Well. I had thought that today I might write a tidy little post about springtime living and dandelions blooming and all of that nice business. But really, I'm sitting in a room half-filled with boxes (which are also half-filled) and am trying to sort out other procedural items like how to get to the post office while my car is in the shop and whether or not I should be repainting furniture or sorting through the terrifying tornado of Mariam's bedroom closet. I think that at the moment, I'm going with neither one.
But I did want to mention that I have a new post up today on the Sparkle Stories blog. It is a little tutorial on making paper look weathered and worn for purposes of DIY treasure map making. Pretty fun, actually. Mariam is very picky about how she spends her time around the house these afternoons. The weather has been beautiful and if she is going to do anything inside the house, it had better be good. She gave this project a big thumbs up (and drew a map to her favorite salamander nest in the woods near school), so I think you'll like it too. You can find it here.
I was feeling a bit optimistic earlier this week as I finally worked away at the hem of my Tea Leaves cardigan. Garter stitch is actually my idea of a good time, and I figured that by today, I would have it bound off and would be telling you all about how I was at l0ng last picking up sleeve stitches. But then late last evening, when clearly I should have been sleeping and not knitting, I made an unfortunate discovery: dropped stitches many rows back. And then I made an even more unfortunate discovery: I am good at many things, but picking up stitches in garter is not one of them. Despite my very best attempts to follow internet instructions dutifully, it was not to be. After spending more time trying to pick up those stupid stitches than I probably had spent knitting the rows that came after them, I took a deep sigh and just frogged away. All the way back to the beginning of the garter stitch rows. So there.
But honestly, we have had a week of it thus far, so my knitting woes are
minor in the scheme of things. It has been the sort of week where by
Monday evening I found myself humming the Jaws theme song while brushing my teeth and saying to
myself "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water..." I
only do that when things are a special kind of crazy and I find myself caught off guard by it all.
Which is exactly how I felt when we landed in the emergency room Monday morning with the baby in anaphylactic shock after eating a bit of peanut butter. Yep. We are adding foods to our list of forbiddens right and left. Apparently, I am raising children with immune systems that just don't know when to quit. So that is something. But I guess that life is a collection of surprises of all sorts, yes? Peanut allergies are one example, I suppose. But then there are nicer things to come along with them. Like these tulips that showed up on my doorstep yesterday morning, sent from Dawn because she is thoughtful and sweet and rightfully concerned that I am losing my mind.
And that is the kind of surprise that keeps things in balance. This much I know.
So. Not a lot is happening at our house this afternoon. Mariam is at school. The pets are napping in their usual preferred locations. We have all kind of gone quiet while we check the news and try to make decisions about what to do next. The idea was to drive down to Cambridge to look for a house this weekend. We were planning to be there by this evening. That plan obviously doesn't make a whole lot of sense right now. So, Plan B. Not sure what that is yet, just working on letting go of my anxiousness around the fact that it is even necessary. What a world this one is sometimes.
In happier news, there is an activity from Volume Twelve of Alphabet Glue available as a free download on Ginny's blog right now. It is the "wave in a bottle" activity, and it is easy kid science at its best. Try it. You'll like it. Oh, and it comes with a sea-centric book recommendation list, which is pretty fun as well. So this weekend you can go get a stack of books about pirates and sailboats and ocean waves and remember that the world is actually vast, beautiful, and facsinating. And really, pretty wonderful too.
Here is the thing about the moment when you fully realize that you will be making a long distance move with a couple of children and handful of pets: you suddenly want to get rid of everything that you own. You flashback to your days as a hippie college student when all of your belongings fit in the back of your car and you could apartment hop without actually packing more than a backpack and maybe a box or two.
So during the seemingly infrequent moments when the smallest frye is busy doing things like looking out the window at the dog in the snow, I've been trying to go through some of our stuff.
One of the first things that I did was to go through my yarn stash. It was a bit challenging to let go of my visions of what a particular skein might be used for, if I ever finished the three sweaters I currently have cast on. But in the end, I managed to get my stash widdled down to the yarn that I need to finish current projects, and then, of course, the small collection of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn that I like to keep just for posterity (and its singular ability to make me feel like a real knitter). It is so soft, and pretty, and I actually do like knitting socks here and there.
Of course it wasn't very long before my small friend discovered what I was up to and decided that he should likely be as involved as possible.
At which point I realized that the fact that we use baskets for so much of our storage, including all of the blocks and toys in the living room, has essentially resulted in a one-year old who believes that the sole purpose of his daily activities revolves around taking things out of baskets and throwing them. And that was the end of yarn organization time.
Oh! And today is the actual and official day: Alphabet Glue is now two years old! Thanks to you all for your enthusiasm for the birthday sale. Visit the Glue website if you'd still like to take advantage of the celebratory discount!
