Little C Learning to Walk

A wonder to behold...

Christmas Socks Gifted

I did some sock knitting this season for some very happy and very gracious recipients.  My brother gets a pair of them knit up for him every year.  Most years I use fingering weight wool but this year I knit him some hiking socks (using a heavily modified version  of this pattern) in Blue Sky Alpaca Dyed Cotton.  They fit him well after a bit of stretching and will be accompanying him on his upcoming trip to New Zealand.  I like that he will be able to wash them with the rest of his clothes but they just aren't as pretty as socks knit with finer yarn.

My aunt got the second pair of socks knit up from a pattern in this book.  I have to do some repair work on one of the pair and I am not sure they will get as much wear as the ones that I give to my brother but they are pretty nonetheless.

Stephanie Pearl McPhee said somewhere that socks knitting is truly a labor of love.  Socks are not one of those gifts that last forever--they wear thin and then wear out.  And they are labor intensive.  Of the four pairs that I have knit for my brother, only two are still usable.  Although I do not love the process of knitting them, I love the wearing thin, wearing out part.  It only encourages me to knit them more.

Nature Study Monday: American Coot

During our recent visit to Texas, we encountered a pond full of ducks, many of which I have never seen (or maybe just never noticed) before.  The American Coot (pictured above), I have learned, is actually not a duck at all (it lacks webbed feet) but a water bird.  In the northeastern part of the US, the American Coot migrates south for the winter.  They can forage a bit for food on land; their diet though consists mostly of pond scum.  Ducklings are a fuzzy black and their adult counterparts can often be found swimming in open water.

The Rainbow Dress Gifted

to my daughter on the eve of a trip to visit my family.  The pattern knits up very easily.  My only problems related to my own inability to concentrate (on anything, ever) on the pattern.  I do not love the yarn either actually--I was envisioning more of a rainbow--but oldest does love it and that is obviously what matters.

I think I must be middle-aged in my knitting years.  I do like some challenges but mostly I would just rather knit in the round on my circular needles with an occasional increase or decrease.  I remember when each new project I started had to present a new skill.  I bet those days will return but I don't need those kinds of challenges on the needles now.

The pattern was just right for me and the dress is just right for her!  More knitted gifts to come...  

Yarn Along

Joining Ginny again today for her Yarn Along...

Although two of my favorite things in the whole wide world are to knit and read (like Ginny), I have not mastered the art of doing both regularly at the same time, especially when I am knitting in a crunch.  In the winter, I am better at it because our littles are in bed quite early, leaving me time to knit while watching a movie and then some reading time at the end of the night.

My brothers annual Christmas socks are almost complete.  I used Blue Sky's dyed cotton that I picked up at a garage sale in the middle of the fall to make him some hiking socks that I have put together using a variety of patterns.

About to finish And the Skylark Sings with Me and I am ready to move on to something less... less... less something.  I am getting all kinds of ideas about how to utilize our community and the resources that surround us from the author; maybe I am just growing a bit weary of his presentation.  Or something.  I am really glad to have read it though and would recommend it to anyone who, like me, is considering homeschooling.

Lots and lots of new reading for the kids.  My soon-to-be five year old is enjoying The Children of Noisy Village as a read aloud and I am too!

Nature Study Monday: House Finch

The bird world has become fascinating to me!  That these marvelously colored creations have been flitting about me all my life and I have barely noticed is astounding to me~ my eyes are wide open now, that is for sure.

The House Finch is a rather new visitor to our backyard.  Apparently word gets out--birds like the Mourning Doves arrived at our feeders immediately but the finches came a little later to the game.  Pictured above is a male House Finch (on the right) and what I think may be his female counterpart on the left.

The House Finch is native to the west coast of this country but can now be found all over and is a welcome visitor in most backyards because of its beautiful song (one that I can still not recognize).  House finches are almost entirely vegetarian; they also feed their young only plant material, which is evidently uncommon even among "vegetarian" birds.  These birds make their homes in and amongst humans--in urban centers, backyards, and barns.  

I plan on popping in and out for the next few days; I am going to be around for our regular Mondays and Wednesdays and will be fully back in the new year.  The happiest of holidays to all of you, my friends!

