Finished, last night, the second installment to my sashiko stitched alphabet. This U, or is it an N, was worked itself out mostly while catching up on streamed episodes of 30 Rock.
I have made
Aug:15
Aug:13
Of all the crafty fads out there right now, I'm most smitten by the faux bois stuff. You know, fake wood. So when it came to packing up a gift for our attendance at today's Angry Birds-themed birthday party, I thought I'd try my hand at faux-ly bois-ing up a simple cardboard box to house the topical plush toy we'd picked up. Seems a little much for decorating a inevitably tossed-aside box, but, really, it took so little time to make. Simply doodled out some wood-grainesque lines onto an easy-carve block and went to work on it with the tools. Handed it, along with an inkpad and a box of pastels to The Boy, and let him go to town on the box. And now another birthday party is behind us.
Aug:3
I cranked on my standard playlist of hipster tunes and the Lego rattling in the next room, and pushed aside quilt detritus to get some more Kindergarten preparation out of the way. New snack baggies had been on the list for a while, the last set shredded and, quite frankly, kind of disgusting from a couple years of use. Ditched the velcro (which proved a weak point in the construction of those other bags), went with a sweet Echino linen lined with muslin, and just went at the raw edges with a down and dirty zig zag stitch, a construction much like sandwich baggies before the advent of ziploc. No messing with right sides and wrong sides and turning and topstitching and french seaming. Cut, fold, sew. Eight baggies, two feet of fabric, a freshly-wound bobbin, one hour. Tested the result with a handful of pretzels. Works just fine.
Department of Tooth Loss
July 24, 2011
I'll dispense with the sappy truism of my too-quickly growing Boy and get right to the gritty facts. He's losing his teeth.
Now, when I was a wee one on the cusp of dental maturity, I fought an uphill battle convincing my mom to participate in the Tooth Fairy racket. In her time and place there was none of this payout business for fallen-out teeth. Their littlefolk simply buried in the dirt or chucked upon an available rooftop their teeth to coax their permanent ones out faster and stronger (not sure what kind of gravitational pull those baby teeth yielded, but I guess it worked for my mom and her kin). For my coercive efforts, a concession was manifest in a small cache of quarters sealed up in a plain white envelope, the kind you might place a rent check in.
But even as childhood-me pled with my mom to play tooth fairy I knew it was a sham. Like I knew Santa and the Easter bunny and redemption (other popular fantasies withheld from me) were kind-hearted lies perpetrated on children partly for the amusement of the adults around them. Amusement I'd like to enjoy for myself now that my children are old enough to be lied to.
And that brings us back to the late-night dash to create a welcome packet of sorts for the much talked-up Tooth Fairy. The Boy had managed to keep the fact of his impending loss from us for nearly a week, until caught deep in tooth waggling concentration. So by the time of discovery, preparation time for the tooth fairy's big day was already compromised, limited to materials on hand. Hence, the late-night dash. I upgraded the plain white envelope of my tooth-losing days to a cloth-and-iron-on-adhesive constructed envelope (modified from this), mimicking the look of those teeny tiny coin-sized manila envelopes. The Boy picked out the last swatches of that skull-patterend flannel for the lining and the little pocket that adorns the front of the envelope. And then to document the lost tooth, because our particular Tooth Fairy likes to keep tidy records of all her collections, I drew up some miniature dental charts to be marked up, filled out and submitted with the genuine artifact.
Which was all fine and dandy. Except that the morning after completing the packets I greeted The Boy, verified all teeth were still in his head, sat down to breakfast, looked up and saw that in the few minutes since I'd last checked, he'd managed to lose a tooth. Just plain lost it. Gone, and, for all intents and purposes, irretrievable. Likely not the last major disappointment of my tenure as Parent, but certainly a huge blow. This Tooth Fairy proxy's disappointment, however, was nothing compared to The Boy's worry that he wouldn't be able to submit a packet for compensation from the Tooth Fairy. Mr. New Media, quick on his feet, brought out paper and pen for The Boy to do up a proper portrait of the missing tooth. And he, with an assuredness that I've never before seen in his drawing endeavors, marked out the outline of your prototypical tooth, with two pointy roots and a flat top. And then he filled out the dental chart, filed it into the envelope along with his utilitarian masterpiece and set it out on a window sill where the Tooth Fairy would find easy access to his submission.
Fulfilling her end of the transaction, Tooth Fairy issued one freshly pressed fiver, tucked into what seems, to a faithful five-year-old, to the be the same envelope he submitted to her.
And, not to worry, a few days later, a second tooth dislodged at dinner, with The Boy holding out his prize triumphantly, eager to fill out another packet.
July:16
Took the last of that Echino laminated linen, paired it with the last of my gray wool felt, and whipped up a gift bag for yet another in a seemingly endless line of birthday parties. That laminatted fabric was such fun to work with, I'm tempted to grab up some more in, like, every pattern available.
July:8
The Boy required a wallet. A growing boy accumulates money and so he needs something to put it in. I'm happy enough to oblige with a simple felt and laminated linen affair, with enough space to carry all that a just-this-side-of-kindergarten boy might need to paint the town pink.
July:7
A by-product of those s'mores cupcakes was a half-mixing-bowl batch of unformed marshmallow that, instead of folding into a pan to set and cube, I piped into albino snakes that I later snipped into hot-cocoa appropriate nubbins. Perfect for storing in mason jars until an appropriate hot-cocoa occasion arises.
