Sprinkles

 The shadows grow long early these winter days; it is noticeably dark when we rise in the morning. We still long for snow...

 Inside we are keeping busy, making making making...

 Playing, whirling, dancing...

 And just bein' our freaky selves...

 This is a common scene these days  - pajamas until the afternoon, keeping warm and trying to stay or get healthy. It's Dan's turn with the crud...he is so good-natured about it, and revives himself for part of every day to play bananagrams, read a book, watch Bugs Bunny, eat a meal...whatever we're doing, which I so appreciate. Yesterday he used his couple of mid-day energetic hours to take Ani to go get a tree while Eliza and I started on sugar cookies for a Christmas party.  We're thinking this happened last year as well, with him feeling less than whole but heroically going to find us a tree anyway.

 We don't bake much around here, so these times stand out like the sprinkles on the cookies!  Our neighbor stopped by after school, just in time to get her fingers into it all with the girls.

 A dear friend and old roommate of mine and I used to make elaborate frosted sugar cookies for Solstice, and I seem to recall that my dad and I made them together one year as well, each time taking hours and hours as we decorated in great color and detail.  It was good for me to stay way out of the decorating and let the girls take charge, mixing the colors, deciding how things were to be done, getting it all as messy and lovely as they wished. My job was to simply provide more cookies...

 Brilliant. And delicious. The Christmas Party was wonderful - a house aglow with lights, wood-fire burning, table laden with sweets, snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, friends so happy to see us, 16 of us around a table for a game...and after the dark, late drive home, we saw lights twinkling on our tree, a magical present from the sick papa.  It's finally starting to feel like a celebration around here!

Felted Wool Solstice Lanterns

Nov 16, 2012 note: There is a new post about making felted wool lanterns with more of a how-to here.  Maybe between the two I've said something helpful!! Happy lantern making...

One of the families in choir invited us to make felted wool lanterns with them and a few other families, so yesterday we gathered in the community center that we meet in for choir (so close to our house), and did just that.  It sounded chaotic and frenzied, but really, it was just 10 children and their big people crafting and gabbing...This is going to be my own interpretation of what we did - we were following instructions that someone had from the current issue of the Living Crafts magazine, which would be much more precise than these, but here goes!

We all had some light color of wool roving or batting, which we pulled apart in long strips, teasing the fibers apart a bit. 

(Listening to instructions...)

We then lightly sprayed our smallish balloons with cold water, and began to wrap our wool strands around the balloon, making sure to cross the fibers of each strand with the others.

This was tricky, 'cause just when you thought you'd gotten your balloon pretty well covered, there would appear a bald spot, and you'd start fussing with that area, only to uncover another. The trick was really to get it just about right and stop touching it!

The next step was taking a piece of wool yarn about 3 yards long and wrapping it all around the balloon, again criss-crossing it over itself.   Aha! This held the wool in place! (This is where I moved from frustration to seeing a bit further ahead. Mind you, I wasn't even making one, I was just helping the kids...)

Now we filled our tubs with hot, soapy water and started to scoop out handfuls of the water and drizzle it over the wool. Then we would pat the wool, helping it to stick to the balloon and to itself. Drizzle, pat pat. Drizzle, pat pat. Repeat for a very long time. We found that adding a bit more soap, even a drop to the wool itself, was really helpful.

We kept at it until the wool felt thick and sturdy, as if it wouldn't easily tear apart. Then we agitated the wool a bit on the balloon, which just looked like rolling the balloon between our hands for a while, then rubbing it against or with a piece of small-bubble bubble wrap.

Finally, when it felt really sturdy, we rinsed the wool-covered balloon quite well (we had used a lot of soap, it turns out), and then it's time to pop the balloon! The lantern sagged, which is all right; the next step is rubbing the top to the bottom, gently at first, then gradually more vigorously, until you are rolling it on itself and massaging it steadily.  The last thing before drying was to run it under hot-as-you-can-stand-it water, continuing to squeeze it together - it will shrink and become even sturdier. They're done! Fill with a new balloon, some leftover bubble wrap, towels or rags - anything to help it hold its shape until dry (oh, at this point you have also cut a hole in the top if you didn't already have one).

We put metal lids in the bottoms of ours and placed a tea candle on that, and lit them in the dark this morning.

We thought they looked like ice caves...igloos...beautiful.

 ps - I wondered about putting a live flame in these lanterns - when they felt tightly, they shrink down considerably, and I was a bit skeptical about the candles being safe in there! But I learned that wool is fire-resistant, meaning that it is hard to ignite and slow to burn. If you are still uncertain, a small LED candle from the dollar store would look pretty too!

playing, wiggling, sewing, elving...

 We've been moving into game-mode, a favorite activity of winter for our family. I found a game of Cranium's Cadoo in our closet - a purchase from Goodwill a few years back, before we were really ready for it. We are READY for it! Both girls read the prompts on the cards with no problem, and can confidently draw, sculpt, act out or puzzle out the answers during their turns. It's so much fun!  And there are secret glasses....

it's an elephant - can you tell?

flashlight, skateboard, mummy - all Ani's drawings

 I'm throwing in these photos of a day a couple of weeks past...just trying to capture Ani in all her daily loveliness...

 The big news around here is that Ani has her first wiggly tooth! It makes me get all mushy...really, I still think of her being the baby. She is so proud of her tooth...so we set out to sew a pillow with a pocket for that tooth, once it decides to fall out!

 Sister stepped in to help sew on one of the, um, seven hearts adorning the pillow...thanks, E.

 Voila! Ready! (That's a tooth pocket, in case you can't tell. Surrounded by seven hearts. There is a lot of love pouring out of this girl these days...)

 And there's been plotting, planning and quite a bit of elving around here...I'm feeling better, and though everyone else is a bit sniffly, they seem to be holding the ick at bay, and we are all in the flow of the Making.

This is my favorite part of these holidays.  Dan is off from teaching classes, and though he has plenty of work to do, he takes some time to make with us...I am grateful that he wants to create with us, and it puts me more in the spirit of things to be doing this together.  Some years it means he and I are up late into the evenings, after the girls are in bed, giggling and being goofy as we work on our projects. This year it has been a full-family project, which is taking more time but is ultimately so satisfying...

a weekend of music and doll-making

 I am slowly coming back to life, starting with a walk down the bike path with Dan and Ani, to see how high the river's gotten with the recent rains and flooding. Looking down, the pile of detritus was like an I-spy picture gone wrong. It's unbelievable what piles up each season.

 Saturday we went to the monthly music offering at our local community center a few blocks away. The guest for the day was a percussionist who had everyone up on stage playing with him.

 And this morning, Jack Frost had visited our windows...so beautiful.

 Eliza and I spent half of the day together at a doll-making workshop at the same community center up the hill.

 The workshop was led by a woman who runs an early childhood Waldorf program out of her home, and the style of doll was soft-bodied, Waldorf-y. So sweet.

 As usual, I was so impressed with Eliza's stitching and her competence. We kept right up with each other, cutting out our pieces and stitching them together.

 Here's my dolly!

 Here is someone's "Dumbledore"...

 Placing the eyes...

 Doll friends.  We made them to donate to a local Women's recovery center, which regularly hosts families with small children. I hope they are loved - they were hard to let go of!