Nature Study Monday: Red-Bellied Woodpecker

This bird (or one of the same species) has visited our backyard throughout the half year that we have been here.  I spotted it briefly over the summer, but his visits are becoming more frequent in the winter months.  Even to my novice eyes, he is clearly a woodpecker   (I mistook him for a visitor when he pecked away at our backdoor a couple weeks ago) and the only woodpecker I know is the Downy Woodpecker.  His flash of red is so much more startling, though, than the pictures I have seen of Downy Woodpeckers.  Sure enough, a little research turned up the Red-Bellied Woodpecker.  Pictured above is a male; females have less red on their heads.

These woodpeckers are year round here in our part of the world.  They often nest in dead trees or on dead branches attached to live trees.  Evidently their nests are often taken over by starlings.  I still do not feel confident that I could identify the call of this bird, but  I will be listening more intently over the spring and summer as their calls are supposed to be easy to distinguish.

Swift

Oh yes, Amanda was right, the swift is our latest and greatest entertainment.  What is best about it is that it serves different purposes for different ages.  For the youngest, a mobile of sorts, for middle a crank that shoots fire, and for the oldest a... yarn winder (and a really awesome one at that).  Thank you Aunt Donna.  I (we) love it!

Today...

was one of those days that I would like to do over, or delete, or edit out, or forget about entirely.  I tried to do too much and wasn't good to my children or myself.  After yelling at my four year old, I apologized by saying, "Mama is in a really grumpy mood today."  And from the background, my three year old, focused on his drawing, said without looking up, "Oh yeah she is." And then we laughed, a lot.  Tomorrow is a few hours away.

Yarn Along

I am joining in with Ginny again this week for the Yarn Along...

I am a pretty monogamous knitter.  I have finish one thing before I start another.  If anything, I have a small, portable project that I carry with me (typically socks) and a larger one for home.  So I am still knitting away on the Rainbow Dress.  Hopefully by next week's Wednesday post, I will be on to something.  I am in the middle of a holiday making frenzy, one that I hoped to avoid this year, but is inevitable.

And I am staying up way too late reading this book.  A wonderful work for someone who is just starting to think of the possibilities homeschooling might afford a little family like ours.

The Coming of Winter

{Playing guitar: not gardening}

{Napping: not riding bikes}

{Roasted root vegetables: not raw tomatoes or green beans}

Nature Study Monday: Northern Cardinal

In a suburb on New York City town, we see a great many of these brilliant birds and their somewhat lackluster female partners.  They are especially pretty in the winter when they provide a streak of color amidst beds of white.

Cardinals mate for life so when you see one, his partner is likely nearby.  Male cardinals are bright red in color (like the one pictured below).  They are in fact such bright red that one might doubt that their feathers were natural if they were not attached to them!  On a walk over the summer, we found a male cardinal feather and it could just as well have been purchased at a craft store as fallen off of the body of a cardinal.

Cardinals evidently have elaborate calling patterns.  As a bird watching novice, I do not yet have the ears for deciphering calls.  According to The Backyard Birdsong Guide, the male sings more often and has a bolder song than the female.

I have to make sure our seed continues to contain sunflower seeds as they evidently like them!  What a beautiful crimson gift these are to our morning eyes.

Yarn Along

Joining along with Ginny again this week...

This has been a couple weeks full of a great deal of knitting (+watching of some great documentaries) and reading.  I fell really ill last week and was bedridden for four days, which gave me an excuse to do my favorite things guilt-free (all while madness occurred downstairs with my hubby trying to man the fort).

Just finishing Teach Your Own by John Holt.  I have so many books waiting to be read--not sure which one to pick up next.  Maybe this one, or this one, or this one?

We changed out our fall books for winter books this week (a little early, I know) so the kids have been immersed in our winter reads, especially the Christmas stories.  

I am still knitting away on the Rainbow Dress.  I knit it at night when my oldest is asleep.  My husband and I have multiple old episodes of Thirty-Something queued up for the weeks leading up to Christmas so I am in good shape.

A Garland of Leaves

Ahh, the bright oranges, reds and yellows of fall seem so far away, don't they?  Winter is swiftly approaching and I am not quite ready for my goodbyes to fall yet.  Our late November skies are greying to white and our trees are nearly bare.  It happened so late this year and fall seems too short.

With this ephemeral season in mind, I decided that we would give Ginny's idea a shot (although I have to admit, it was especially enticing because it gave me a reason to {1} buy beeswax and {2} use the funny little mini-slow cooker that came with our real slow cooker). While the leaves were still falling all around us like little gifts from the sky, we collected them from a variety of trees for our garland and pressed them between the pages of heavy books for a couple of days.

