Crafternoon

"Mom. Do you know what I like about hot glue guns?"

"Ummm...everything?"

"Yes, but I really like that you don't have to wait for the glue to dry."

I've been hearing for the last few years from Wyatt's teachers that children have a seasonal rhythm. In the spring, the children begin to "breathe out." They need more space to move around, group projects become more challenging, and they are less able to focus. The exhale continues through the wildness of summer, and in the fall, the children begin to "breathe in." Their energy shifts, they're ready to begin to work together, and they can maintain more focus. Until last week, this mystical explanation struck me as a post-hoc rationalization for "Why We Have Summer Vacation."

But last week, I began to question my skepticism of the "seasonal childhood rhythm" when, to my surprise, every afternoon, Wyatt requested we do increasingly complicated crafts, and then he actually worked on them for hours. His attention and intensity were astonishing. We started saying we were having "Crafternoons."

Fortunately, we had a focus for our Crafternoons. Before leaving on vacation, Wyatt received a box from his craft pal, Benjamin. Benjamin had made him a money shark (for all his toy sale earnings), a ladybug, and a gnome. Everyone I care to know would have been thrilled to receive such perfectly thoughtful gifts.

Wyatt began planning presents for Benjamin while we were in Massachusetts. He basically got my mother's permission to raid her stash of googly eyes and fancy pipe cleaners, and then he stowed them in my suitcase. He started brainstorming what he could make out of egg cartons.

Our first Crafternoon involved making and photographing sparkly caterpillars. It didn't take long for me to just hand over the (low-temperature) glue gun and figure Wyatt would learn soon enough how to keep his fingers from getting burned. I assisted as needed, but he needed very little help.

Our second Crafternoon involved sewing a gnome, in the style of the gnome he had made at school last year. If you cut a piece of felt in the shape of a simple house, you can make two overcast stitch edges and one running stitch neck. A little stuffing, cinch of the neck, and a trimming of felt to make a face space, and you're there.

Our third Crafternoon involved a ceramics painting playdate at a local studio, more sparkly caterpillars (because he wanted one for himself), and putting Benjamin's presents in the mail.

During the fourth and fifth Crafternoons, Wyatt learned to knit: "In through the front door, running 'round the back, peeping through the window, and off jumps Jack!" Thanks to Maja for that rhyme.

Today, we were out of egg cartons. Even worse, we didn't have much time for Crafternoon. All Wyatt wanted to do was squish into some clay on the counter while I made dinner. But killjoy that I am, preferring my dinner silt-free, I redirected him to the glue gun. He happily busied himself bedazzling some felt...to make another gnome.

It's probably a good thing that school starts Wednesday.

Planet Earth Is Blue

We don't listen to broadcast radio when Wyatt is around because we think he deserves to feel like the world is good and that that he is safe. With the news, either we don't know what will be reported, or we can guess what will be reported, and we don't want him to hear it. Take this weekend for example. How could we explain to our five-year old the terror attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando? Or references to the shooting in San Bernardino? Or Sandy Hook Elementary? Or any of the other recent mass shootings? I can already imagine Wyatt's questions. So we just won't go there, yet. But it won't be long before Marc and I will have to try to explain what is going on with people, guns, and some people with guns in our country.

I wonder whether there will be a meaningful shift in United States gun policy anytime soon. I haven't given up hope (or voting, or contacting my representatives), but if 20 dead six to seven-year old children didn't spur a change in policy, I don't know what will. Because I'm not sure what more I can do to support legislative changes, I've also been thinking about how to raise a person who can help defuse hatred, stop violence, and end oppression. So far, I have identified three qualities to model for Wyatt, with the hope he'll take them on and make the world a better place. They are: Civic responsibility, empathy, and gratitude.

Civic responsibility is a relatively easy one compared to the other two. For example, we already take Wyatt with us to vote in every election, we participate in volunteer activities in our community, and we do our best otherwise to be "responsible citizens." As he gets older, we may get more involved in organizations and issues, but I feel like we're off to a good start.

