Strengthening Cultural Connections: A Maine-New Zealand Collaboration

Can you tell I have been doing lots of academic reading with long titles and colons in the middle?

Well, it's happened again. My little ATCs have gone on a long journey from Maine to NZ (for the price of $3.50, it was a super cheap flight), crossing a continent and an ocean and landing finally on a beautiful green island in the talented hands of Mary Anna of Make It Smirk! We agreed this would be a 2hr for 2 hr swap: I would crank out as many cards as I could in 2 hours (plus a few that I had made before and seemed ready to go on a trip), and she in turn would make something for me in 2 hours.

Here's my new Quilting Tiki:
A tiki, I was informed by the handy wikipedia article Mary Anna included, is a kind of totem of the Maori culture, usually a neck pendant made of greenstone. This is a Quilting Tiki, "an old-fashioned kind of guy who does his by hand," according to the notes from Mary Anna, and he "also appears to have a problem with his foot, but...there is a leech on hand to help him out." (If you are not getting the leech reference, see this post.) She had only safety-pinned the foot with leech on it, in case I got tired of the reference, but I went ahead right away and tacked it down!
Can you see that he has a sewing needle in hand? He also comes equipped with a zipper, so that he can consume my quilting scraps and become fat. Although right now, there are not so many scraps being produced around here, more like piles of paper waste (from the volumes and pages I am reading for school) and somehow I just don't think that will look as nice. Thank you, Mary Anna!

Here are a few ATCs that Mary Anna has now:
It still seems funny to me that someone I have never met can tickle my funnybone so often through her blog posts. Knowing she has a quirky sense of humor inspired the above cards.

And one of my favorites from the Fish Cookery Book:
Be sure to admire Mary Anna's newly organized and spruced-up sewing room. I am totally envious and her photos are beautiful.

I love swapping, even small swaps. If you want to join the fun, leave a comment and let me know you're up for it.

Housecleaning: 5 Minute Method

Pirate band-aids, on a dining room chair.

I used to have a Thursday morning date with my house, for cleaning. Maybe an hour or so spent straightening, dusting, vacuuming, bathrooms, etc. Just maintenance, general upkeep stuff. Now, in my extra Busy Life, I have 5 minutes about every day or so. The whole house is never clean at once this way, but it's how it is right now. Maybe one room gets vacuumed. One room dusted. Random items scooped up from odd places and put rightfully away. I could spend time nagging or wondering why the 6 year-old has a trail of detritus in his wake, or why no one else seems to pick up socks, but I'd rather just do it.

This morning was a scooping and putting away day.

3 socks, none matched, in three different rooms.
(One doesn't even belong to us.)

2 ATC books to be taken to their owner.
(The bottom one is a Swap Book that
ACTUALLY circulates from the Rockport Library.
You can swap out a card and replace it with your own!
How cool is it to have a book that will never ever be the same twice?)
Sylvan's discarded pants,
about three feet from the dirty clothes hamper.
Sylvan's discarded pajamas,
in the dining room where he got dressed this morning.
Some kind of tiny vehicle with big wheels.
Monster truck, maybe? Also Sylvan's.
Cowboy boots, willy-nilly in the kitchen. Sylvan's.
Two piles of my school readings consolidated into one!

I also put two games away, and threw away a gum wrapper. Are you wondering where all of Jonas's stuff is? Well, it seems in this 5 minutes it was mostly put away (socks and games were his). Actually, he prefers only to change his clothes when hassled into doing it, so not much laundry from him. The man of the house helps on the weekends, to his credit, and I am so grateful that Jonas likes to clean the toilet (with gloves on, who could blame him). Sylvan even changes the toilet paper roll! Now these are enlightened men! I am very lucky.

Art at the Library 2009

Jonas's dollhouse birthday cake (it's SO SMALL)

This month we will be kicking off the next segment of art fun at our own Rockport Public Library, a mini-course on artist journals. Many of the techniques we'll play with are also ATC-friendly, they are multi-layered, textured wonders, with as much or little text as the artist needs/wants. We will have four sessions, the third Saturday afternoon of the month, from March to June, from 2:30-4. Space is limited, so call the library to sign up (236-3642). Robinsunne and I are collaborating on the teaching part of it and she has already made a yummy sample book, with some pages of a few of the techniques we'll be trying. Here's one of her delightful pages:
That crazy texture you see is this neat spreadable modeling paste stuff, available locally at Rockport Blueprint, and it is a bit like spackle (for your walls) but it doesn't crack when dry, it sort of turns out feeling like thick, bendy wallpaper.
This is what we did for our Snowy Day themed preschool story-time at the library this morning, when I was standing in for Miss Jane. We read snow books, we talked about snow and what we do in it. The parents enjoyed it less that the kids, perhaps. But the snowman craft was a hit, proving that you can't go wrong with googly eyes with this crowd.
And I had to show you the tiny purse for our friend the birthday girl, filled with tiny packages of Sculpey dollhouse food (baguette, pretzels, cookies, cinnamon loaf, a fancy sandwich), for Sylvan's special friend Sophia. And he enclosed a photo of himself. (I think he is hoping for one from her in return.) That lovely cake you saw above was Jonas's gift to her, because even though he doesn't know her like Sylvan does, we all feel like we know her well because Sylvan speaks of her so often. Sylvan reported that the party was a hit and the birthday girl wore a very fancy dress!

