Rediscovering Birth

This past week I finally finished reading Rediscovering Birth by Sheila Kitzinger. I've had this book for some time and have flipped through it more than once because it has great pictures and some good quotes as well. It is a big hardback book (sort of coffee table style), which makes it heavy to hold up while lying on my side in bed to read. Hence, the reason it took like 2 years to make it off my to-read bookshelf.

I then treated myself to Things I Learned from Knitting , which was a birthday gift from me to my mom. It is by the Yarn Harlot and was just as funny as her others. And, yes, though this is a humor book about knitting, I still marked two sections because they had potential to develop into analogies about birth. LOL! We all have our obsessions! One was about cooking a mushroom stroganoff and the other about chance of death via legal execution....Watch and wait with baited breath for how I relate these to birth in a complicated and yet ingenious manner ;-) I won't be posted these for a while, since they aren't at the top of my to-do list, but someday, I promise...

The whole gnome family...

A couple of weeks ago I posted about our family wide gnome making project and included a picture of my gnome and her baby. I took a picture of the whole gnome family and wanted to share it too...


Z's is on the left (I made it too. The pants were a "creative" hot glue operation involving excessive gluing and then cutting them into a pants shape around the glue lines, LOL!), then M's, then mine, and then L's. I ADORE L's exuberant little guy (the red one). He made the whole thing himself, except for wrapping the legs with yarn, which I did for him. He painted it in his own special way and made the clothes and everything. Maybe it doesn't come across in the photo, but this little gnome completely cracks me up. The life and zest in it is unbelievable. L has tired of it already for the most part, but for a while he played with it a lot and it was always sitting with its legs at some wonky angle and that goofy, wonderful grin on its little face. It made me laugh every time I came across it--so unselfconscious and so insane looking. So much fun!

Speaking of more crafts, I got this book from playgroup a couple of weeks ago and last week the boys and I cooked up these fabulous knight helmets out of old cereal boxes. They were really fun to make. Then we also made "knight bread" and ate it with jam (it was really an Irish brown bread recipe from Parents magazine). I also made L a pizza box breastplate/armor, but it was less stunning than the helmets, LOL! In progress is a paper towel and toilet paper tube castle, but L is sick of painting it, so it may never reach its full glory. I know I have been known to scoff mightily at what I call "paper cup dog crafts," but with little guys, sometimes it is fun to just make stuff out of cardboard that can be finished in 20 minutes, instead of laboring over a "real" craft that they quickly burn out with and I am left in a, "leave me alone and let me FINISH this" mode instead of a family fun mode.

I close with a Zen calendar quote:

"In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you love? How deeply did you learn to let go?"

--Buddha

Maybe I should add, "how well did you construct playthings from cardboard?" ;-)

Aren't they sweethearts?!

Gnome Lady & Baby

We had a family wide gnome making project going on this week. Here's mine:

Isn't she a cutie? (the picture is kind of blurry.) Here is a close up (also blurry):


I have new project ideas brewing that are better than this (though she turned out pretty good despite all the shortcuts I took with her and my lack of proper materials) and have been poring over the books I already have: Feltcraft, The Nature Corner, and Making Dolls, while eagerly awaiting the arrival of two more from Amazon (as well as an expensive passel of doll making supplies winging their way here from Australia). I have visions of adorable dolls dancing in my head!

Knitted Farmyard!

If you recall, in November I posted about the winter issue of Living Crafts magazine and the glorious knitted farm playmat depicted therein. I also referenced the crafting skills of my lovely and talented mother (who is a capital K, Knitter). I confess to thinking the knitted farmyard was a little out of her range of talent, but lo and behold, what was waiting for my boys on Christmas morning?! This lovely item of beauty and joy forever!
Yes, knitted! And, knitted in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas only. Told you she was a Knitter! (In a sidenote testimony to my mom's powers of Knitting, her warmly knitted socks cured me of the chillblains I used to get on my toes each winter.)

