Bird and Little Bird

Just in Case...

In the event that you see this guy, and after noticing that he has amassed a considerable collection of green ink stains pretty much all over his person, you find yourself wondering if his mother was allowing him to eat markers or something, I just want to assure you that yes, that is basically what happened. We do what we must.

We are kind of having a week of it around here, and the result is marginally controlled chaos. Dan started his first rotation of residency, and is working an eighty something hour week. Despite being vaccinated, the dog got kennel cough from a dog park encounter (we assume). Daffodil the guinea pig left us for the great hay trough in the sky. And Mariam was the one to find her. There have been various other small indignities as well, but I suspect it is best not to dwell on them.

Because, as always, there have been some nice things too. I sold the too large couch on Craigslist and no longer have to worry about it languishing in storage while I feel guilty about it. I picked up some inexpensive picture frames at the semi-disposable Swedish furniture store and will finally get my favorite of Mariam's artworks framed and on the wall, which will make this place feel like home for certain. We made it to the town pool three days out of four and I just ate a corndog for breakfast.

It's all about balance, friends.

Library Monday: A Little Giveaway for Your Library.

The considerable effort at organizing our recently unboxed wordly posessions continues. Although I tried to go through a lot of our belongings on the Vermont end of things, the reality was that as the move loomed closer and closer, I just ran out of time to be as conscientious and thoughtful about what to bring and what to giveaway as I had hoped.

But, this turns out to be a good thing. Well, for you anyway. Because one of the discoveries that I made as I was unpacking last week was a stack of extra copies of Henry and Mudge titles from my days teaching small literacy groups. There are four different titles represented, and I think that I have enough copies to give away sets of the four books to three interested parties. So, if you would like to fortify your Cynthia Rylant collection a bit (always a recommended course of action, if you ask me) simply leave a comment on this post. I'll pull numbers out of the proverbial hat 'round about Friday or so, and then email folks to get mailing addresses for sending the books. Thanks to all who entered! I'll be in touch with the winners, Christen, Sandra, and Liz via email.

In other news, I have a post up on the Playful Learning blog at the moment. It is an easy recipe for gluten-free play clay, and we are finding that the stuff works great for all kinds of sculpture and model building activities. The clay will be making another appearance (as part of a larger project) in the Alphabet Glue 2013 Summer Science Special, which I am hoping to have ready next Monday, July 1st.

Yarn Along (Picking it Up).

I should begin by saying a thank you to everyone who left encouraging commentary last week on the idea of redoing the bind-off on my crewneck sweater. Weirdly enough, the box containing that sweater hasn't surfaced in the unpacking process just yet, but when it does, I think I will indeed summon my courage and fix it right up. Or at least try.

In the meantime, I continue to work along the bottom edge of my Tea Leaves at a preternaturally slow pace. I'm close, actually, to binding off the bottom of this sweater as well, but I keep making the mistake of doing late evening knitting. After a full day of dog chasing and baby wrangling and house organizing, late evening knitting is the ultimate recipe for disaster. So, my biggest accomplishment for this week thus far? Learning how to pick up dropped stitches in garter.

In my defense, I must say that I have not historically been a stitch dropper. But something about the hem of this project has been causing me to drop stitches like crazy and then not realize it for eight or so rows. I had tried on a couple of previous stitch dropping occasions to dutifully pick up my dropped stitches, but really struggled with the garter, and kept making things so much worse that it ended up being better to frog back to the end of the body section of the sweater. But then, yesterday morning, I finally figured it out. The process is a little persnickety, and I wouldn't suggest doing it for row and rows and rows exactly, but it is definitely better than frogging a dozen rows of sweater width stitching. Goodness.

So, I may not have figured out where to keep anyone's shoes, or managed to unpack any of the boxes piled up in Mariam's room. But I did get something done. That is the official party line anyway.

Yarning along with Ginny today.  Oh, and speaking of Ginny, check out her post from yesterday to download a free project PDF from the latest issue of Alphabet Glue, and to find a coupon code good for 20% off all this week. Good stuff for summer!