Two years ago this week, I first launched an experimental little project called Alphabet Glue. The first issue was a goofy kind of labor of love. A collection of whimsical ideas and projects that my then six year old and I had been tinkering around with and thought we might share. I wrote much of that issue under a nest of blankets in Mariam's bunk bed while she dug through picture books and occasionally chimed in with titles that I should include in those very first booklists.
Two years later, there are eleven issues of Alphabet Glue (twelve if you include the Summer Science Special). I have built a website from scratch, working late into the evenings after my kids were tucked into bed. I have assembled hundreds of pages of science projects, book recommendations, quirky printable pages, and hands-on activities. I have dropped them into your virtual laps every other month, hoping that you will like them.
And you? You all have been beyond supportive and enthusiastic. You have sent kind emails, shared photos of your kids doing the projects, and left really nice comments on the blog to help keep me motivated (and on schedule). Blogger friends have written dozens of posts and shared like crazy on social media. The result is that the community of Alphabet Glue families feels like one big family in and of itself, and I am incredibly grateful. Because of your families, this is no longer just about me making a fantastic mess on our dining room table in pursuit of the perfect repurposing of an empty cardboard toilet paper roll. Instead, it is about all of us sharing a love of literature with our collective small folk, and about finding creative (if sometimes messy) moments for families to work together.
So thanks to each and every one of you for supporting my little magazine. As a way of saying thank you, I'm having a big sale on issues of Alphabet Glue.Between now and the 27th, you can enter "two" at checkout and receive 30% off.
The Tea Leaves is ongoing. As in, on and on it goes. The knitting is pleasant, and although the progress is perhaps slow, it is for various good reasons.
For one, the baby has been sick with a wicked head cold all week long. Under normal circumstances little man is super cute and hilarious and a general snuggly delight. But let us take a moment to note the absence of the word "easygoing" in the aforementioned list of adjectives. And when he isn't feeling well? Sweet Christmas gravy (as my friend Ed would say). Things go from mundane to mayhem with astonishing speed. So there's that.
But the other reason that I haven't been doing quite as much knitting, is because actually, I have been sewing. The perfect storm of pets and resident small people has resulted in the near total destruction of a couple of the slip covers for the cushions on the living room couch. I decided that rather than moping about the sad state of one of the few real pieces of furniture we own, I would remember that things are just things and make some new pillow covers. And that I would do so with cheerful resolve. Or something approximating it.
With our big move on the horizon, I decided that said pillows would need to be made entirely out of fabric already in my stash. Of course, I almost immediately decided that I wanted some other stuff too, so I dug through my friend Sarah's stash as well, and between the scraps that we both had, came out with a pretty good pile to work from. This first pillow is actually kind a huge mess. I am the world's laziest quilter, so the pieces are pretty wonky and a lot of the seams don't quite line up. And it turns out that this doesn't bother me all that much. One of my roomates will probably just eat it anyway.
I decided early on in the whole process to ditch the idea of piping and zippers. Something about those features is making the official couch pillows of particular culinary interest to the puppy, and I think it is best to just eliminate temptation. Also, the lazy thing again. This second pillow cover is a little less haphazard than the first, being an actual semblance of a log cabin quilt square. I'm hoping to finish it this evening and bring our sum total of couch pillows back to regular numbers.
In all, I think I'm reasonably happy with how the whole project is going, even if it is taking me a lot more time than I expected. And I seem to have won Mariam's approval, despite her initial declarations that something was kind of off about the whole thing. She appears to have come up with some kind of idea that real grown-ups don't generally rebuild their home decor from scraps of stuff they find in a basket under the desk.
But she is in the other room using fluorescent colored duct tape to resecure her solar system mobile to the ceiling above her bed, so she has no interior design credibility as far as I'm concerned.
Yarning along with Ginny today (well, in spirit at least).
I feel, although perhaps I am being overly sensitive to concerns about being boring, that perhaps my Tea Leaves sweater is officially in that spot where we can't really talk too much more about it until it has sleeves. Which I think will be soon, but only if I can stop falling asleep at the same time as my children in the evening. Talk about a satisfying but wholly unproductive habit. Goodness.
While working away on the new sweater, I have also been making small repairs to old, favorite sweaters. All of them cardigans, because apparently, that is my thing. The long-sleeved t-shirt plus jeans and a cardigan situation is what I'm all about. And if kids, pets and self manage to avoid getting food or dirt on said t-shirt, I will totally sleep in it too. So there. Way more than you wanted to know, yes?
I realized recently that waiting to find buttons that actually matched those that are missing on my sweaters was going to mean that I would never get around to replacing them. And knowing me, I would just wear the buttonless sweater anyway and look unkempt. So, I just started replacing missing buttons with random ones I had available, and it works fine. And gives one some small sense of productivity for having actually gotten something out of the mending pile and back into the closet.
