Glitter Makes Everything Better

My dear friend and dancing mentor (and fibre artist extraordinaire, for which I love her as well), Elinor, headed on a vacation not long ago to see her family. A great lover of trips to the airport, I offered to drive her to her flight and also to pick her up. We joked that we, my dance wife Bonnie and I, would greet her with signs and she said she had never been greeted with signs before and so the plan was set.

Originally Bonnie and I planned on getting either white or colourful bristol board to decorate with welcome home messages. And maybe sparkle it up with glitter. The dollar store had other plans...with school about to start the white bristol board was sold out and a new plan hatched.

We bought black bristol board, glitter, felt flowers and decals. We got back to my place and set up in the back yard

We started painting the letters on with Mod Podge, and just covered it in glitter

Grace wanted to help out so Bonnie set her to coating the felt flowers with glitter spray

And anything else she opted to spray...like her hair, her clothes, the yard, Bonnie...

During the application glitter got everywhere, it was on the yard, the table, even in our coffee

We tried to contain the excess glitter so it could be reused

But it wasn't easy, especially when you miss the bucket

When we were done our hands were covered

As well as everything else.

My backyard looked like Fairies had come by and thrown one hell of a party

But the end result was perfect

And the look on Elinor's face (which I cannot believe I did not get a picture of!) made it all worth it.

Itchy

I have always had the sort of relationship with blogging where I get the urge to post, I map out posts in my head, I plan several posts ahead, I plan series of posts, I have even on occasion done stuff because I knew it would make blog fodder. Not everything would make the blog, but I liked to create posts in my head. I used to take pics just for the blog. Twitter sort of took over that element...my iphone is full of pics I took simply because I wanted to tweet them. I missed blogging though.

When I created this blog I had every intention to blog more often. I even had a great post ready to go about our first week back into the school year. Then stuff happened and I had a different blog post completely done that I could never quite bring myself to post. So that was deleted. And the blog stalled out.

But the last few days I've been...itchy. Itchy to be creative in a way that wasn't knitting, wasn't spinning. I made a new dance bra and thought maybe that was where it was coming from. But that didn't satisfy it. I thought maybe I should haul out my sewing machine and work on stuff there. But that didn't feel right. Finally I pulled out Wreck this Journal and my new one Finish This Book and worked on those for a bit. While I was sketching I realized...I wanted to write. It's been forever since I have properly written.

So I decided to give this blogging thing another go.

Back in September when I was all set to have a great school year and blog about it we were hit damn hard with a family medical emergency. I won't go into details, because that person is intensely private about their life. It did rock me, changed my perspective on what is important and the changes it has brought for my family have been positive as we all heal. The family member who was ill is doing great now, better every day and we are grateful. Blessed.

That set us back in our school year, and since it has felt like every time we get going with our school year we hit a set back. My depression hit me like a truck early in the new year, which made it really hard to get motivated. The twins make getting to school work difficult since they became busy toddlers. As a result we have not accomplished most of what I wanted done this year. But the best part of home schooling is that we can roll with those punches and continue our year on our own schedule and according to my children's needs. They're ahead in some things, behind in others, and we still have goals we need to reach. We will get there, I am sure of it. I'm much better now (better living through chemistry!) and I feel good about where we are and what we need to do.

I joined the executive board the Nova Scotia Home Educators Association, as first chair (go big or go home, lol) and that has proved to be an interesting challenge. I am not sure if I will continue, as there are elements that need to be in place for me to do so, but I would love to see the organization find its feet again. It could be such a great support for the home schooling community, and it has been flailing over the last year or so. I may be a little too optimistic on that front, but we shall see.

I mentioned in a previous post meeting Raina the Halifax Mermaid at World Ocean Day last year. I decided to hire her for Grace's birthday party in March and it was an amazing experience. She and her little sister swam as mermaids with the kids for an hour in the pool, we had cameras and underwater cameras and the kids had a great time. Worth every penny and then some. Cannot recommend hiring a mermaid enough.

A few weeks later my dear friend and fellow knitter and dance teacher had a birthday and hired Raina. This time we sat and drank wine and hung out with a mermaid while dressed in under-the-sea themed outfits. I may have drank too much wine. But we had a blast.

In between there I attended a workshop with Yasmina Ramzy and it was amazing. She is an incredible woman with an incredible history and I learned a lot from her. I also got to bond with my dance family.

And I took a tarot class! Which was really fun and I am enjoying getting to know the cards and learning how to read them. I got a beautiful set of mermaid tarot cards, they are gorgeous.

I've been dancing and knitting and spinning and hanging out with good friends.