Once the leaves were ready, I melted the beeswax in the mini-cooker (this was, perhaps, the best part--the sweet smell of beeswax might be one of my favorite things in the whole wide world).  Then taking turns, we dipped our leaves into the melted wax and let them dry on some newspaper.

Finally, we threaded a needle with some thicker thread and strung our new garland!  It now hangs on our mantle and although the leaves have lost some of their splendor, it still serves as a nice reminder of those not so long past orange, red, and yellow days.

Nature Study Monday: Blue Jay

In our backyard neighborhood, the Blue Jays are the rabble-rousers; they are the ones that arrive late to the party and they clear the house with their unrefined antics.  I rarely spot Blue Jays, for some reason, in the wee morning hours, just when the sun is coming up and our breakfast is being served.  They seem to pop in later and with a lot of fanfare, typically scaring the other (smaller) birds away from the feeder but not scaring them so much that they leave altogether.

We spot them fairly frequently, but not as easily as we spot wrens, for example.  They are a great deal larger than most of the birds feeding in our backyard, and, although they are a bit gruff, I still stand at attention when one comes around.

Blue Jays can be found all year round in the Northeast, although some do migrate south for the winter.  Their nests are large and bulky, and they may have appropriated them.  According to my source, Blue Jays sometimes feed on eggs or newly hatched young of other birds.

What a pleasure it is to see their streaks of blue and black amongst all of the other colors right here in our backyard. 

Out Sick

We are one sick brood right now, especially Mama.  In a couple of days, I will be posting regularly again.  Right now, I am just trying to take in the still.  Hope your weekend was full and your days leading up to Thanksgiving are warm.

Thankful Thursday

Joining in again with Kerry today...

When I realized that today was Thankful Thursday instantaneously I knew what I would write about.  With our oldest of Kindergarten age next fall, much of my time has been spent lately pondering our options regarding schooling.  I have been reading, talking to friends, and mulling things over with my husband mostly.  So today I am thankful for the options that are offered to us in this incredibly unique and diverse country that we live in.  I am grateful to those that came before us, whose independent spirits laid the groundwork for much of what is possible in the United States today.  

Yarn Along

I think posting on Wednesdays might be one of my favorite things to do!  Knitting and reading (and writing) all together in one post.  Wow!

By my bedside table is still Teach Your Own.  I am about half way through the book.  Has anyone read it?  There are parts of it that really resonate with me and other parts that I simply can not relate to at all.  But I keep reading still...

The littles and I went to the library with some friends on one rainy day and picked up some books.  Elsa Beskow's Aunt Green, Aunt Brown and Aunt Lavender was a big hit with the kids.  I love all of her stories and illustrations but many of them are a hard sell for the littles. For some reason, this one really resonated with them.

And on the needles is a gauge swatch for the Rainbow Dress--a present for our oldest this Christmas.  

Christmas 2008 Sweater Finished October 2010

I had grand plans 2 years ago to knit a warm, cozy winter sweater for the warmest, coziest person in my life (my husband) each year for him.  This sweater that should have been knit up in a month took nearly three years.  It was started, then stopped way back when I realized that I was clearly delusional to think it would be complete for a 2008 Christmas.  It went to sleep during the long, cold winter of 2009, it was resurrected, ripped,  resurrected again, ripped again, then finally finished.

Was it worth the work?  Every bit of it.  It is New Jersey winter warm, it is soft, and he wears it all of the time. Nothing like seeing the love you put into making a sweater on the one you love.

Nature Study Monday: Milkweed

For the past few years I have been interested in attracting butterflies and hummingbirds to  a (our) garden and this is one plant that a butterfly garden can not be without.  Surprisingly, I didn't know what the plant looked like until late this summer and still have not seen one in bloom.  I purchased a couple of milkweed plants at the garden center in late summer and had the chance to see their airy seeds flit and float, blown by the breeze, the breath of a child, or of seemingly their own magical airiness, away to some home in the far corners of our garden or off to a neighbor's, where they may not be as welcome as they are here in our backyard.


Milkweed can (evidently) be a pretty intrusive plant so many folks pull them as soon as they sprout.  In fact, I read that the biggest "predator" of the milkweed plant is actually the gardener!  The leaves of the plant are poisonous so littles need to be kept away from the plant or watched closely around it.

Interestingly enough, the plant, which is host to the Monarch butterfly caterpillar, does not poison the insect but makes her poisonous to her own prey therefore giving her some protection against them.  How amazingly complex and so simple all at once!

