this creative place

 Things are happening around here. And readers, we are not moving far away, we just need to move closer in to our workplaces. Our house will be listed very soon and it feels exciting!

I thought I would show you the fruits of my recent organizing. Imagine this: a clean and neat craft cupboard where I can find everything! "Oh, you need a thank-you note? Second shelf down on the left." "Valentine supplies? Bottom shelf." I got rid of a LOT: a big garbage bag went out to the dump, yard sale pile, and then lots of little bits to special people here and there.

Knitting project in the works for a lot of babies waiting to be born... Booties meant to stay on little feet that are shaped like little Volkswagon buses, because that is the shape of a nice, chubby baby foot. And if you are a regular reader, I am sure you are familiar with what that looks like. I found the pattern on Ravelry, but I had to make a lot of changes to it, so I will rewrite it here when I have finished.

Sylvan's shelter diorama is finished! He picked the Mongolian yurt. We felted using wet and dry techniques for the yurt and the sheep. And for the base, we got a lovely piece of birch plywood that he made a watercolor wash on, then added colored pencil to indicate grass. He made the figure out of beeswax, and we added a fireplace inside (with a fire made of colored wool), and a little sleeping bed. Do you like the tuft of smoke?

 You can just see the fireplace in the picture below:

And the beautiful colored pencil geometric construction that Jonas made this week. His shading is really excellent and I love his color choices.

 After the internal cleansing we did, I have so many new ideas about food and my body. I learned a lot about what my body likes, needs, and doesn't like. I learned that I need a big lunchtime salad and that I feel a lot lighter without gluten products. So I have been experimenting with some different ways of baking. This recipe has been adapted from the beYOUtiful cookbook, La Tartine Gourmand  by Beatrice Peltre. You should get your hands on it, it is so worth a look.

Banana Chocolate Chunk Muffins---Vegan and Gluten Free

This will make one dozen muffins and a small loaf of bread

4 T. flax meal soaked in 8 T. water for a few minutes

4 ripe bananas

2/3 c. canola or vegetable oil

½ c. applesauce, unsweetened

2/3 c. maple syrup

1 ½ c. nut meal (almond or pecan)

1 ½ c. brown rice or millet flour

¾ t. baking soda

1 ½. t. baking powder

salt

1 t. cinnamon

chocolate chunks (good quality chocolate, semi or bittersweet), however much you think is enough

Chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Oil pans, or use muffin cups

Put your bananas in a standing mixer and mash them. Soak your flax meal for a few minutes.

Mix up your dry ingredients in a separate bowl: flour, meal, baking powder and soda, salt, cinnamon.

To the mashed bananas, add soaked flax, oil, applesauce, and syrup, and mix well.

Now add dry into wet in a couple of additions. Then fold in chocolate chunks and nuts, if you are using them.

Scoop batter into muffin cups filling up to about ¾ full. Put the rest into a greased loaf pan.  Bake at 350 for 20 or so minutes. When they start to smell good is the time to test them.

inspiration returns

OK, enough whining. Let's get on with it, despite a new head cold, strep throat, and snow this week. There is so much talent around me, it's staggering.

The mom who, having finally discerned that the reason her daughter hated wearing hats was because of the preferred hairdo of said daughter (2 long ponytails, perched high, then braided), decided to knit a two-ponytail hat. (And it's not underpants, GooneyBird.) Adorable and innovative.

~another friend loves me by mail~

And frankly, there's some real fashion-forward/fashion-freedom happening in the 6th grade, my son's class at school. I love that it seems to stem not from boy-craziness or "I'm so cool," but in a true spirit of Makership and Art.

We have the delightful innovator who has been wearing her family's wool, appliqued Christmas Tree Skirt (you know that skirt that fits round the base of the tree?), every year since first grade as a festive winter assembly skirt. You can imagine that it was ballroom length when this started, and it has slowly gotten shorter as she has lengthened!

I spotted a very sweet Leprechaun hat perched atop her head, just recently in honor of St. Patrick's day. Fashioned out of felt and about the size of a cupcake, it appeared to be fastened to a headband.

In the same 6th grade, there is also E. You must remember her from previous posts. We like to swap things we Make. E. is a sewist, crafter, and Maker of things. She makes bags out of repurposed plastic shopping bags, fused together, then sewn. She might get a whim to make pants one day...and just make them, and wear them the next day to school. Or she creates shorts, using an old tee shirt. A Christmas skirt from some crazy South American woven fabric she found. She totally pulled it off: the sewing and the wearing.