Library Monday: If You Want to See a Whale.

A good couple of months before we started even packing up for the big move to Massachusetts, I put some serious restrictions on book procurement for any and all people around here who I am officially in charge of. Myself and the kids, essentially. Dan's book collection habits are an unstoppable force of nature that I wouldn't even try to harness. So, new books have been few and far between for the smalls these last few months, and any exceptions to this rule have been notable ones.

Which is to say, that if you are looking for a picture book truly worth its shelf space, If You Want to See a Whale by Julie Fogliano (with illustrations by Erin E. Stead) is an excellent choice indeed. I had heard enough buzz about this book even before it was in print, that when it actually became available, I just couldn't help but snap up a copy for our shelf. I have no regrets.

If You Want to See a Whale is a lyrical exploration of the finer points of watching for an extraordinary thing to happen; an ode to patience, perserverence, and the benefits of a watchful eye. The text reads almost like poetry, and the softly colored illustrations are simultaneously subtle and expressive. The story is a simple one- it chronicles the quest of a small boy and his dog as they set about whale watching- but the words on each page serve as invitations to a larger tale, just on the horizon of the reader's imagination. And despite the fact that this particular picture book is ideal for the younger reader, my chapter book eating nine-year old read through it immediately upon its arrival, and then wanted me to do the same (so that I could understand what she meant when she told me how very, very good it was).

If You Want to See a Whale is a whimsical and humorous guide to the finer points of nature observation (not being distracted by pirates, for example), but it is also a nice reflection on approaching the world with wide-eyed wonder and expecting to meet magic.

Rainy Days and Neighborhood Explores.

I have begun to accept the fact that it might actually not stop raining. Ever. It is marginally easier to regard this situation with cheerful resignation when I think about the fact that my children look very cute in their semi-matching rain jackets. The baby likes his very much, and regularly asks to put it on so that he can wear it around the house.

Since it seems that it will be raining always, we have been just going about our business with some expectation of being wet, and maybe a little cold. I have been letting the kids wear whatever shoes they want and haven't said a word about avoiding puddles. Really no point. Yesterday Mariam tromped through about six inches of water along the edge of the sidewalk as we walked to the farmer's market in the afternoon. It is a tiny market by any objective standards, but it is also a few hundred feet from our front door. Seriously. And we were able to get everything that we needed for dinner, including some haddock filets from a local lobsterman. Then we walked home in the rain, which took about a minute and a half.

 

For today's explore, we visited our new local library and got our library cards. We also grabbed a copy of Regarding the Fountain, which will likely be next in the read-aloud cue after we finish the second Mysterious Benedict Society book. I love Regarding the Fountain, and can't believe we've never read it together. Although I think it is sort of a perfect end-of-third-grade read, so perhaps that is why.

Oh, and the blur of baby in a blue rain jacket pictured above? A pretty accurate representation of what the world looks like from my point of view basically all the time these days.

Yarn Along (Hidden Not-So Treasure).

One of the seemingly inevitable "gifts" of the moving process is the discovery of things long forgotten, often purposely, and for fairly good reasons. This sweater, for example. It is an Oatmeal Pullover, knit from cream colored O-Wool and it had been stashed inside a canvas tote bag on the top shelf of my closet for approximately two and a half years, completely finished with the notable exception of half a sleeve that would probably prove useful if a person ever wanted to actually wear said sweater.

So why abandon a very nearly finished and objectively kind of attractive sweater to the lonely, dark cavern of my closet after hours and hours of knitting it? Well. The thing is that this particular pattern called for using a sewn bind-off, and due to it either being a strange technique or to the possibility of user error (ahem) the end result is the worst bind-off ever. I can't even bring myself to look at it. So, the closet. Inside a bag to further decrease the possibility of catching a glimpse of it. I would be brave and show you a photo of the sweater's hem, except that we are still only about 80% unpacked and I can't actually find the sweater right now. But I know that I will soon, and then I'll need to decide what to do with it. Closet space being limited here, I'm thinking that I will probably need to just get brave and fix it. But I haven't ever undone a bind-off, and I'm wondering how that even works. Anyone? If you have words of wisdom, I am all ears.