The kids are great, they are winding down their activities for the year and we are coming up on year-end recitals, plays and reviews. Cam is in Air Cadets and it has been such a positive experience for him. Grace is finishing her last year in ballet/jazz/tap and looking forward to performing in the recital and then getting to cut her hair. She and Gabriel plan to do circus school as their extra next year. Gabriel has been involved in gymnastics through the rec centre and got to do a course called "All Sorts of Sports" where he gets to try out different things. One week was skateboarding, and he loved it. We may be breaking our "no extras over summer" rule and enroll him in a week long half-day camp in skateboarding. Cam will be away for two weeks in July for cadet camp so if we can plan it to correspond with that and Grace may enroll as well, it would be lovely for all of them.

Things are good on the home front and promise to continue to get better. If we could just pull a lottery win...lol

The Towel

Years and years ago when my relationship with my husband was fairly new, he suprised me one Friday evening with a present. We had been going out long enough that I was there every weekend, but were not yet at the point where my apartment had become just my cat's apartment and a place where I stored my couch. We were exclusive, but not "forever" serious yet.

It was in a pretty gift bag and he seemed pretty pleased with himself. I was pretty pleased to be getting a gift. I opened it up and found....

a towel.

A blue beach towel to be exact.

I was a little confused initially, and must have looked it, because he said "It's for here."

Then I understood. Being a new(ish) girlfriend I had tried not to complain too much about the towel situation, but it was a bit of a problem. He was a single dad and they didn't have a lot of towels, they hadn't needed them, it was just the two of them. The towels they did have were small ones, I liked to be able to wrap my towels right around my body. His were what I'd have called "hair towels", suitable for wrapping turban style around my head to dry my hair, but not for a good post-shower wrap up.

This new towel was big enough to wrap around me. And it was designated "mine", for my use when I stayed the night.

It seems like a small thing, this towel, but looking back the gesture was huge. Phil wasn't just giving me a towel, he was saying "I want you here, I want you to be happy and comfortable and have the things you need while you're here."

It marked a turning point for us...before too much longer I was there several nights during the week as well as weekends. I started bringing my laundry over (including some of my large bath towels) since I was never home long enough to do laundry...and that led to just leaving my clothes there since it was "easier". Before too long we made the decision to just have me move in...there was no sense in me paying rent for my cat. We combined our two households worth of stuff (linens and all), had those big Forever and Ever talks...

Blink your eyes, and it's 9 years and 5 kids later.

Phil's given me many gifts over the years, but only a handful with heartfelt sentiment as powerful as that towel had.

It was an indicator of how sweet and thoughtful he was. That he would think of my needs and do what he could to make sure I was happy. He still does that today. He works hard to provide the necessities as well as the creature comforts for his family.

I'm a very lucky woman. I have the towel to prove it.

Spinning!

A while back I showed off my new wheel, who I have since named "Ashley", but I never did show you what she can do.

The first yarns off my new wheel

The fibre is superwash merino from Yarn Pirate, in the colourway "Culture Club". I split it into 3 equal(ish) parts and spun 3 bobbins up and then started the 3-ply. I ended up with 2 skeins of 3 ply totally 236yards and about 58 yards of 2 ply. It's really soft and lovely.

Because the bobbins on the Ashford are smallish they fill up quickly. I like spinning on it, so for my next project I spun the singles on Ashley and did the plying on Charlotte.

Which resulted in this yumminess

349 yards of merino. The fibre for this was a gift from a friend and it's so pretty. I think this would make really great mittens.

One of the groups I participate in on Ravelry did a swap that coincided with the Tour de Fleece, which is a challenge for spinners to spin every day the Tour de France rides. The swap we did paired spinners with those who don't spin, and the spinners spin up 8oz of fibre into yarn to send to their non-spinner, and in return they get 8oz of fibre. Plus goodies. It's a good swap.

For my partner I asked local artist and belly dancer extraordinaire Uberwench to make something special. I told her I was aiming to spun 4oz of a semi-solid and 4oz of a multi coloured and then ply them together. I told her my partner's colour preferences and sent her off to her dye pots.

This is what she came up with

So pretty...and soft too, a lovely superwash merino.

I spun up the singles on Ashley, resulting in this loveliness

I got busy plying on Charlotte, and the resulting yarns are just amazing

As is typical with my spinning I had way more of one ply than I did of the other, so I divided the leftover multi and got about 189 yards. The 2 colours plied together yielded a whopping 945 yards. Depending on what she knits with it, she could end up up with some pretty subtle striping effect. I love this yarn, it was really hard to send off. But my swap recipient loves it too, and I have been assured that I can get more if I really really want it.