Empathy is more challenging for me than civic responsibility, and it is the key to bridging differences and connecting with others. I've been working on my empathy skills through parenting classes. I've also become aware of the lenses through which I see the world, and I continually work to adjust them. I used to read a lot to educate myself and gain new perspectives, but lately, I've moved to reaching out in real life to new friends and...listening to podcasts. My favorites in this realm are:  Show About Race, Embedded, Code Switch, 99% Invisible, 2 Dope Queens, and More Perfect.

Gratitude is just as important as empathy. In addition to improving one's outlook on life, I believe it's an antidote to entitlement. I think gratitude starts with politeness and thank-you notes— taking a moment to appreciate a kindness—and it grows from there. I've been cultivating a gratitude practice over the past year, and while I'm much less consistent than I once was with my 5-Minute Journal, I now regularly notice more things throughout the day that I am grateful for. Marc and I also tried to start a gratitude practice as part of our family dinner time: "Three Things I Liked About Today." But Wyatt quickly decided he didn't want to play, and let me tell you, there's very little joy that springs from a practice that is punctuated by whining and pouting, so we have put that particular activity on hold for now.

There are so many ways to feel and show gratitude, and it benefits us to find them. Sometimes it's as simple as giving someone a smile or a wave, and sometimes it can be a larger effort. Wyatt's and my most recent project was for our friend who's a checker at the grocery store. According to both of them, they are "best friends." They connected upon first meeting, and now I text her when we're coming to the store so we are sure to see her while we are there. She has been so generous—I can't even begin to explain all she has given us, in addition to the new Spanish vocabulary words she teaches us each week. Unfortunately, she has been having trouble with her feet recently, and foot trouble is no good for someone who is on her feet all day. Wyatt and I concluded that while we couldn't do anything to heal her feet, we could make her some slippers to warm them and to show her how much we appreciate her.

Wyatt selected the yarn for the slippers himself. I would have never, ever chosen the colors, but I should have. The contrast worked beautifully. But then I did what a knitter should never, ever do: skip the gauge swatch. In my defense, I had made slippers from this pattern once before in what I thought was a comparable yarn. But the yarn wasn't comparable after all. The first slipper turned out about twice as big as it should have been. It was loose, floppy and unwearable. But rather than ripping it out, I decided we should try to save it through wet felting. Wyatt and I had hand-felted soap before, and after I did a little research, I felt like a (controlled) felting job might give us a winning slipper. Fortunately, the felting worked, and the resulting slipper was far better than the plain-old knitted version. So I moved on to knitting the next slipper, and then Wyatt and I felted that one, too.

We took a bucket of hot water, a bucket of cold water, dish soap, some gloves, and a couple of old bath towels. The slipper went into the hot water, we rubbed it with soap in the direction we wanted the slipper to shrink, rinsed out the soap, and then plunged the slipper into cold water. We repeated this process for about 40 minutes, until we had a slipper that was just the right size.*

Once the slippers were dry, we wrapped them in Christmas paper and a big bow (at Wyatt's insistence), and we hand-delivered them to our friend at her check stand. She later texted me a photo showing that they fit. Not bad, right?

Obviously, handmade slippers won't change gun policy or bridge the wide political rifts in our country. But the slippers represent care, and caring matters today as much as it ever has. While the news flies fast and furious and the hatred so prevalent in this election cycle swirls, I plan to turn up my empathy and gratitude, and to exercise my vote in November. With any luck, some of these practices will rub off on my kid.

*Thanks to Wyatt's birthday twin, Addie, and her parents for this amazing Bowie Tee. It's his favorite.

Adventures in Natural Egg Dyeing

"Mom. My teacher told me you can make egg dye with all kinds of things. Like beets, parsley and red cabbage."

"Yes! We did that the first year I dyed eggs with you. Do you remember?"

"No."

"You were pretty little. We can do that again this year if you want. It would be fun. We'd make the dyes, arrange the eggs in the dye, and they could sit overnight in the egg dye."

