Crafting With the Urchins

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Party Like Picasso

Published March 30, 2009 Cooking , Crafting With the Urchins , In the Kitchen 10 Comments

It was tonsillitis. Sore throat, high fever, crummy tonsillitis. I think it’s been banished by the mighty z-pack but I’m not claiming total victory just yet. I noticed while working out this morning that my throat is still feeling a bit swollen. Luckily, I had recuperated enough by Saturday to celebrate an upcoming sixth birthday. Our little artist and a whole bunch of her friends gathered at our house to create some art and sing happy birthday. We set up three stations — the kids are so familiar with the station concept from school it was a good way to keep them organized — for the art projects and divided the kids into three groups. We really wanted the kids to use real art materials so at station number one they used watercolor crayons — less messy than watercolor paints and just as fun — to paint on canvas.

This was the painting Katie created. The watercolor crayons are great, the kids draw with them like crayons and then use a wet paint brush to move the color around on the paper. I so wish I took a photo of all the different paintings drying together. At station number two the kids made a sculpture. We used crayola model magic clay for this because it is lightweight, not messy, and only needs to air dry. I did not want to be worrying about baking clay in the oven, especially because station number three was perler beads and that was crazy enough with Tristan repeatedly trying to use the iron.

For the food we had sliders and pigs-in-a-blanket with french fries. We also served a variety of fruits — organized by color on a painter’s palette — with fruit dip. Papa made the cupcakes and we placed them on another palette — I just picked them up at our local art supply store — by color. Today on the way home from kindergarten a mom stopped me and said her son told her it was the best girl birthday party he had ever been to — success!

Take a Hike

Published February 23, 2009 Crafting With the Urchins , Through The Lens 4 Comments

My in-laws were here last week and we miss them already — not just because they kept my kitchen spotless. On President’s Day we all went out and took a hike to look for animal tracks. Tristan wore his explorer pack and Katie brought her field guides. The only tracks we found belonged to horses and canines but we still had a fabulous time looking for signs of life in the cold quiet woods.

Eggsperimenting

Published January 26, 2009 Crafted by Friends , Crafting With the Urchins , In the Mailbox 3 Comments

Those scribblings up there are notes and observations by two budding scientists. Stefani recently published the first installment of her incredible project, The Book of Days and this egg experiment was one of the activities. Stef and her boys have obviously done a lot of work to prepare this incredible resource for families that want to, in her words, cherish their days. The February edition was released today and looks to be even better than January. It seems hard to imagine that’s possible since Katie’s response to the first edition was that’s the coolest thing ever! You should check it out, you may find you think the same thing.

More Mitts

Published January 13, 2009 Crafting With the Urchins , Fiber Crafts , Gifts , In the Mailbox , Knitting 12 Comments

I realized I never told you guys about some holiday knitting that happened here in the urchin house. Some of you may remember that in 2007 Katie and I dyed some yarn and then I knit scarves from that yarn for her teachers. I was prepared to do the same thing this year but Katie decided that instead of scarves she wanted me to make them mitts.

These are just knit in rib with a thumb gusset — I can email you the particulars if you need them — so they were very quick. The yarn is Knit Picks Bare – bulky weight again and we used easter egg dye to dye it. If you have not dyed yarn with your urchins you should really give it a try. Using food-safe easter egg dye or koolaid means that the dyes are urchin-safe too. Do wear gloves though when you are putting your hands in the dyes. Food safe or not it’s very acidic.

There is a bit of green yarn left, which is good because there is a new aspiring knitter in our house. She really wants to knit but is frustrated she doesn’t just know how to do it perfectly to start with. Can you tell she’s a first born? Getting her to practice anything is a bit of a struggle and knitting is supposed to be fun so I’m not pushing it. Nana and Opa are coming for a visit next month and I think practicing with Nana will hold more appeal. Nana and Opa gave her the needles, yarn, and Lucinda Guy’s book Kids Learn to Knit. Opa made the needles — thanks to Grace for the inspiration for this gift — using a dowel and Katie loves the little faces at the ends. I do too as a matter of fact. With some more practice maybe next year she can do the dyeing and the knitting too.

Have You Sent Your Hats?