In addition to being a host to the Monarch, it also attracts other butterflies, including the Swallowtail, and hummingbirds.  This plant really delights me (and others) and I can't wait to see it in blossom in the Spring!

Quotable Sunday

Against the Wind

It seems like yesterday 
But it was long ago 
Janey was lovely she was the queen of my nights 
There in the darkness with the radio playing low 
And the secrets that we shared 
The mountains that we moved 
Caught like a wildfire out of control 
'Til there was nothing left to burn and nothing left to prove 
And I remember what she said to me 
How she swore that it never would end 
I remember how she held me oh so tight 
Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then 


Bob Seger

Grateful Thursday (on Friday)

Joining in with Kerry again.

I was sitting downstairs on my living room couch yesterday thinking about our Thursday gratefulness.  Thinking of what I was most grateful for right in that moment while middle was upstairs in my room playing with tin soldiers that were my brother's, and before him, my father's.  Oldest was occupied in my craft room with a dollhouse that one of my grandpas built and painted and the other furnished with tiny wooden pieces made with his very own hands.  And I thought--I am thankful for the history, a shared history, here in our home where we can hold tight to where we come from and at the same time, let go a little too.  Make new games, new worlds, new histories.  Not just in our one little house but in all the homes that came before us and the myriads that will follow.  I am thankful for our place in time, thankful for what has come before and and for all that will come to be.

Yarn Along

 Following along with Ginny again this week.

Still knitting those broken rib socks.  I cast one off the needles last night and then realized that no one older than 10, and definitely not my 34 year old brother, could actually get their foot in it so I am ripping and watching old Thirtysomething episodes on Netflix tonight (Gary, Hope, Michael, and Eliot are household names here.  We talk about them as if they are actually a part of our circle of friends).


Just finished this and am starting Teach Your Own tonight.  Starting to consider our options for public schooling next year so I am collecting information and beginning here.

Making New Crayons from the Old

We had a cozy, crafty, homey kind of weekend over here.  No plans, starkly bright blue skies and good moods all around.  We spent most of Saturday morning melting down the many, many crayon bits that we have accumulated over the years.  As I have gotten older (and maybe wiser), I have resisted the urge to throw away useful bits like crayons that we get in restaurants or ones that are too small to use anymore so the collection we have amassed was really quite impressive.  

We began by sorting the pieces--the fun part for my girl.

Then, using the mini-muffin tins I got expressly for this purpose, we prepped them for the melting.

After that, we put them in the oven heated to 350 degrees.  They came out looking like this in under five minutes.

Now we have six (or so) new sets of crayons.  I am going to bag them up and give them as party favors for middle's birthday in February.

Nature Study Monday: Eastern Black Swallowtail

In July, when watering our potted dill plant on our front porch, I came across the most spectacular caterpillar--one straight off the pages of an Eric Carle story.  She was green with yellow, black and white markings and she had clearly been eating a lot of dill.  The kids and I found our fish bowl (which had recently housed another caterpillar whose fate was not a fortunate one) and put her inside with a hefty amount of leaves, sticks, and some water.

In a week, she hatched into what I now know was an Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly.  The bright blue and yellow makings on her hind wings identify her as a female.  Males have a row of yellow spots on their wings and some dimmer blue spots under those.  {Eastern} Black Swallowtails like plants in the carrot family, like dill and fennel, so if you want to attract them to your garden, definitely plant some of these host plants.

Quotable Sunday

Inspired by Kyrie

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay. 

Robert Frost

Thankful Thursday

Kerry of Young Ones has dedicated all of her Thursday posts until Thanksgiving to expressions of gratitude and I am going to join along.  Today I am thankful for so much, for the big and for the small, for the lasting and for the fleeting and more specifically for:

• a day off from nursery school for my two older children
• the rain--it kept us inside and together
• paper and crayons and the budding artist in my middle child
• high heels for my oldest to don
• my husband, his open heart and open mind
• the smell of bread
• and for our baby's new word "ug-ok" or truck

Yarn Along

For the next few weeks I am going to be joining Ginny as she shares what she is knitting and reading.  There is little that I like to do more than knit or read so to post about them at once sounds lovely!

Today while my older two were at school I stole a rare knitting moment while our baby played with yarn and some books from our seasonal book basket.  Each year, I knit my brother a pair of socks.  This year I am making him the broken ribbed socks from 101 Designer One Skein Wonders out of some stashed cotton yarn.  Usually I make his socks in wool as he loves it but I love the color of this yarn for him so we are going cotton this year.