"That's okay. I'm good. Can you just buy the package instead?"

This conversation happened on Sunday morning, even before any of us had really committed to getting out of our pajamas. My answer was, of course, a resounding, "YES." I could absolutely buy the package of dye, if only to celebrate the moment when my child basically requested that for once, we not do something the hard way.

Yellow onion skin produced the orange, beets made magenta, and blueberries the variegated purple. On the end, one faintly green egg was from parsley, and the pale yellowish one was from cumin.

We dyed eggs every year when I was a kid, with double doses of PAAS tablets, probably so the color would get darker faster. I hardly ever dyed Easter eggs as an adult, and for Wyatt's first two Easters, I didn't dye any eggs as a parent, either. Our first attempt at egg dyeing was in 2013. And when I say "our" I mean "my." That year, I decided I would attempt using natural dyes, and I Googled my way to whatever "recipes" I could find. Because the instructions I found were so imprecise and apparently untested (otherwise known as "terrible recipes" or "ideas! for egg dyeing! with stuff you can find in your house!"), the process was time-consuming, a little smelly (don't try to dye with cumin) and somewhat aggravating.

Accordingly, in 2014, I bought a natural dye kit so I could compare our results with my experience the previous year, and so that Wyatt could participate without having to wait hours to get colored eggs. The results were fast—we got color within minutes rather than hours. And the colors were bright, too. It was a fun project to do with a toddler. So I bought the same kit in 2015, and it looks like we'll be revisiting it again this year.

Before this morning's egg dyeing conversation, I had toyed with trying the homemade natural dyes again. Since February, I have been mostly remembering to keep the skins from yellow onions I use for cooking. Of the dyestuffs we tried in 2013, onion skins, beets, and frozen blueberries were our winners. (The losers were cumin, parsley and red wine.) And while it sounds like we're committed to going the kit route again this year, I read a great tutorial just this morning on homemade natural egg dyes. Unlike all the "recipes" I read in 2013, this author notes that the eggs have to sit in the color at least overnight to gain a deep hue on their shells. And she used hibiscus powder! If I run across any of that, I think we may try at least hibiscus-dyed eggs along with our kit.

The explanation in the tutorial of how to make flower silhouette prints on the eggs is also excellent. If you've already got pressed, dried flowers for this project, more power to you. We don't. We did, however, use a a similar approach last year, after gathering fresh leaves from our garden, and we got some pretty prints on our eggs. Flat leaf parlsey worked well. Place the leaves on the egg before dyeing and secure with pantyhose tied around the egg, then add the egg-in-hosiery to the dye. Remove the egg when you reach your desired color, and then carefully remove the pantyhose and leaves. You can also make fun designs by using different thicknesses of rubber bands, wrapped different ways around the eggs before dyeing.

Last year, our first challenge for egg dyeing was finding pasture-raised eggs that were white. We never found any, and I ended up buying pasture-raised duck eggs instead. Looking at the photos from the tutorial, though, I wonder if we might do fine with eggs that aren't white. Eggshell color may be our experiment for this year.

The other important question with egg dyeing is of course, "How long do you boil your eggs?" It's a critical question to answer if you like to eat the eggs you color. For the last few years, we have been making Easter Egg Salad with our colored eggs.

I love to eat eggs all kinds of ways, and I like them cooked perfectly. Overcooked hard boiled eggs don't cut it for me. In fact, I think being able to make great hard boiled eggs is an excellent reason to own a circulator. But if you, like me, don't have a circulator, here is a recipe that will get you very close to perfection.

Do you have egg dyeing tips, tricks or stories? Please share them in the comments.

Instagram Saved Our Cheese

"Mom! I LOVE that red thread! And the little face smiling sideways. Good job."

The Internet was so good to me last week. As you know, we are in the midst of spring cleaning at our house. We've got until Easter to get it done, and to be honest, the verve we initially brought to this project is basically gone. Don't get me wrong—we haven't given up on the plan, but we also don't make progress every day anymore. This scenario is obviously not ideal, but why be dogmatic about the "every day" part of it if we're still moving forward? Rationalizations aside, we actually made huge progress this weekend when we bundled and donated six big bags of items.