The point is, E. has no fear. She has an idea. She cuts up the fabric and then sews it up. Simple. And OK, so the hems are not usually finished. And sure, the pants ended up with a split seam. Disasters are part of it, part of learning, part of creation. Is this a person who asks herself if she has a knitwear needle? Or who stops in her tracks because the thread isn't an exact match? No fear of failure.

People try their whole lives to unlearn the fear of failure in Making. They spend $100,000 at art school to learn to innovate. Or thousands of dollars in therapy to unlearn that "can't" is a total mind construct. I do hope this gal ends up at art school someday. And someday, she'll finish a hem, I just know it. She recently used a pattern!

remember this sweet new friend?

made for me by E., from a pattern!

You already know Denyse Schmidt, fabric designer, quilt designer, and inspired Maker. She gives workshops ("Improvisational Patchwork"), too---she was even at Alewives. Her quilts and designs have this quality of asymmetry and freedom. Some of the blocks I have seen, like this one, have been tickling the back of my mind. When I got her book though, it was all so measured out and instructions and.... It stopped me. It didn't match the idea I had of what the process and spirit of those quilt blocks were.

This weekend I had the itch of Making. I dumped out all of my scraps and started piles of scrap friends. Pretty soon, I was thinking of Denyse Schmidt and E. My inner rule-follower wanted to call those gals at Alewives right up and ask them for tips. Instead, I pretended I was E. I chose the Scrap Friends pile that excited me most in that moment, cut up a rectangle and found a strip to sew along side it.

The rule-follower said: "Wait! Don't you want to save your longest pieces for the outside of the square??? Be sensible!" No thanks, I want this fabric, and I want it right now.

I measured nothing. I set aside the cutters and the rulers and used scissors. I just had fun playing with fabric and sewing. Following the fabrics and who they wanted to rub shoulders with. At the end of it, I trimmed it down to about a 15" square. Next time, I'll try being even more radical with my cuts and slants.

"Is it a pillow? What's it going to be?" They asked me.

"Don't know. Don't really care. I think it looks pretty good tacked up on my inspiration board for the moment."

::Look at this:: More inspiration from someone who's under 18.

::Reading this:: Because my very liberal liberal arts education denied me the pleasure of reading classics.

::Watching this:: When I was so sick that I couldn't do anything, this was the perfect escape. The costumes! The BBC! Swoonful.

::Listening to:: Manu Chao station on Pandora.

and the craft was all around

birthday table setting

In all rooms, in all media, in all corners, at all times of day, some secret, some not secret, with friends, alone, with Christmas music or hiphop, while reading, at night, morning, and afternoon.
Crafts with scissors and glue.

Or just scissors.

Fabric, of course. These are going to a sweet family of three: hankies for the whole family!

So I was invited to participate in a cookie swap, a first for me. I blithely said sure, thinking I'd make a batch of cookies and bring them to swap a few with the ladies involved. Actually what I had happened upon was a cookie swap not intended for the faint of heart.

pj pants for my dear boys

shhh! secret!

(Did I mention that the instigator might have a future in roller derby? Yup, she's hardcore as well as a fellow fan of hedgehogenalia and cute little toadstools.)

So we were to make two dozen cookies for each of the participants (6 total, including ourselves), which friends, let me spare you the math, is 144 cookies total. (In laywoman's terms that translates to a metric $%^@-ton of cookies.) The idea is that you can make up little boxes for teachers and friends, etc. which on paper is totally, absolutely great and logical.

I broke it down into a half-day of dough making and a half-day of baking, followed by an hour of icing. Which worked out fine, as I had chosen a recipe for sliced cookies. But now I am faced with transport: iced cookies do not like to be squished. I have every available cookie sheet and one pizza pan covered in iced lemon sugar cookies.

And then there was my own dear sweet boy who turned twelve this week. The morning of his birthday was quite the same as the morning of his very first: rosy dawn and snowy. He was wide-eyed and curious about the world then as now, though over the years we have gotten to know his unique twinkle, humor, generosity, and grace. He loved the tricky candles that kept relighting until we were gagging from the smoke!