hand-made doll for a four year old

Since watching the magical slideshow of Kiki and Coco in Paris this summer I have been obsessed with making a doll for my three-now-four year old's birthday.

Now we too can have idyllic adventures, charming doll in hand as she does adorable things like jump on the couch, get her haircut, and (I'm most excited about this one -) sleep.

I must concede that it might not totally be the same, seeing that we are not in Paris but rather suburban California, nor am I a professional photographer with a fabulous eye for adorableness (although I do have a very adorable 4 year old subject. :) )

Also, I need to convince the child that this doll is better than the hand-me-down Barbie (with a chewed-off hand thank you very much family dog) she currently favors.

I guess you just can't force love.

Good luck, Daisy.

(To see where Coco's gorgeous doll was made - shown in the link at the beginning of the post - look at Jess Brown's beautiful blog. Unbelievable.)

Happy Thanksgiving

Sweep the house clean,

hang fresh curtains

in the windows

put on a new dress

and come with me!

The elm is scattering

its little loaves

of sweet smells

from a white sky!

Who shall hear of us

in the time to come?

Let him say there was

a burst of fragrance

from black branches.

William Carlos Williams - Love Song

Paul Klee Landscape

We did Paul Klee in my daughter's second grade class this week - it was really fun. Here was my lesson plan, in conjunction with this slideshow that I've shared on slideshare (note: I have about an hour to teach the lesson, and I aim for our discussion/slide part to last for about 5 minutes, so it's not super in-depth. Also the kids are seven. :) If you were doing this with older kids, you could add more detail, etc. to the discussion.)

Paul Klee & the Color Wheel: slide discussion

-Understanding color is important as an artist. If you learn the language of color, you can use it to convey a feeling, provoke emotion, highlight certain details, or even to give your picture a temperature.

-Three colors - called primary colors - are the basis for the color wheel. These three colors can be mixed together (along with black and white) to create pretty much any color you can think of. RED, YELLOW, BLUE. (If there are kids in the class who happen to have shirts on that are R, Y or B, it's kind of fun to have them come & stand in front of the class).

-When you put opposite colors against each other, it makes the other color POP (complementary colors. Again, you can call kids up based on the colors of their shirts to demonstrate - for instance, put a kid wearing an orange shirt back to back with a kid wearing a purple shirt)

-Warm colors are red, yellow, orange; Cool are blue, green, violet. Warm colors feel like they are moving forward, while cool colors tend to make things look further away. (Have the kids close their eyes and think of the coldest place they can think of - and then have them describe the colors they see in this place; likewise with a hot place. These kids were talking about how your lips turn blue when you get cold, and how volcanos spit out red fire.)

-An artist who loved color was the great Paul Klee (1879 - 1940), a swiss artist who painted in the 1900’s. He used color as a language, to create a sense of place in his pictures (the Tunisian watercolors) or of temperature (The Nile painting - the blue and white squares tell the story of a cool river - we know it's water looking at it, even though we don't see the shape of an ocean or stream). We can guess how he felt about what he painted by studying the colors he used.

Project:

materials: small piece of watercolor paper (about 4" x 6"); Red, Yellow, Blue and Gold liquid watercolors (you just need a TINY amount of this kind of paint. We passed out little cups, with about a tablespoon of paint in each, and put one cup on each child's desk, with a paintbrush in it. The kids shared the colors with the kids sitting around them. Note that the paintbrushes stay with the paint, not with the child, as the cups move around so the colors don't get muddled), brushes (small are best); little cups or bowls to hold the paint

1. Pass out paper, & have kids write name, teacher, and grade on the back. Then have them draw a grid. (Note: in the interest of time, you may want to guide the kids to make about six lines total. Lots of lines make a more detailed painting - which is awesome - but it will take longer to finish). No one needs to worry about their lines being perfectly straight or even - imperfect is best with this project.

