Voilà! A kitty!

I have this stash of fun fabric for making Asher pants, clam diggers, and shorts and today I finally had all the pieces in the same location and a little time to get started. I haven’t sewed clothing like this since last summer, so I wasn’t entirely sure I’d remember what to do, but it all worked out pretty well. We’ll call these a “proof of concept.” I’m still using the pattern that my mother bought in 2008, I just cut them a trifle bigger. Now that I’ve got them all together, I can see that they’re pretty baggy and could be skinnier in the legs. But baggy clothing is cooler on hot days, no? I may choose to hem them up another inch….

And because these clam diggers are roomy this year, they will probably fit him again next summer, too, only they will be a little shorter. (Ahser is still able to wear the pants and shorts mom and I made last summer.) These are made from “Vehicles Allover” fabric from “Oh Boy!” by David Walker for Free Spirit Westminster Fibers. Fun!

The knitted donkey work in progress that I wrote about last week is finished. Here he is!

We decided our newest mom-made toy is named Sturdylegs the Donkey. Other name contenders—all great suggestions from Lucas—were Nightsky, Faithful, and Chimney. His names were so perfect and creative, it makes me want to knit three more donkeys just to use them all. (I doubt any family of four needs four knitted donkeys, however.)

Sturdylegs is all one piece, knitted from wool yarn and stuffed with wool roving. His mane and tail tuft is black acrylic because that’s what I had. The pattern is from Toymaking with Children by Freya Jaffke.

I’ve started knitting a cat, which is far easier than the donkey.  😉

Why a donkey? I don’t actually know, except that it’s small and doesn’t matter. I think that appealed to me. And this pattern is more challenging that the lamb and duck that I’ve knitted in the past. I’d been feeling a lack of handwork even though I’m discouraged because the sweater I was knitting for Asher would no longer fit him if I actually finished it—yes, it takes me THAT long! (Oh, and he hates sweaters.)

Anyway, this donkey has been a good way to practice (remember) how to increase and decrease stitches, and to read a pattern. The trickiest part was increasing in the center of the rows to produce the neck of the animal. There was MATH and everything! It was a great boon to have my friend Dakini_Grl (an accomplished knitter) over for dinner the night I first attempted that! She’s the BEST. It’s actually looking like a donkey now.

I can see why fabric collecting is addicting, especially to someone like me who is totally invigorated by color. This is most of the stash I’ve gathered little by little over the last year. Via the Glorious Internet, I’ve come to find that I actually have some favorite designers. Wacky!

I’m hoping to make some groovy new shorts and pants for Asher. The ones that I and my mother made in past years were such a success and fun to make. I bought these fabrics with Asher in mind. It’s more challenging that I realized at first to find fabrics suitable for boys. I now realize I have way more fabric for sewing than time for sewing.

Fortunately, some shorts and pants we made last summer look like they’re going to fit another season. The pants are now clam diggers, of course, because Asher has grown so much taller.

I’m kind of waiting to see if this summer Lucas will grab for the shorts grandma sewed for him in the past, or if he’ll gravitate to the more conventional, mass-produced shorts instead. He is probably just on the cusp of not wanting to wear sewn garments anymore. Although, if Lucas wants some for himself, I’ll probably have him pick out the fabric, and most likely it will be much more subdued than these.

I’d been saving up this hammered botanicals project ever since I saw it on a blog I read, called Dim Sum, Bagels, and Crawfish, last March. (How could I not read it, with a marvelous name like that?) Oh, here it is! I was afraid I might not be able to find it. (The Internet is AWESOME!) Anyway, the Dim Sum author, Lucia, found it in a terrific book called Nature’s Art Box, which is on my wish list.

Anyway, I thought that these smashed flower prints would be a perfect project for my boisterous, bashing boys. I learned a lot during this project, not the lease of which was it’s best to follow directions. Alas, I’m the dive-in-and-figure-it-out sort of person.

