Later this month we’ll be attending Love Auction #9 at the Sacramento Waldorf School, the annual fundraiser auction. I’m finishing my handcrafted items to donate by Friday. Here’s a peek:

A birthday bunting (or playroom/bedroom decoration) made from three recycled, thrifted, 100% cotton shirts that my friend, Anne, found and gave to me. I love the variegated fabric; it lends a definite Waldorf, watercolory feel to the bunting. The bunting is three yards long. (I’ve never cut up a garment before to salvage the fabric for another purpose. It felt very strange, but oddly satisfying.)

A birthday crown (or dress-up crown) for a boy or a girl (or a king or queen or wizard or astronomer) made from 70% wool felt and sewed by hand. I started this on the plane to New Jersey a week ago. The nifty thread-cutting pendant my mom let me borrow was very useful! Sewing on the plane was a soothing way to pass some time. I still have to put the elastic on the back of the crown to finish it off.

Last year, my donation was needle-felted gnomes and a fairy and a book of Tiptoes Lightly stories. No idea how to assign a value to these items for the school to use as a starting bid. Suggestions?

This is something I’ve wanted to do since I was about four years old, sitting on the floor of Dotty’s home and playing with her “Sleeping Beauty”-style spinning wheel.

I took a spinning class this weekend from my new friends at Syrendell. (Lucky for me they are local!) Jennifer Tan and her daughter, Joey, taught us how to use the drop spindle and let us try spinning on a wheel, too. The drop spindle is fairly simple in concept and it didn’t take too long to catch on. My first attempt is on the far right of the photo below. I started with a brown wool roving, then spun some white Merino wool with tencil, then tried a muted green/blue wool. It’s all on one skein. It’s lumpy and wonky and imperfect and I love it!

We got to create batts of prepared wool fiber on a drum carder, which felt surprisingly like painting with wool and created such a gorgeous, fluffy, ready-to-spin batt. I loved laying out the colors and wondering how they might combine in the spun yarn.

I bought a spindle for myself and took home the two batts of fiber I had prepared, one green and one rainbow. On Saturday afternoon, I spun the green into yarn and Lucas helped me. He was really curious and I think we can do this together. On Sunday, I spun the rainbow fiber and it was wonderful! It has lumps and places that are over- or underspun. Making perfectly even, consistent yarn is clearly not something one learns in a day!

Now I have something else to do with all that wool roving I’ve bought over the years for needle-felting.

Yesterday at about 6:30 Pacific time: I’m finally one of those people on the airplane using a laptop. I’m maybe halfway through my flight now. The flight was delayed two hours and I didn’t leave SF airport until 3:45. My day has been fine, but a little long. It seems like more of this time should be productive, but there is a lot of waiting to move and when I tried to get Internet service in the airport, both Mozilla Firefox and IE said they couldn’t find the network connection. I could see the free public network, connect to it, but couldn’t surf. Frustrating. My boss has been worrying about my traveling today. The taxi company that’s supposed to pick me up at the airport knows my flight has been delayed.

I’m already missing my family. Yes, I’m having a small adventure. Yes, I got to see snow-covered Rockies out my window. That’s wonderful and I wish I was better at enjoying my time alone. It is a strange unease, though. Kind of like maybe I forgot to bring along two arms and a leg on this trip. There won’t be much time for fun or sightseeing, though. I’m working almost all the hours I’m in New Jersey.

I packed a tiny sewing project with me this time. A few pieces of felt, about six pins, needle and embroidery floss. And Mom lent me the niftiest little device—a little thread cutter with no visible (forbidden) blade. It’s a small brass pendant hanging around my neck. Pull a thread through any of the slots around the edge of the pendant and it goes in past the blade and cuts, just like magic! I am wishing I had had more time at home to cut out all the pieces of felt I need because I’ve already sewn the bulk of what I did bring and now I’ve run out of project. The whole thing was well conceived except for its duration. I didn’t bring along my knitting.

Today 8:30 pm Eastern time: I’m exhausted! After I’m done with writing this I’m calling home and then going to sleep. I didn’t get to my hotel until 1:45 am today. Got 4.5 hours of sleep and then hit the ground running for 8 hours of meeting today, plus a dinner. It all went well and I think this could be an awesome project. I’m kind of wishing that in this room full of PhDs and EDDs that I had more than a BA under my belt. This is textbook publishing, so that stuff matters—kind of. Anyway, everyone is warm and friendly and very knowledgeable.