Published December 9, 2008 Crafting With the Urchins , Gifts , In the Mailbox , Inspiring 10 Comments

You’ve still got a tiny bit of time to send your hats off to Amanda. I’m pretty sure she’ll be accepting them through the end of the week. I’m sending a bunch but I know that any you can send would be appreciated. The reason I’m sending so many is because my Daisy Girl Scout troop made some at our meeting last Friday.

The girls brought me old t-shirts before Thanksgiving. I cut them up and made them into hats with Amanda’s pattern, setting the white ones aside. Then at our meeting I told the girls a bit about Haiti and how most people don’t have running water. They looked at me like I was crazy. Thanks to flickr I could show them a few photos of Haitian children — even some carrying water — they were still not convinced. Then we tie-dyed the white hats. I am no expert tie-dyer, that’s for sure, but I think they turned out well and the girls were amazed at the hats after they were un-tied. Even more amazing though was the empathy I saw as these five and six year old girls realized that there are those in the world who need our help, and even more importantly, that we can help them, even if our hands are small.

Luggage Tags

Published November 13, 2008 Crafting With the Urchins , Fiber Crafts , Sewing 8 Comments
Tags: luggagetags

Does someone in your house travel frequently? Someone in our house does. Actually, he doesn’t travel nearly as much as he used to which seemed like it was constant. I found myself on repeat saying I’m so glad you’re enjoying São Paulo/Mexico City/Paris/Barcelona/Bonn/London/Seoul/Tokyo but I’m 5 months pregnant and Katie has bronchitis so I don’t really want to hear about it. Okay, well it wasn’t always that bad but I was afraid that I would go into labor and he wouldn’t be here. Anyway, now he’s on an airplane far less and often he’s traveling domestically so that means the trips are shorter too.

So back at Father’s Day — yes I said Father’s Day and I’m not blogging about it until now, I told you I had some stuff to catch up on — the kids gave him a new piece of luggage but that seemed like a little bit boring. Plus, we’ve had a hand theme going on the last few years. If you travel at all you know that most of the luggage out there is black and your suitcase can be easily confused with someone else’s. Enter the urchin hand luggage tags. These were about the easiest thing ever to make and so cute.

I traced their hand onto a piece of freezer paper and cut it out. Then I traced the shape onto a piece of timtex. Next, I cut a small red heart from wool felt and machine appliquéd it to a piece of denim. Line up your freezer paper hand on the denim so the heart is under the palm of the hand and iron it to the right side right over the heart. Now you’re going to make a sandwich on your worktable like this: denim (wrongside up) + timtex + denim w/heart (rightside up) and freezer paper. You want the freezer paper and timtex to line up as best you can. Then you just sew around the freezer paper as close as you can to the edge of the timtex. After you’ve sewn around you can cut out the hand shape from the denim leaving a small seam allowance – the edges will fray with use. I used my grommet punch thingy to add a grommet and then threaded a piece of ribbon through to attach it to the luggage. A piece of leather lace would probably be sturdier. Cute and easy… perfect.

Mini Book Swap

Published August 8, 2008 Crafting With the Urchins , In the Mailbox , Swaps 3 Comments

When we got our partner for the mini book swap I knew just what book we should send. The problem was we only had one copy from Papa’s childhood and there was no way we were sending that one. Funny, I didn’t think of that when I signed up for the swap. So our swapping was slightly delayed while we acquired another copy of the book, The Beaver Pond — weekly reader edition from the 70s — by Alvin Tresselt.

This, to me, is a perfect children’s book. It’s a story about the natural world — one of the most fascinating topics for my urchins — and the story is brought to life with beautiful illustrations, by Roger Duvoisin. Tresselt’s prose has just enough poetry, if you know what I mean, to keep the story magical. Tresselt and Duvoisin must have made a good team since they published a number of books together, including the 1948 Caldecott medal winner — I need to get my hands on a copy of that one.

...the mother deer brought their young ones to drink...