We used:

• white cotton fabric
• scissors
• pinking shears
• hammer
• scotch tape
• flower cuttings from our garden
• phone book
• watercolor paper
• watercolor paints and paintbrush
• dollar store certificate frames, 8.5 x 11 size

Lucas enthusiastically helped with the hammering, but I couldn’t get Asher to join in. When dealing with a 3-year-old, timing is everything! And the time I had set aside to do this project was All Wrong. Asher wouldn’t even come outside to see what we were up to.

We found that the roses and pansies gave brilliant colors. The mallow flowers and Spanish lavender were subtler. Creating the watercolored mats fell to me. (Are they really mats if the fabric print goes on top of them?) I didn’t want to try to cut the mats precisely; laying the fabric on top of the watercolor paper seemed just fine.

Originally we made six of these. Then I read online that a mixture of alum and water would help keep the colors fresh. Fortunately, our friends had some alum that we could borrow. Unfortunately, three unexpected results happened when I lightly sprayed the fabric prints with the solution.

1. The color from the smashed roses bled like crazy, running down the hanging fabric (which you can see in the photo below in the center)
2. The color from the dark purple pansies bled outward (I learned not to spray as much solution, and still the capillary action of the water caused the dye to spread)
3. Unbeknownst to me, the fabric on two of the prints had actually taken up a tiny amount of newsprint from the phone book pages when we were hammering the cuttings. It was invisible before I sprayed the prints. Afterward, ack! Some of the newsprint words appeared in our lovely botanical prints. (You can see a big black W and other type on the right-hand print in the photo above)

None of those three surprises made me happy. And if I were to do this project again, I’m not sure if I’ll bother with spraying them with alum. Perhaps the colors from the flowers and stems will oxidize or fade over time. I don’t know. Also, I’ll make sure to put white paper between my fabric and anything with newsprint on it.

When all was said (cussed) and done, and after two pieces of glass from our frames were broken (more cussing after the children were asleep), we ended up with three pretty prints, ready to give out to grandmothers on Mother’s Day.

The grandmothers seemed pleased. 😉

I took some photos of Asher’s recent artwork. I’m sure some would say that only a mother could love this, but I don’t care. I admire the energy of his art, the thoroughness and intensity it reveals. Asher seems to like to mix media and will work on the same piece for a long time, sometimes leaving it several times and then coming back to it later. He is strongly left handed. He uses the whole paper. I don’t know if this means anything at all about his self-expression or his personality, but I can tell you that Lucas’s art at this age was quite different—somehow less committed, less bold, and more delicate. Somehow, not quite so firmly on the earth. Or maybe that’s just my imagination …

One of our favorite children’s books is Sun Bread, written and illustrated by Elisa Kleven. I’ve gushed about it (and other books of hers) before, and have given Sun Bread to many children over the years. Lucas still loves it. Asher loves it, and hears it both at home and at preschool. Yesterday morning he brought it to me and asked me to read the book to him. Of course I did.

When we got to the end, he asked if we could make sun bread. Um … of course we can. So, after school we started baking.

Asher looked at the book while Lucas and I mixed eggs and sugar, flour and yeast. I love Kleven’s illustrations!

Lucas was a wonderful assistant, which is good because I’m not much of a cook these days. He stuck by me during the whole project, mixing ingredients, kneading the dough, shaping our sun … and eating it, too.

They both enjoyed this part! Why don’t we do this more often?

Our super cute sun bread. Here it needs one more rise, then a short time in the oven. Since we started at 4 p.m., our bread wasn’t ready until after dinner and bath time, with the two, hour-long rising periods. But that was just fine, since a generous drizzle of local honey made it a yummy dessert. I think it was in the oven about two minutes too long, which gave it a darker crust than I would have liked to see. But the boys enjoyed it and it smelled heavenly! In fact, it was kind of torture for me and Ian, since we aren’t eating bread right now.

“Bread so brilliant, bright, and sunny, Summer seemed to fill their tummies. Bread so fluffy and so fine, They felt themselves begin to shine …”