The process of clearing out closets brings me face to face with items we love but haven't worn because they need help in some way. I found a favorite jacket of mine (with a stuck zipper), a couple of sweaters (that have been worn thin in spots), a skirt (that's still about six inches too long for me), and a few of Wyatt's pants that have holes in the knees. My stack of mending is pretty tall right now, and my skills are not yet equal to the task. Imagine my delight to find that in 2014, The Guardian published some incredibly helpful "How-To's" in a series called "How to Mend." I've pinned them all so I can consult them as needed.

As you can see from the photo at the top of this post, my "visible mending" techniques can use some improvement, but I'm happy to be figuring it out as I go along. You can see my first attempt at knee patches on the left. The jeans were hand-me-downs to Wyatt, and there was nothing to lose by practicing on them with my sewing machine. He wears the jeans all the time now. On the right, you can see the intentionally crooked smiley face I embroidered by hand this weekend to mend two holes (one of which is now an eye, and the other of which is the nose). My next job is to find a replacement zipper and figure out how to use the zipper foot on my sewing machine. Thank goodness for YouTube tutorials.

And oh-my-stars, thank goodness for Instagram. Last Thursday, I posted a photo of the Valençay cheeses that have been aging in our refrigerator. I had noticed that they were developing weird little spots of mold, and I thought I might have to compost them. When I posted the photo, I used a bunch of hashtags and tagged a couple of experts, including Louella Hill, whose cheesemaking book I own, to see what they thought was going on.

Louella Hill responded! My cheeses are fine, she said. I could remove the mold, or not. The wild blue "invaders" weren't really a problem, and the cheeses should just keep aging for another week or maybe three. Louella even answered my follow-up question about where to look for more information about cheese mold (Ben Wolfe and Rachel Dutton, in case you're curious, and haven't yet followed me on Instagram). I removed the mold spots (they slipped right off the ash, interestingly enough) and things now look to be back to normal in the cave.

I keep remembering how much more difficult it used to be, when we weren't so well-connected, to try something new and troubleshoot when things went wrong. It's kind of unbelievable that we can now get practically real-time, helpful feedback from people we don't know in real life. I realize there are huge downsides to social media. And I know that some people write horrible things to others online thanks to the anonymity the Internet affords. But when Instagram saves our cheese, and the Internet rescues my favorite jacket, it's only right to notice the good that's out there.

Craft Pals

Christmas is over. Soon we will put away for another year the tree and all its ornaments, as well as the lights that we have draped around various windows in our house. And soon, Wyatt may stop asking every day whether any boxes arrived for him.

Getting letters, cards, and fun surprises in the mail is so thrilling. The holidays brought us a fat stack of beautiful cards, many parcels, and fortunately, extra exuberance from our mail carrier, Roberto. One of the most special gifts that arrived at our house this year was for Wyatt, from his friend, Benjamin, who just turned six. Benjamin made Wyatt a needle-felted toadstool:

This most marvelous creation was the latest in an ongoing informal craft exchange that sprang up over the last year or so. The boys have never met, but Benjamin's mother, Sarah, and I became friends through a book club I joined when I moved to San Francisco. Sarah and her husband moved back to South Carolina before Benjamin was born, but Sarah and I have stayed in touch through social media and email. Sarah's cooking, canning, knitting, writing, and her joy and frustration in wrangling life's chaos inspire me.

The exchange began with homemade marshmallows. In October 2014, Wyatt and I decided to make marshmallows. I posted about it online, as one does, and Sarah commented that she wished she had some herself, but having made them in the past, she was in no hurry to experience the process (the smell, really) again any time soon. Our marshmallows turned out well, and because marshmallows are best shared, we sent Sarah and Benjamin a bag of them.