I also started spinning a 16oz lot of a bamboo/merino I bought years ago from The Unique Sheep on Charlotte. I love both wheels, and I am trying to get more spinning time in.

Which is good, because we've just added a fibre-bearing animal to our house hold. Not a sheep though, because even I can admit that would be crazy.

Meet Beatrix MacPoufybottom

She's a 5 month old black english angora. She's super soft and very loveable. I cannot wait to spin her fibre.

Look at those ears though!

No really, look at them!

Awesome.

Deep Fried Deliciousness

Lately the urge to attempt new and exciting things in the kitchen has become overwhelming. I got it in my head that I wanted to try my hand at home made donuts.

A quick google brought me some recipes and I read their reviews to see which one I wanted to try. I wanted something uncomplicated, with clear directions. I looked up info on frying, since I don't have a deep fryer I wanted to be sure I could do this safely.

Side note: since doing this Phil has suggested that we get a little deep fryer so I can make these without all the temperature fussing. Which sounds like a good solid theory. But...way back when I lived with a very good friend and she owned a little deep fryer and I became flat out addicted to making fries. Cutting up potatoes with the skins on, frying them until they are crispy as all get out and liberally dosing them with salt, using three-cheese ranch salad dressing for dip....omg so good.

Yeah. I do not need that kind of temptation again. One of the good things about doing it stove top is that it is kind of a pain in the ass, once in a while thing to do. If I have an easy-peasy deep fryer to work with then that could get dangerous to my waistline damn quick.

Anyway...I consulted with a friend who owns a cafe and makes incredibly good baked goods, and while she hasn't done much with this sort of baked good, she did warn me against making sure my temp didn't dip too low. If the temp is too low then the donuts would absorb too much of the oil and taste funny. Make sure I had a good thermometer.

Armed with that advice I tried my hand at making these beaver-tail style donuts
. The recipe was really easy to follow, and getting to punch down the dough after it rose was a lot of fun



Then you pull off bits of dough and roll them out flat. Usually beaver-tails are quite big, I wanted something smaller and more manageable.

Tip: very carefully lay them into the oil. Dropping causes splashing which causes burns on your fingertips



I thought I had a good thermometer but it turned out that while the one I had was awesome, it didn't go as high as I thought. I did my best to keep an eye on the temp by guessing where it was above the highest temps, but I was concerned about not letting the temp go to high (not wanting to have a kitchen fire. Again). As a result, I think I low-balled it and as a result there was a little bit of weirdness to the taste.

They were still really good. Most of them I coated in cinnamon sugar



They were very well recieved, the whole family enjoyed them.

The last bit I made up a bit of garlic butter to smear over them and topped that with shredded cheese



Those ones were awesome and I'm glad I only made a few of them since it would be super easy to over-indulge in those.

I'm looking forward to trying them again, next time I'll be able to monitor temp better since I bought a new thermometer that clips onto the side of the pot and goes up as high as I need it to.

For my next attempt I used this cake donut recipe. The dough has to be refridgerated for an hour before being fried up, so I mixed it before I went to dance class with the intention of frying it up just before watching the latest episode of True Blood with some knitters. I'm still not entirely what happened, but I suspect that I didn't have enough oil so the temp rose too quickly. The dough I dropped in immediately burned and the oil began to smoke, so the pot was immediately covered and removed from heat (then put outside because it stank).

I gave it another go, being very careful to use enough oil and monitor temp



This dough is rolled out and cut into circles. I used a little biscuit cutter since I was really just making donut holes (do they count as "holes" if you never made the donut part?)



The dough went from flat disks to puffy in the oil. They were then transferred to a pie plate with coffee filters on it to get the excess oil off. Popped them into a baggie with cinnamon sugar to coat them and ta da!



They were so good! The kids loved them! I loved them!

I plan on doing them again, but this time I'll make full sized donuts. The problem with these little bite-sized bits of goodness is that you can eat way more of them then you intended to.

My next kitchen adventures will be scones and then croissants. If you never hear about that again, you can assume it went horribly wrong.

Flutterby

Years ago I worked in Early Childhood Education and in my first or second year of teaching I attended a workshop facilitated by a fantastic teacher who ran a preschool. She was very science-oriented and so many of the things she did with her students were inspiring.

None caught my attention more than the idea of raising butterflies. I tried unsuccessfully to get my director to order some in and while each year I worked in the field I thought "I should really just do it on my own, and share it with the kids" I never got to it. When we started home schooling I re-visited the butterfly idea but again, I never got around to it.

Then a few months ago one of the parents in the home schooling group asked if anyone would be interested in going in on a set of butterfly larvae from Boreal. She received a huge positive response and I think there were a couple sets of 80 ordered. Each family got to take home 10 Painted Lady Butterfly larvae in little cups with food.