We also have a copy of Tresselt’s telling of the The Mitten, also a weekly reader edition — which may be an easier title to find a copy of — and also a great story. And speaking of the weekly reader children’s book club, I wonder if you can find a list of all the books sent over the years? My feeble web searching skills haven’t turned up much. In return for The Beaver Pond we received another delightful book, The Purple Coat by Amy Hest. We’ve only read it twice so far but it is at the top of the bedtime story pile. So, what did you guys send/receive as part of the mini book swap?

Grammy’s 75th Birthday Quilt

Published July 27, 2008 Crafting With the Urchins , Fiber Crafts , Gifts , In the Mailbox , Sewing 30 Comments
Tags: grammyquilt

My Grammy was born in 1933, the youngest in a family of six children. She married my grandfather in 1951 and within five years had three young girls. About a decade later she had one more daughter and then a divorce. She raised my mom and my aunts with very few resources in a time when divorce was still stigmatized. She became a grandmother when she was 41 and before long I was calling her Grammy.

Yesterday we celebrated her 75th birthday with all the food, laughter, and love that a big family gathering brings. She was surrounded by all of her daughters and almost all of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren as she opened her gifts.

The gift from her grandchildren and great-grandchildren was a quilt with each of our handprints on it. I used four colors — pink and orange for the girls, blue and green for the boys — and had everyone paint their hand and then press it onto white Kona cotton. After each handprint dried and was set with the iron I trimmed the fabric into a wonky square. I then used two inch strips from Amy Butler’s midwest modern line to frame each of the handprints log-cabin style. Next each frame was surrounded by more white kona cotton and squared up to 14 inches.

I arranged the squares with five filler log cabins and one plain white square to make a 5 x 5 quilt top that measured about 68″ x 68″. The back is from Full Moon Forest by Tula Pink. The strip down the middle has 19 strips — one for each of Grammy’s 19 grandchildren and great-grandchildren — and four bigger rectangles — one for each daughter. My sentimental — or semi-mental, as Amanda Jean would say — side really came through in this project.

And speaking of Amanda Jean, I knew I could trust her with quilting such a special project for me, and fast — you may remember my nephew was born less than two weeks ago. She stippled the quilt around all of the handprints and left an empty space in the middle for the only handprint I was missing…. Grammy’s.

Happy 75th birthday Grammy!

Blueberries

Published June 26, 2008 Crafting With the Urchins 9 Comments

Animal Summer

Published May 29, 2008 Crafting With the Urchins 8 Comments

We have a very low-key summer planned and I am so looking forward to it. Papa thinks that by July I’ll be pulling my hair out — and he might be right — but we have not signed up for anything (except Vacation Bible School). No camps, no dance, no running to and fro. I am so looking forward to it.

But to keep me from pulling my hair out I’ve decided that we’re going to talk about/learn about animals while we’re soaking up the sun. I have no intention for this to become like a curriculum or anything particularly structured. I’m just using it as something we can use to focus our attention especially on those days when we all need to focus on something besides each other.

In June we’ll be thinking and talking about animals that live on farms. Next week we’ll start with animals we use for food. In July we’re planning to learn about animals that live in the ocean. Molly, we’re thinking of an aquarium trip with you sometime. Then in August we’re going to focus on animals that we find at the zoo.

I chose animals because both of my urchins love animals and while Katie is interested in knowing the difference between an ape and a monkey, Tristan is interested in pretending to be a monkey and hopefully I should be able to accommodate both. I’ve outlined our plan below with June in greater detail since it starts next week — which isn’t that crazy? — and I need to be a little bit organized. Feel free to borrow the idea if you want. We can all learn about animals together.

On The Farm
June 1 – 7 :: Animals for Food

Cows
Chickens
Pigs
Ducks
Geese

June 8 – 14 :: Animals for Work

Horses
Oxen

June 15 – 21 :: Animals for Clothes

Sheep
Goats
Llamas/Alpacas

June 22 – 28 :: Animals for Pets

Dogs
Cats

In the Ocean
June 29 – July 5 :: Fish
July 6 – 12 :: Whales
July 13 – 19 :: Sharks
July 20 – 26 :: Walruses, Seals and Sealions
July 27 – August 2 :: Birds

Around the World
August 3 – 9 :: Primates
August 10 – 16 :: Big Cats
August 17 – 23 :: Pachyderms
August 24 – 30 :: Bears

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