A few weeks later, Benjamin sent Wyatt a tin of homemade pumpkin pie spice. It smelled heavenly. We used it to make pumpkin custard. The tin has long been empty, and the label is a little stained with vanilla extract. But we keep the tin because it was such a fun gift, it smells good, and we might even refill it one day.

Once the spice was gone, we thought and thought about what we could make for Benjamin. Wyatt decided on hand-rolled beeswax candles. Wyatt rolled, I mailed, and Benjamin loved. The day Benjamin received the box, Sarah sent us a photograph of him enjoying his dinner by candelight. 

Some time went by, and then one day there was a surprise parcel for Wyatt. Benjamin had made him a garland of felted balls. Benjamin explained in the accompanying card that the balls reminded him of planets. Wyatt was delighted and immediately asked if he could hang the garland in his room. It hung on his toddler bed for awhile, and when he moved to his big bed, we hung it over the window. The garland arrived wrapped securely (and untangled!) around a toilet paper tube that Benjamin had painted. Wyatt kept that tube, too.

This summer, we made some felted soap for Benjamin.

We went to Rainbow Grocery and bought some soap that smells like creamsicles taste, and we set about giving that soap a woolen jacket.

Wyatt wrapped the soap in wool roving, and we knotted the roving-wrapped bar in a nylon stocking. He rubbed the bar of soap in as hot water as he could stand, and then dipped it in cold water, and then went back to rubbing it in hot water, then cold water, then back to hot. The bubbles grew thicker and thicker as we worked on the soap for about ten minutes. The wool shrank and felted to the shape of the soap. We let the soap dry so we could pack it for mailing. (Wyatt made a bar of soap for himself, too, because why not?) Wyatt thought Benjamin's soap (the blue one) looked like a map of England, so we mentioned that in the card.

Around the same time as we felted the soap, I finished knitting a lace scarf from teal alpaca yarn. I sent the scarf to Sarah. She's worthy of hand-knit gifts any day, but at that time she was extra deserving, having recently given birth to Benjamin's little brother and having just gone back to school for a master's degree. The scarf seemed like something she would enjoy when the weather grew colder.

A couple of weeks ago, Benjamin sent Wyatt the excellent toadstool and a handmade autumn-themed card. Sarah told me she painted the tree and Benjamin added the leaves with a q-tip.

The timing of this gift couldn't have been better. Just two days before the gift arrived, Wyatt had been cross-examining me about why, OH WHY! could he not do needle felting? I have no idea why needle felting occurred to him. It's not like I had ever done needle felting myself. We didn't even have any tools for it. I told him he could do it when he was older because of the needles. He might stab himself, and stabbed, bleeding fingers would feel very bad. He was unmoved by my explanation. When he learned that Benjamin had made the toadstool himself, he immediately confronted me with the reason why it was totally appropriate for him to start needle felting: "Benjamin does it!" After marveling at the toadstool for an entire afternoon, Wyatt carefully re-wrapped it in its golden tissue paper and placed it in his basket, saving it for when we got our Christmas tree. We shopped for needle felting tools the next day.

Once we had our tools, and then our replacement tools because some needles broke, we made Benjamin a needle felted ornament. Wyatt was very clear that it needed to be made of hearts.

He was careful to have me write in the accompanying card that Benjamin could put the ornament on his Christmas tree, but he didn't have to. We also sent some caramel popcorn clusters because the only thing nicer than sending Sarah the recipe was to send the popcorn itself.

There are so many reasons why I love this little exchange of treats and crafts, not the least of which is the way it sprang up so spontaneously. There has never been any pressure to send anything, never mind by any particular date. It's just really fun. We've also made some pretty great items with our boys. I am mystified why crafts are so often considered and almost always marketed as an activity for girls. After all, who among us wouldn't enjoy a good roving-stabbing from time to time? Seeing Sarah and Benjamin's creativity has inspired us to try new crafts. And the joy and appreciation that Wyatt has in receiving something that his friend has made for him, a couple of thousand miles away, with his very own hands, is truly wonderful.