Here are some more detail pix. The garden has little felted carrots! And yes, that is Jabba the Hutt frolicking there in the field...
Speaking of crafts and my talented mama, registrations for Shannondale Craft Camp are in full swing. We think this will be the best year ever!

I know I haven't posted about books recently, but I have been reading a lot and have a pile of to-blog-about reads. However, I also have a baby with the stomach flu and thus not much time for posts requiring thinking/analysis.

Living Crafts

My aunt bought our family a gift subscription to the new magazine Living Crafts for Christmas. I saw this advertised in the last Brain, Child issue and was instantly intrigued. Anyway, the premiere issue did not disappoint. I loved it! Then my mom borrowed it and loved it too. My mother is perhaps the most skilled and multitalented craftsperson I've ever met, so I wasn't sure much could impress her, but she really loved the magazine a lot as well and wants it back from me to look through some more.

The centerpiece of this issue for me is the uber-cool knitted farm playmat. Oh. My. Goodness. A total masterpiece (a tribal masterpiece as 12 women collaborated throughout the country to make it). Fascinatingly cool. My grandma was visiting for Thanksgiving and took home the pattern, so I'm crossing my fingers for future knitted farm coolness for my boys to play with! ;-) (they referred at the article's end to this The Knitted Farmyard book). There was also an interesting and inspiring article about prayer beads. I have more beads and charms than I know what to do with, so I sense a new project in my future!

There was also a pattern for a Waldorf-ish valentine doll that made me consider trying my hand at making something like that again. My past attempts have been pathetic, but I really think it is because I have never used the real tricot fabric you're supposed to use for their faces--I always just use some random knit and it doesn't work right at all.

Okay, sick-Molly does not a fascinating blogger make. Time for bed!

KnitLit

This afternoon I finished reading a delightful little volume of KnitLit (too). The shortest synopsis is that it is a collection of essays/stories about knitting (and the components thereof--so some essays were about wool, yarn, or sheep). You would think I would only read books like this if I was a Knitter. One of the essays even says as much. However, I'm not really, but I do have a Knitter for a mother and hence, the passage of this book into my hands (and if I get a book, I read it, even if I lack the proper capitalization credentials to do so!). This was a nice collection of stories and I enjoyed it. Some were funny, some were a little sad, some were whimsical, and so forth. Someday I might even be a Knitter too...

Celebrating Pregnancy through Art

I'm excited to be presenting a session about Celebrating Pregnancy through Art at a retreat this weekend. During the session, I let each participant paint a pregnant woman figurine to keep (I make batches of plain white plaster ones up in advance). Anyway, I thought I'd share one of them here. This one is painted in my signature "placenta red" ;-) She has a labyrinth on her belly as a metaphor for birth compared to traditional linear, medical models of birth (such as bell curves and plastic dilation charts).

Related reading: Pam England's wonderful "LabOrinth"
article.

Yarn Harlot

Finished reading another loaner from my mom by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee called Yarn Harlot. It was great as well, though some of the essays seemed a little familiar, like parts of them were in her other book (?). Regardless, it was funny, cute, and true! Again, I feel an urge to unearth my scarf project from two years ago. I'm worried I forgot how to knit though...

At Knit's End

A few days ago, I finished a cute little book called At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much. My mom lent it to me and I now have renewed appreciation of her lovely gifts of hand knit socks :-) Before, I didn't really understand why she was a bit agitated when I neglected to wear slippers with the socks, now I get it better! I also feel like knitting something...

Back to the book though--It is a "meditation of the day" style of book. Each is one short page (a couple span two) that opens with a carefully slected quote, then a short application to knitting, and closing with a meditation/affirmation/thought for the day type of thing. Anyway, it is SO cute, funny, and TRUE! I loved it (I don't even consider myself a knitter--I think many people would enjoy the book, regardless of their knit-commitment). The quotes she chose to open each page were gems and her own thoughts were pretty great as well. I intended to copy some of the quotes I liked so much here, but my baby is fussing and I need to get him instead of typing!