knits for birthday

just after christmas, sienna and i had a chat about projects that we loose motivation for and that get pushed aside, left waiting for someone to get the urge to finish them off. admittedly, we both have a bit of this kind of thing going on. it is one of my quests right now to tackle the unfinished projects that are cluttering our lives.

one request sienna often has is for her dolls to be mended. i suggested i focus on doctoring her dolls for her birthday (feb 6) gift and she jumped at the idea! not only was i pleased that she wasn't insistent that she get new presents, but this would also give me a chance to check something off that ever-growing to do list. (for the record, i also needle felted a special animal for her and she received a book.)
four dolls received the first round of treatment. i have much more work to do, but she was pleased with my progress thus far. first up is her most beloved companion (next to her brother), *birthday*. birthday was custom made by fabs of *fig & me*. she came to live with sienna on her sixth birthday. she is so loved here and a regular part of our family.
fabs has such skilled hands and pours so much love into her creations. birthday really did not need any mending from me. despite the fact that sienna has taken her on countless adventures all over the place in the past year, including camping at music festivals, much frolicking in the woods, numerous picnics in the yard, and hundreds of trips in the car, she had only one popped stitch on her shoulder and a slightly dirty nose to show for it.
so birthday got a new outfit instead. i bookmarked shelley's doll sweater pattern when it first appeared in living crafts. i told myself that i could not knit sweaters yet though. then i just decided to tackle it....and i did it! it was so much fun i am kind of surprised that i didn't cast on for another one right away!
the buttons were jasper's contribution. i intended for us to make our own from fallen branches in our yard. however we found these little wooden disks in our playroom and went with those instead. he sanded them, drilled the holes with his hand drill, and gave them a watercolor wash before rubbing them with beeswax polish. he was so proud when sienna saw them!
i based the hat and the leg warmers on patterns i found online for american girl dolls and adapted them to my needs. i should add some ties on the hat to help hold it on all that gorgeous hair!
the tube dress was an impromptu fix. i had spent my allotted time for this project on knitting the rest of her attire, but she needed something to complete her outfit. i had just made sienna a skirt out of this amazingly soft sweater and cut the sleeve of it for birthday. it slipped right on!
eventually i will share pics of the other dolls as well as various other completed crafty adventures. however i am having trouble getting decent pictures and making the time to edit them and fight with blogger to get a post out.

wishing you a beautiful and inspired weekend!

crow hoodie

first, a huge and heartfelt thank you to all of the warm and encouraging sentiments you have shared. each one brings a tear to my eye and a ray of hope to my heart. i am sure that i will reread them many times in days to come when i am feeling low and needing a lift. i appreciate each one of you!

we have a friend, todd crowe, also known as *mr crowe* or *the crowe*, that jazzy is rather fond of. he is also quite fond of the color black....he has claimed it as his favorite color for some time now. last fall, when i suggested he be a bird for halloween, he chose a crow (do peek if you haven't seen it!) right away. this involved a black hooded sweatshirt that had a hideous (to me) graphic on the front, which was fine because it was all covered up with feather boas.

after halloween, when the costume was deconstructed, i had the idea to put a crow on it for him as he continued to call it his crow hoodie. it was a bit too small though so i didn't fully commit to it, but i had a vision that would not get out of my head until i brought it to life. when my mom showed up with this gray hoodie recently, i got to work right away.

here are the pieces i started with. printouts of a crow in two sizes and plastic mesh.

i feel very blessed to be friends with the uber-talented ms jean from the artful parent. this project was inspired by two different techniques that jean has taught me, freezer paper stenciling and doily printing. in this case, i printed with the plastic mesh covering our box of clementines.

after the stenciling and printing were finished, before assembling.

i love the way the mesh printed!! i want to use it to do more prints. my mind is actually far too full of ideas for fabric printing now. ;)
i chose to do a rough, fringed edge on my patch giving it a bit of a punk rock feel. maybe it disguises the fact that i actually don't know much about how to operate my sewing machine properly?
this hoodie will not fit him for too long either, but for the meantime he is loving it has worn it the past two days in a row. it is the perfect jacket layer for this 60 degree weather we have been having. seriously amazing!!
there had to be one of the front so that he could actually see his crow. ;)

it feels good to get this one out of my head. i will soon share the outfit i made for sienna when i can manage some decent photos. until then, may you enjoy the weather wherever you are. don't worry, i'm sure king winter will return to us before too long!