Unfortunately for the blog, the delivery date happened the same week we moved. So I didn't get to picture taking of the process until they were in the chrysalis stage. Totally missed the caterpillars, and I regret it. When they arrived they were tiny wee things, just over 1cm in length and no bigger around than fingering weight yarn. Within a week they were big fat things, about 4cm in length and thicker than most bulky weight yarns (but not so big as pencil roving).

Sadly, one of our caterpillars died before he could make a chrysalis. The kids were sort of bummed about that, but it led to a few good chats about life cycles.

The instructions told us we could put gauze or cheesecloth under the lids of the little cups for the caterpillars to attach their chrysalis to, and while most of ours did that, they then promptly fell off once they were totally encased. I taped a strip of gauze to the side of the (empty) fish tank that would be their home and carefully picked up each one and hooked it on to the gauze just like the video showed.

I was not expecting their little bums to start wiggling frantically as I moved them, a surprise that nearly had me dropping them.

Surprise wiggles aside, I did successfully get them situated in the tank and the waiting began



Because that's how life works...most of them emerged while we were out of the house. We came back from Cam's band class to discover we had 5 butterflies hanging out in the tank


The streaks of red are meconium

The instructions told us to make a sugar water solution (5 tbsps sugar to one cup water) and soak cotton balls in it, then put the cotton balls in the habitat for the butterflies to eat from. I hadn't gotten around to buying cotton balls. I thought I had plain cotton make-up pads, but couldn't find those anywhere. I did have something made of clean cotton I could use, and it worked rather well...



Heh. If you can't quite figure out what those are, picture them with a string attached.

The next morning the kids and I are hanging out eating breakfast and Grace exclaims that there are more butterflies in the tank. I do a head count and sure enough, there are two more. We blink and a third has emerged and is shaking out his/her wings. We turn our attention to the last chrysalis, and it is definitely wiggling. As we watch the butterfly's head pokes out and then whoosh! It's out! It happened so quickly I didn't have time to grab the camera. I would have loved to have gotten video of it.



On Saturday our butterflies entered what is now referred to as their "experimental college days". They discovered their mating drive and man alive did they ever act on it. We had been discussing when we were going to set them free, and decided that since they had been mating we should probably get to it sooner rather than later...we wanted them to be able to lay their eggs. Since we were going out to my parents place on Sunday for Father's day, and they have a lovely garden, we opted to release them there.



I took the screen off and we waited for them to take flight. They left in pairs mostly, except the last two. One took off and the last one had to be encouraged to move on (I took a stick and let him climb on, then transferred him into the garden. He did fly off to rest elsewhere though, so I think he's fine).

All in all, it was a great experience. I look forward to next year :)

In which we meet a Real! Live! Mermaid!

Friday June 8th was World Oceans Day so the kids and I got up early and headed over to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic...free admission and all sorts of really cool exhibits.

Our first stop was the Bedford Institute of Oceanography table, where the kids got to explore rocks and sand and got to watch a webcam streaming live from the harbour, in a spot not too far from our house. The staff working the table were awesome, great with the kids and even managed to get Cam involved in the display (no mean feat, seeing as he was really into his role of "moody tween" that day. He also managed to dodge almost all of the pictures I took. One day that kid is going to look at our family albums and complain that we never got any pics of him at family things and I will pull out all the blurry shots of him running out of view).



From there we said hi to Merlin then headed into the main gallery. The big draw for us was Raina, the Halifax Mermaid. She did not disappoint.



I knew Grace would be excited, but I was pleasantly surprised at how into Gabriel was. She gave the kids a little treasure, Grace chose a sea shell and Gabriel chose a smooth green stone which he clutched in his hand the rest of the visit. He even went up later and quietly asked if she could put mermaid sparkles on his face. He was fascinated by her, and it was wonderful to see.

(Frankly, I was too. If you click through to her website you see that you can hire Raina to do birthday parties. Highly tempted to have myself a mermaid party this year.)

(And I have no idea what Cam's thoughts on the mermaid were. Again, moody tween is moody. At one point I told him if he didn't at least try to become engaged in what we were doing I would make a big deal of hugging and kissing him right there in public. He got a bit better after that, lol)

We wandered around the museum a bit, then the kids played with some dead fish



Then we headed outside where we ran into some other home schooling families. We checked out the exhibits outside, collected all sorts of pamphlets and booklets and posters and stickers, chatted with all sorts of interesting people and learned some cool things.

And got pictures with a giant lobster



All in all, a pretty great day out with my kids. The definite highlight was meeting the mermaid. I mean...it's a mermaid. A real live mermaid. Awesome.