Tomorrow we meet from 8:30 am to 2:30 pm, then head to the airport. I’ll arrive in Sacramento sometime near midnight—if everything goes perfectly and my two flights aren’t delayed. Rain tomorrow here, but snow in Chicago. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I’ve only seen a teeny-tiny slice of New Jersey, but what I’ve seen is very pretty. Bare, deciduous woods with snow on the ground, punctuated by gorgeous, big homes. No fences, not much yard, just woods.  I’m truly grateful to be here and to be doing this. I just miss my family and my husband’s strong arms around me. Tomorrow I will rock it, and then I will make a long trek home.

Oh what a time we had!

We decided to crack open the wonderful cheesemaking kit that our dear friends Tox and Shannon brought us. This past Saturday we made a special trek to Whole Foods for pasturized (not ultra pasturized) whole milk. We probably can get it elsewhere, but weren’t certain where, and we were quite sure we could find what we needed there. Whole Foods also has raw milk, which is supposed to be best for cheese, but as it was really pricey, we decided not to use raw milk on the first try. (You know, in case the magic didn’t work.)

Lucas dissolved the citric acid in chlorine-free water.

The kit came with everything we needed except the milk and the chlorine-free water.

Here’s our milk, frothy and cooking.

We slowly heated the milk to 90° F, added the rennet, and waited for it to coagulate the milk solids.

Then we tested to see if it had done it’s job. Yep, the whey was clearish and the milk solids (curds) were congealed and looked like custard.

I think Asher is praying to the goddess of milk, Hathor, here. Daddy carefully cut the curds.

The curds were returned to the heat and heated to 110° F. We had to make a water bath (185° F) and dip our colander full of mozzarella curds into the hot water. This made them elastic and stretchable!

Then we were able to   s  t  r  e  t  c  h our mozzarella (we ate some at this point). Stretching elongates the proteins (but I don’t know what that means).

We formed it into our heart shape. It cooled in its ice bath for 10 minutes and voilà, MOZZARELLA CHEESE!

Kitchen science is awesome. Now here’s the crazy part: If we had been better prepared and more experienced, we could have taken the whey, the byproduct of the mozzarella, and make … more cheese from it. The whey must be used within three hours though, and we weren’t prepared to start a new cheesemaking project then. It was time to eat!

Thanks, Tox and Shannon!

Lucas has been enjoying playing with Fuse Beads lately. You arrange them standing on end in patterns and then fuse them together with a clothes iron.

Lucas quickly tired of following the suggested patterns and created a whole army of little guys. They each have a name, though I can’t tell you what the names are; I could not pronounce them even if I remembered them.

Here are a few familiar characters: a fused R2D2 and a Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader ready to fuse. I’d better get on that!

For this one, he used the fuse beads in a different way. Waldorf kids are cool.

Sometime last year I found a project on the Great and Glorious Internet for making crayon heart Valentines and I saved it up for months. I really looked forward to actually doing this with Lucas! Last year, our Valentines for Lucas’s classmates were wonderful and handmade. They also took days and days of concentrated effort, which was (in hindsight) more than Lucas really was ready for at 6.5 years old. I wanted to do something easier this year, and this project turned out to be perfect for three reasons: 1) we used up years’ worth of crayon stubs; 2) they truly are beautiful and useful treasures; and 3) I invested in a groovy Wilton mini heart muffin pan that I can use for all kinds of goodies, not just crayons!

Before. We stripped the crayon stubs of their paper and *gasp* broke crayons into smaller pieces on purpose.

We filled up my groovy new silicone baking pan (safe up to 500° F), set it atop another cookie sheet covered with a sheet of aluminum foil (just in case), and popped it in the oven for 20 minutes at 250° F. We found the crayons (of mixed brands and qualities) melted at different rates. It took 20 minutes for them all to melt. We removed the pan and let the melted hearts cool. When they were completely cool, they easily popped out of the silicone shapes. You can actually turn the heart inside out and the crayon comes out perfect and unmarred.

After. Here are the first two batches, which we actually finished in January. Aren’t they lovely? We made 36 of these gorgeous multicolored crayon hearts—more than a class set.

We found the pigment sank to the bottom (the top in this picture). The paraffin wax of the crayons was less dense than the pigment and it floated to the top (or bottom in the photo). They have an interesting stripy effect when viewed from the side, no? The paraffin side of our hearts doesn’t color all that well, but we take comfort in knowing it will be useful for magical watercolor paintings. A child can draw with the clearish wax, then watercolor over the wax drawing for a batik result. Anyway, I’m really curious whether we’d get a better result that colors on both sides if we used higher quality crayons.