grow a crystal heart

we have been growing borax snowflakes for years. they are fascinating to watch. you can almost see the crystals growing! they are equally dazzling when they are finished and we hang them to shine and sparkle above our nature table.

this year we gave it a little valentine's twist and i love how these crystal hearts turned out! here's a brief recap so you can make some, too. great last minute valentine's as they take only a few hours to crystallize.
you will need borax, wide mouth glass jars, pipe cleaners, and hot water. if you wish to color yours, you will need a coloring agent, too. we happen to be a house free from food coloring so we used our watercolors and it worked wonderfully.

borax is a laundry booster and is labeled *all natural* but please use caution when working with children. mine never touch the borax and we work in a ventilated room just to be safe.
to make the heart shape, first fold your pipe cleaner in half.
now twist the two ends of the pipe cleaner together and pull them down into a heart shape.
tie a string around your heart and tie it to a pencil. this will rest on the lip of the jar, suspending your heart in the borax solution. set it aside and put some water on to boil.
when you have poured hot water into your jar, begin to pour in borax powder. stir, stir, stir. continue adding borax until it will no longer dissolve. we are very unscientific in this process and just keep adding until the powder starts to gather on the bottom.at this point we added color. we usually have some primary watercolors already mixed up so we squeezed it into the jars. we added varying amounts in each jar to produce different shades of pink and red.

i had some beet juice concentrate in my freezer waiting for a dye project. we tried some of that too but it reacted with the borax and turned brown! of course you could use food coloring here, too.
aren't they lovely? we used all sorts of ribbons to hang them.i wish my camera could really capture the sparkle of these crystals!we found a budding branch on the side of the road and brought it home. i hung it over our dining table and our hearts and our valentine fairy now dance above our heads.yesterday we did some more experimenting. we did one with epsom salt (red), one with borax (purple) and one with sugar (clear with read pipe cleaner). only the borax has produced crystals for us so far. the other two are still on our table under observation.here's a peek at the borax heart after only a couple of hours.i can't wait to see what this one does! from what i've read, the sugar solution can take several days to make crystals. i think this heart will be spectacular with the red pipe cleaner inside the white crystals.

have a wonderful weekend and happy heart crafting! i have a make up birthday party to get ready for......

separating

i have been silent in this space for a long time. one of the reasons that i blog is to intentionally focus on the positive and beautiful things in our lives. taking note of moments or projects that would otherwise be lost in the whirlwind of emotions and activities throughout a normal day brings me joy. that focus is not ever meant to portray our lives as picture perfect as they are anything but. behind this blog is a regular mom who has daily struggles along with those triumphs. i just choose not to highlight those parts of my day so much. blogging takes a lot of time and energy and i just can't see doing it to post about all that is stressing me. we get more of what we focus on, yes?
that being said, many of you are my friends and i wish to share important moments with you, positive or no. this year has already brought many, many challenges to my family. the greatest of which is the decision for matt and i to separate. dividing our family is something that i have not taken lightly and have worried so much about. things have been stressful for so long and i have held on as long as i can. i wanted to be absolutely sure before we made a choice to raise our children without both of their parents under one roof.
matt is truly a wonderful man but he suffers with severe stress and anxiety, among other things, and with it comes a prevailing sense of negativity and a constant flux of emotions. i feel this provides an unstable home for our wee ones and wish to find our way back to creating a life of peace and contentedness. years of living in this situation have changed me, too. i have become reactionary. i have so much anger and disappointment that i don't recognize myself sometimes. i want to find my happy place again.
10 years and two gorgeous children takes a long time to unravel. it is a slow and rather painful process. fortunately, we have remained friends and are both keeping it rather positive for the children. but it hurts. i am hurting. so many days i don't feel like i can do anything without crying. other days i feel numb and mostly stare into space. knitting has saved me those days. i am able to sit with my children and occupy myself with my yarn and needles and mommy doesn't seem quite so out of it. ;)
i have continued to visit your blogs. they bring me joy and sometimes tears. often, if something has really moved me, i can not even comment. i know that sometimes when i have commented in the last few months on one of your posts, it hasn't even made sense. i am just not all there.....but i am trying. i know that it will get easier. i just wish that were sooner.
we have been doing lots of valentine crafting and getting ready for a makeup birthday party tomorrow. so, i have some joyful things to share, but i had to get this out there first. don't expect me to post about it a lot, but know that this is where i am at.....dealing. and being incredibly busy with school! february means open houses, plans for summer camps, fall enrollment, and so much more!