Getting Our Craft On

Thanks to Skip the Chips I have embraced yet another Grandma craft, yes, now I can say I have made a rolled-hem hankie by hand just like my Aunt Stella used to. She posted a link to a lovely tutorial from Purl SOHO, if you want to get your Grandma Craft on.
It's so fussy and super detail oriented that I have not made it start-to-finish through one hankie...I usually take a few stitches, then move on to something else. As it happens there are a couple birthday girls who needed presents. Would they have chosen this pattern of fabric? Probably not, but I figured why NOT have something bright and happy to blow your nose on?
You may remember the fabric from the Tiny Purse project that started this whole sewing thing.
One of Sylvan's very dear friends, Miss S. is turning 4 on Tuesday! As I am pretty sure she is not reading this blog, I feel confident to show you the interior of her birthday card. She will be getting a special gift of the very last Tiny Purse in stock and a doll.
This is Sylvan displaying his 3rd place ribbon that he got from his VERY FIRST skiing race, in icy and fast conditions, at yesterday's Family Fun Race hosted by the Ragged Mountain Ski and Snowboard Club! He was so excited to be wearing that bib, displaying his race number (#57). The ribbon has his NAME on it, on the back---he wants me to tell you---and they announced his NAME and NUMBER and TIME on the loudspeaker. Although there was initially some totally slapstick humor style misses on the mountain...Sylvan had no helmet, Dad had the helmet on the mountain somewhere, Sylvan waited for him, then decided to go up and find him, Dad came down (repeat this a few times)...all ended well and they finally reunited.
And I had to repeat last week's cinnamon rolls. This time I made extra for our friend Ed who plows our driveway at no charge, a significant gift, as plow prices are steep and this winter is such a doozy. They are saying 8-12" of snow for tomorrow?!?! Come on. So when I get the chance, I like to make Ed some goodies. I froze his rolls unbaked so that he could have the aromatherapy for his house also.

6th file, 6th photo

I'm so glad it wasn't some dud picture that I shouldn't have even uploaded! But it's this one, from November of 2005, a Halloween shot of my knight (almost seven) and my puppy dog (three). I was probably grumping and bossing them about, hustling them into the photo before we had to race off to school's All Hallow's Eve Walk, which starts promptly and which Dear Husband is always heavily involved with, so he is not at home stuffing people into costumes, making sure there is something healthy in their bellies before all that sugar, locating the special item that is essential for the costume but somehow misplaced, and fixing the face paint that smudged.

That is probably more disclosure than you were looking for. I could have just said it was a peaceful moment before our lovely school ritual of a dusky walk in the enchanted forest.

I was tagged by Skip the Chips for the 6th of the 6th, and I think, now that I am doing it that APA tagged me a LONG time ago to do something similar, and there it is, I forgot until just now. So the way it works is you locate your 6th folder of photos and post the 6th picture you find in there, tag 6 bloggers, and then link back to this post here, where I am tagging you:

Make It Smirk, Totally Smitten Mama, Miss Smith at Home, Pink Crow Stirrings, Philigry, and Tollipop.

Not a Small Amount of Snow

Those of you with children in school may appreciate the fact that a snow day yesterday, after the week of Anti-Vacation that I had, was not very welcome. We had a great day anyway, just not the day that I thought I might have had. We got dumped upon, old-school style with SO much heavy snow. This was the snow, in the amounts, from my childhood, the kind of snow that is almost as tall as you are when you are small. And the piles from the plow are as tall as an adult. Really, it was kind of magical. I showed you one picture yesterday, but here are some more.

The view out of my kitchen window

Sad old chicken fence, laden with snow.

Small red hat bobbing above the whiteness.

This chicken is to show you just how high the snow is,
like mid-thigh on a medium-sized woman.

After doing bits and pieces of my schoolwork in those rare peaceful moments when the children were playing harmoniously (they HAVE been together almost constantly for over a week), and after working up a sweat shoveling some more, I decided to pack it in and make cinnamon rolls. The recipe can be found here, and I made it pretty much verbatim except with a little whole wheat flour for the illusion of better healthiness. Partly I wanted the aromatherapy, because there is a weird smell in our dining room that may or may not be a dead mouse under the house. The inspiration for the rolls may have come from Tollipop.

They tasted pretty amazing.

And today, everyone was back where we all were supposed to be, namely work and school. And as a bonus, we are healthy, well, and a two-parent household again.

Calvin Coolidge and his unusual boat name

Remember my new favorite old book that I have been using in some recent ATCs? They come from this wonderful treasure trove, The American Heritage Book of Fish Cookery (1980), full of black and white photos of fisherpeople with excellent captions and weird-sounding recipes. I see there's a used one on Amazon for 59 cents, if you fall in love with it from this post. How can I cut up a book, you ask? Well, if no one has checked it out from the library in 8 years, why not turn it into something people WILL look at?

For example, that lady above in her apron is brandishing a fish that is in the process of eating another fish. The caption calls her Granny Turner, of Bear Island, Ontario.
And here is our 30th president (1926-1929), Calvin Coolidge, described as "one of our most enthusiastic presidential anglers" by this source:
And here's a close-up of the name of his jaunty vessel:
(For those of you reading from outside the US, those two words have Other Connotations here. Did they have the same connotations back then? That would be interesting.)

And check out these hotties, described as "...the lean, hard men who put out after bluefish were notorious for being just as strong, wild and quick tempered as the fish they sought..." Yum.
We also have these lovely ladies in their hats, preparing a fish breakfast on the West Branch of the Penobscot, here in Maine in 1885:
Finally, here is Edward Llewellen with his 425 pound giant sea bass, caught off of Catalina Island in California in 1903:
Here is what it's like today, with snow blanketing our window screens:
The shoveling down to the chicken house was heavy and wet and up to Jonas's waist, he reports.