Here are Lucas’s finished Valentines 2010, wrapped, signed, and ready to go for Friday’s exchange at school. I hope the children like them. I think they will be a hit!

I made another thing—one that you can hold in your hand. Before, it wasn’t there. Then I made it and now it is! This making stuff is quite miraculous to me still.

Ever since I read Amanda Soule’s book The Creative Family, I had it stuck in my head that I wanted to make Asher a birthday crown. I tried talking myself out of doing it a dozen times—after all, Asher’s really picky about what he’ll wear on his body and we have had more than enough fights tantrums disagreements over clothing during the past six months. Honestly, I thought he would never wear a birthday crown, and I try hard not to set myself up for disappointments of the kind that might come with hand-sewing a special gift for the birthday boy to wear and then finding that he won’t wear it.

But, two days before Asher’s birthday, I still couldn’t stop thinking about making him a crown. And so I started. I had the felt at home already.

I drew several designs before settling on flying birds. Then I noodled around with the birds till I liked their arrangement. I dragged the kids to the fabric store to find the right kind of stars and some pretty thread.

And I worked diligently with my rainbow stitches. And Lucas helped with some, but not many because Mama is a control freak.

I used silver thread to make the stars sparkle. And the Gingher embroidery scissors my boys bought me for Christmas sure came in handy!

I made the inside lining green like the leaves, hand-sewed the two pieces together, and attached the elastic to the back. And I finished in time.

And Asher wore it! I’m so proud of this! This photo is one I took the day after his birthday party because I wasn’t satisfied with my shots from the party—he just wouldn’t sit still that day! Doesn’t he look regal?

(Lucas wants a crown for his birthday, too.)

I guess now I pack the crown away to use again on his next birthday, but I kind of hate to do that. I think I have to for it to be a special, though. What would you do?

Such a big day we had last Sunday. Our littlest boy turned 3 years old!

There was a birthday crown, which — surprise! surprise! — he actually wore!

And there were grandpas and grandmas all over the place! Even RoRo and Nana. And special friends and Auntie Kellie came too.

And balloons arrived, which sent the Birthday Boy over the MOON with excitement and inspired many crazy antics!

We had decorated with the birthday bunting and this repurposed Christmas wreath and purple and yellow primroses in pots, and everything looked so festive.

We ate croissant sandwiches and salad and potatoes and strawberries for lunch.

Asher got many lovely presents, including toys like this helicopter and a special doctor’s kit, and big-boy underpants with Thomas the Train on them …

and delightful new books (and we read every one of them three times that day)!

Asher got his wish for a purple hippo chocolate birthday cake. (And mommy got to reuse a specialty cake pan bought last year for Lucas’s birthday. Win win!)

Our guests fussed over the Birthday Boy, who was happy and acting out and a trifle overwhelmed when everyone left—but not so worn out that he couldn’t horse around with his brother for a while, read all his new books, run with the balloons, play doctor, and go for a walk through the neighborhood before he collapsed in a sleepy pile on my bed with me. We both napped that day and it was the best birthday present I could have asked for.

It was a happy birthday!

Last night we created the smallest, cutest Candlemas, or Imbolc,  ceremony in our home. (I’m sort of better at my practice in my mind than in practice, so to speak.) But this year we pulled it off. We rolled four simple beeswax candles and talked about it being the midpoint between the winter solstice, or beginning of winter, and the spring equinox, or end of winter/beginning of spring.

I love that the wintertime is punctuated by festivals of warmth and light, and that candles still have a beautiful place in even our modern homes. And damn, that beeswax smells so good! Children are usually far removed from the fire that has traditionally kept us warm, kept human beings safe and together, and helped us build and maintain our human family. That’s too bad. We try to light a candle every evening for our bedtime Candle Prayer. It’s good to be reminded of the magic of a lighted candle in the dark.

This is an exciting moment for me because from here on, I can look forward to spring. [Incidentally, this day (February 2) was my official due date for Asher’s birth three years ago. I sort of expected to have an Imbolc baby—it seemed to follow naturally since I already had a Beltane baby. Even though I didn’t have an Imbolc baby, the association is still there.]

Oh, and Happy Birthday to Lance, wherever he is.

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.