My other favorite thing to do these days is to patch up the tiny holes that seem to be forever appearing in the sleeves of my lightweight sweaters by using a bit of patterned fabric and some double-sided fusible interfacing. It is the laziest possible version of mending something, and although it is by no means super sturdy or anything, it does make a garment servicable once more. Which is totally important if it happens to be your favorite color of blue and you don't want to give it up even though it has something like six holes in the sleeves.
edit to add: Bird and Little Bird has just been nominated for an award in The Homies, over at Apartment Therapy. Would you pretty please visit and cast your vote for my little blog? I don't expect to even make it to the next round, but would love to get just a bit more attention for the projects that I do here (especially Alphabet Glue). Oh! And Ginny from Small Things is nominated as well. You can vote for more than one blog, so give her a thumbs up too if you can. Thanks, all!
Before I launch into my planned mini-tirade about tangled yarn and excessive pet love, can I say a quick thank you to everyone for your lovely reception of the newest issue of Alphabet Glue? I cannot even tell you all how much I appreciate all the kind words about this newest installment. Really.
In knitting news, I have made some good progress on the yoke of the Tea Leaves cardigan. That being said, there is something we need to talk about, and it is this: Madelinetosh is the nicest, most lovely, fluffiest yarn I've ever knit with, but it tangles like nobody's business when you try to wind it into a ball.
I almost have no words for the madness that ensues when I put the skein onto my swift and attempt to tame it into a knittable sphere. This latest skein took me hours to wind into a ball, and the whole time I was trying to figure out what I had done to make such an incredible mess of the whole situation. But then! But then, I put it out there on Twitter, and it turns out that the tangled Madelinetosh is A Thing. All these other folks chimed in saying that it had happened to them too, and they thought that they had done something to make it happen as well. So, I consulted The Google. And guess what? It really is a thing. And apparently knitters the world over already knew about it. But not me. No.
But when yarn is this nice, I suppose that you take a deep breath, and do some kind of curse-free mindfulness practice while you just sort it out.
And then, there is this guy. He has shown, almost from the beginning, a reasonable fondness for things like pets. I'm pretty sure that the dawning of a new day of Cat Love is his purpose for getting out of bed in the morning. But lately, the animal enthusiasm has reached new heights and is becoming almost problematic. Like yesterday, when we stopped to get some pet food at a local farm and yard store that happens to have a resident cat. Baby Z loved the cat, as he apparently does all cats. But he loved it so much that we had to have an epic meltdown about not being able to just climb all over said cat and snuggle it and pet it and nuzzle it indefinitely. This morning, on the way home from the farm, there was crying about not being able to touch the goats.
Believe me, I am all for enthusiasm about whatever you feel like getting enthusiastic about, but leave it to one of my kids to take it to a whole new level.
Good Monday, friends! I am quite happy to announce to you all that Volume Eleven of Alphabet Glue is officially ready to take up residence in your virtual laps. This news actually comes as a bit of a surprise to myself (and the people who live with me) because somehow, this particular issue of the magazine just came together so easily and so naturally and so very well, that the usual last minute panic about whether or not I could manage to get it done on time was suspiciously absent. Indeed, I finished days ahead of schedule. Apparently, wonders truly never do cease.
Volume Eleven has a little bit of each of the things that have made
past issues of Glue such great bookish fun for families. Inside this newest
installment you will find instructions for simple scientific experimentation, imaginative
inspiration for young writers, and paper crafts that manage to toe
the line between whimsical and practical.
I suspect that the reason this issue pulled itself together almost without my noticing is, simply put, because it is really a pretty good one. The projects complement one another nicely, and they are pretty much all of the easy, seat-of-your-pants variety. You could decide to throw them together on a whim, using only materials readily available around your house and yard on a quiet Saturday afternoon.
To read up on the newest issue of Glue and to find out more about what you can expect to find tucked inside its bright and shiny pages, visit the brand new Volume Eleven page here.
And, in recognition of the continued enthusiasm that you all have shown for my beloved little publishing project, I thought we should get a little celebratory giveaway action going. Because I do like to say thank you. Volume Eleven has five new booklists inside, including a list of our family's very favorite books ever. For a chance to win a bundle of five books (a well loved title from each list in this issue), use the widget below to enter. I'll notify the winner on Friday afternoon.
I'm continuing, bit by bit, to knit away at the yoke of my Tea Leaves cardi. Progress is admittedly slow here, but I've been super busy over the last week. So much so that on Monday, around mid-day, I stopped and said aloud to myself, "Today is the busiest day." And it kind of was. But there have been some free minutes for knitting, and so I've made it about forty rows in.
pinhole viewboxes from Volume Eleven
I've also been occupied with tying up the loose ends on Volume Eleven of Alphabet Glue. I'm surprisingly close to being finished, so much so that I might even classify myself as being ahead of schedule this time around. But it never seems to make good sense to do end-of-the-week launches of a new issue, and I'm sure that there are ducks that have escaped the row, so to speak. So, I'll plan for a Monday release.
When not knitting or Gluing, I've been reading. I'm currently about three-quarters of the way through Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott. It turns out to be the perfect book for me to be reading right now, and I've been enjoying every word. "Courage is fear that has said its prayers," she says. Yes, indeed.
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