And half-finished sleeves, of course.

Yarning along with Ginny today.

Budgies and Birdseed.

Towards the end of last week, as the pile of boxes appeared to be magically multiplying itself everytime that I turned my back on them, we decided that we very much needed to do the one thing that made good sense: ditch the entire operation for a few hours and go to the zoo. I have complicated feelings about zoos, if we are being honest, but I also think that sometimes there is nothing in the world that will make you happier than feeding a parakeet with birdseed stuck to a popsicle stick.

Additionally, the word "budgerigar" is remarkably difficult to pronounce properly. Go ahead, try it.

 

This guy, on the other hand, has no complex relationship with the idea of animals in captivity. He knows exactly what he thinks and what he thinks is that it is the most amazing idea. This was his first zoo experience, and when he caught on to what was actually happening there, he very nearly lost his ability to function. He just stood with his feet firmly planted in place, waving his arms and yelling at tree kangaroos with an unbridled joy so intense I thought he might fall over. It was something to see. Total strangers shook their heads with laughter and said things like "Wow. He is excited!"

 

Oh, and did you know that you can do more than feed parakeets with leftover popsicle sticks? True story. You can also make harmonicas out of them. The baby is somewhat less impressed by this trick than the bird thing, though.

On the Other End.

Howdy, strangers! I had all the best of intentions of popping in here a little more often over the last week or so, but then everything got all sorts of insane and I um, did not do that. This was by far our most disastrous move to date, and I don't think that I am being overly dramatic in claiming that more things went unexpectedly wrong than not.

The day of the move was 93 degrees, and the air conditioning in the house was broken when we arrived, making the third floor bedrooms in the house well over 100 degrees. And then then movers didn't show up, and the stairs into our apartment turned out to be stunningly narrow (and at a 90 degree angle to the door), totally eclipsing the chance of fitting the new couch into the house. Or any couch, actually. Somehow, knowing that the old couch wouldn't have fit either makes me feel just incrementally less sad.

But we are here, and so it most of our stuff. Which, by the way, I now feel mostly obsessed with trying to get rid of because moving it was hard. And I don't want to do it again. Ever. But then my feelings about getting rid of All the Things get all mixed up with my feelings about how nice it is to have a wooden goose to play with, or the right size knitting needles when you need them.

Speaking of which, the knitting basket is unpacked, and tucked away in a dining room corner. So that's nice. Also nice is all of the sweet feedback people have been sending my way about the new issue of Alphabet Glue! I haven't had as much time to share the new issue as I usually do, but it seems that you all are really enjoying this one and knowing that has made this challenging week feel a whole lot better. So thank you! I like it too, but it is always nice to know that you agree!

Okay, I have to go assemble furniture and what not. But I'll be back. Promise.

Alphabet Glue: Volume Thirteen

Believe me when I say that no one is more surprised than I am to hear the news that in spite of all the packing and the sorting and the moving across various state lines and then unpacking and sorting some more, there is a new issue of Alphabet Glue ready. Right this minute. Indeed, in the midst of all the madness (and I can assure you, it really was madness), I put the finishing touches on Volume Thirteen of Alphabet Glue. It probably helped that I started working on it the very day that I launched Volume Twelve. And after I finished this newest installment, I proceeded to engage in all sorts of internet wizardry to make sure that it could launch itself this morning, even if I found myself without internet, or coffee, or shoes. Or all of the above.

 

Volume Thirteen is simple summer fun at its finest. Cool kid science activities, fun printables, four fantastic new themed booklists, basic bookmaking projects for storytellers and naturalists alike. Good, good stuff. And from freezer-free ice cream to handmade insect encyclopedias, you can find it all right here.

Which, of course, I hope that you will do.