I recently began reading The Mood Cure by Julia Ross based on a recommendation.  While the author can be a bit "pitchy" for my taste (and I remain skeptical about some of the claims that she makes), there are some definite kernels of wisdom in the book.  I am really interested in her claims about adding protein to your diet in order to sharpen your thinking and elevate your state of mind, for example.  I look forward to trying some of her suggested recipes in the coming weeks.

I am also reading Chickens in Your Backyard.  We plan to get our chicks in the spring so this book is giving me some ideas about coops, breeds of chickens, fencing, etc...

Nature Study Monday: The Gingko Tree

I am going to start a little Monday nature series by writing about a new-to-me discovery in my backyard or on our daily walks.  I love learning about the birds, trees, bugs, and butterflies that we encounter on a daily basis and I think this will be a good way to record them--our nature journal of sorts.  Please join along if you like.  I am looking forward to learning so much more!

Gingko Trees--I had only heard of these before this season.  My mother-in-law found a large gingko tree leaf last fall on one of her trips and brought it home to show the kids.  The leaf was large, from a tree much more mature than the one pictured, and exotic looking.  Even a novice like myself knows that it is not native to the area, and yet we have two within a half mile radius of our house!

The Gingko hails from China and somehow its leaves tell that story--beautiful fan-like delicacies, they are.  It can evidently get quite large but those in our neighborhood are fairly small--maybe 16 feet tall or so.  I would love to know how much upkeep they require, given that they are non-native.  I feel as though this might not be a tree that I plant in my own yard, and it is still simply stunning to behold.

Happy Halloween!

from Glinda the Good, the Wicked Witch of the West, Tin Man, Scarecrow, Lion, and Dorothy...

Costuming #3

Hopefully our scarecrow will like his costume a lot more on our big day because to say that he is not a fan of it would be a gross understatement.  He found it tolerable until today, when we added the completed hat.  Not. A. Fan.  The only picture I could get that was not blurred by his swinging head (in an attempt to remove the hat) was this tear-filled one.  This one was also extremely easy.  Some felt, some rafia, some old fabric and an orange romper.    We are off to see the Wizard...

Costuming #2

Here is our scary lion!  I knew our second child would not need much convincing in the costume department--he loves everything about them, especially their roars!  We don't make much of the looking for his courage part and we have one happy trick or treater!  This one was a cinch to put together--got the idea here and made some modifications.  And tomorrow... the cutest scarecrow I ever did see!

Costuming #1

For possibly the first time in my life, I started planning our Halloween weeks in advance and finished the costumes over a week before Halloween.  Our costumes are almost always put together in the 11th hour and we generally look like a ragtag bunch.  Not this year.  The hubby and I had a costume party to attend last weekend; this jump-started the preparations.  My sewing machine has moved downstairs for the month and our dining room is, um, slightly messy [it is becoming harder to convince my children to clean up their toys at the end of the day when mine are all over the floor, and the table, and the rest of the dining room furniture].

First up in the costume postings is my dear little Dorothy.  I actually fear that she is going to be my dear little grumpy Dorothy, as she was persuaded into this one by her brother, her grandma, and her mother {first choice: baby mermaid}.  I modified the lazy days skirt pattern by oliver + s for the jumper by adding a bib and straps.  Buttons and buttonholes were new to me (so that is what that funny little square is for on my sewing machine.)  So today, Dorothy.  Tomorrow one very SCARY lion...

Spirituality and Our Children

Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different than the adult of today.  It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has a fairy godmother in its soul.    

 -Francis Thompson

For The Love of Trees

I am not sure quite how it happened but I grew up knowing next to nothing about the natural world.  Aside from an interest in all things animal-related, I was completely ignorant.  I mean, until a few years, I could not have distinguished between an oak and a maple tree.  Really.  Nothing.  


Now my kids and I are making up for lost time.  Recently, I have become fascinated with all things tree.  On our recent trip to Vermont, I picked up a pocket guide to identifying coniferous and deciduous trees and took it on a hike with us.  Wow are there lots of species of pine trees!  And they all look so similar to these amateur eyes!  Every day I "discover" a new to me tree right in my neighborhood.  Yesterday, a Tulip tree and today a Gingko.  


Amazing what we can find when we open our eyes, isn't it?  There is so much beauty all around and if we can just escape through that gate, that bolted door in our head, get out of our mind and into the world--we can really live, even if only for moments at a time.