with love and appreciation for each one of you,

rae

p.s. to those of you who notice, my apologies for the double post here. i simply could not live with those non-transparent corners! i really hope it's right this time.....

handmade holidays wrap up, part II

sienna's canvases. age 6 and 3/4.

butterfly for bakka (my mom) on stretched canvas. she painted this one, outlined it in marker, and then stitched around the butterfly.

sunflowers for grandma debbie. watercolor pencils on stretched canvas.

drawing of st lucia. colored pencils on her most requested art material...*white paper*. ;)

here she is hard at work on daddy's gift.

daddy's painting is of an owl family. there are white baby owls tucked under each wing of the mother and father.

this one is for uncle scottie. a boy and girl dancing to some record tunes.

this one is poppa hum's. the christmas tree farm, complete with blow up snowman, strands of lights, and a girl driving her tree home on top of her truck.

handmade holidays wrap up, part I

i showed you the beginning of this flying snake a while ago. here he is finished. this pattern challenged me as a novice knitter, but i enjoyed feeling as though i conquered it (relatively speaking here). my circular knitting certainly has much room for improvement, but being that this was my first project on dpns, i think i did alright. the long body of the snake is hollow and his round head is stuffed with beans.
jasper loves him!! he has provided us with several opportunities to talk about appropriate play, too. ;) a favorite thing to do with him is to slide him across the linoleum floor. in the springtime, he will enjoy much wilder play outdoors, i am sure of it!

the other project i shared at that time was the princess in the forest outfit. well, i started with the felted slippers. i knit them larger than the pattern called for and yet when i felted them, they shrunk to jasper's size! a long ways from fitting sienna.

at that point, i knew i was not going to stress myself about trying to get this project done by solstice. i went ahead and ordered another skein of yarn and the second set of slippers are currently on the needles. it's at times like these that i am thankful that her birthday is just six weeks after christmas!
sienna made such thoughtful and beautiful gifts for jasper. i wanted to give jasper the opportunity to gift something just as meaningful that he helped create for her. i found this wooden box at the craft store. i used my wood burner to embellish it a little and then handed it over to him. he chose pink and blue (and therefore purple) watercolors as they are her favorite colors. then we rubbed it with beeswax polish. i just love how it turned out!! it is a treasure box. a proper place to put those special tokens that she previously had no home for. i lined the inside of the box with a piece of felted sweater.

i also purchased two wooden blanks that matt painted with chalkboard paint so that each child now has their own chalkboard.wishing you all many blessings and good fortune in the new year!!

tomorrow i will show the gifts that dad made. he really outdid himself!

dreamy white christmas

christmas eve we went up to the blue ridge parkway for a little excursion. it was a gorgeous, sunny day and relatively warm. the ice was melting and the water was running behind the sheets of ice still clinging to the rock faces. fascinating to watch....and taste! it was a bit nippy, but there was no sign of what was to come.
christmas morning we awoke to our first big snow of the year!! it continued to snow until monday morning. long ago, i lived in these mountains during the latter years of my childhood. snow of this volume was just unheard of at that time. we once had a blizzard and that was a freak occurrence. otherwise, the little snow we did get, just melted right back away. from the look of things last winter and the start of this one, times are once again changing.
so delightful to spend christmas snowed in with the family. we were due to travel to poppa's house for christmas dinner but plans were canceled when the snow arrived.
we played games, drew lots of pictures, listened to christmas music, did some baking, some cleaning and rearranging, and played in the powdery goodness outside our door. upon our return, we indulged in hot chocolate and my new favorite delight, peppermint whipped cream. mmmmm!!! the mini trampoline grandma sent for christmas came in very handy for working off that chocolate rush. ;)
matt has been working a lot and has rarely even taken two days off in a row for months now. to have him home for three days in a row and snowed in for two of them was a real treat indeed!
sienna was born in colorado but sadly does not remember it. i am always thrilled when she gets to experience plentiful snow like this.
their blissful joy is such a thrill to experience!
here's hoping you are loving your weather wherever you are!