2. Creative thinking: have the kids take a second before they start painting to think about what they want to say with their art. Do they want to make a picture of a hot place? Or of someplace cold? Or of a place that's both of those things? Or make a picture that feels happy, or serious? Do they want to add any shapes like Klee did (look at the Tunisian paintings to see the domed roofs, or the volcanos...). If they want, they can create a horizon line to separate the earth from the sky...

3. Let the kids go to town painting. Guide them to try and use different colors in every square so they play around with mixing the colors right on their paper. The liquid watercolors are so vivid that it's really interesting to see what you get when you layer them on top of each other.

Holiday Fair, and sad realization

In classic Lynne-style, I volunteered (along with many others) to make a bunch of little crafts for the school to sell at their Holiday Shop this year. No problem, I thought. You'd like 20 from each crafter? Why, it will be a pleasure to plan on bringing 40! I like making things, and the right kind of craft can sometimes, if you happen to find yourself completely alone, take mere moments to assemble. That was back in August, when I had all the time in the world - a baby who took looong naps, and school days which hadn't filled themselves up. Now however December is almost upon me, with a myriad of other really big projects also on my plate - and so I found myself wandering the aisles of Michael's, panic surging through my veins.

I happened upon a little packet of blank bookmarks right next to the pretty Martha Stewart stickers, and the quick-craft lightbulb clicked on in my head. Bookmarks + stickers= easy and perfect!

It was only as I was driving away from the store that I realized:

I have become the out-of-touch mother who thinks that kids want to buy a bookmark at a holiday gift fair.

I'll have to remember not to put my name on them. I'll tell my kids I brought the candy cane reindeers. :)

Quicky A-Line Skirts

My seven year old is growing too fast. She is like a very cute and emotional weed. So I made her some skirts this week, because I happen to be a firm believer that kids need to wear clothes that cover their bums. Here's a quick run-down of my very unprofessional hack-save-as-much-time-as-possible technique:

1. Measure around the hips. I couldn't find my tape measure so I used a ribbon.

2. Choose your fabric. Skirts require surprisingly little - for my daughter's skirts, I used half a yard. (By the way, the fabric: Heather Ross's Far Far Away II that I've been hording, and some Echino dots. I think a heavier weight of fabric works best with this kind of skirt). Fold your piece lengthwise in half, and then in half again (visualize when you fold in half the first time that you are making the back of the skirt (on the bottom), and the front of the skirt (the top) - and then for that second fold, you'll be folding the whole thing right down the middle. Sorry, is that really confusing? It's kind of late as I write this). Using the same idea, fold your ribbon in half and then in half again, and put the edge of it on the top of the fabric, lined up with that middle fold. Mark the end of the ribbon (or, probably in your case, a tape measure) with chalk. The ribbon represents the waist, and on the right side of the fabric is the fold (see picture below).

3. Take a yardstick, and line it up perpendicularly from the end of the waist. Determine the angle you would like for the A-line. Totally up to you how much you want it to flare it out. Also determine how long you want the skirt to be. Mark accordingly with chalk, and cut through all four layers of the fabric on the sides. Round the bottom.

4. Unfold the fabric. It should look like this:

5. Sew the side seams. If you have an extra two minutes, you can zig zag the edges to neaten the inside - I didn't here, and it made the threading of the elastic a little bit more difficult.

6. Hem the bottom (my quick trick on these skirts: zig zag as close to the raw edge as possible, then flip the hem under just once and stitch with a straight stitch).

7. For the waist, fold over the edge twice to make a neat casing (like a tunnel) for your elastic, and sew, leaving a small space open to thread the elastic into. Because of the a-line of the skirt, it will seem a little bunchy when you fold it over, but persevere! Once you thread the elastic in to the skirt the waist will all be bunchy. On purpose.

8. Measure your daughter's waist with your elastic. You want the elastic to actually hold the skirt on so don't make it too long that it just slips off.

9. Once you've determined the right length for the elastic, use a safety pin to thread it through the casing. Stitch the elastic in place (I kind of like to make the front of the skirt flatter, with most of the elastic gathers in the back), and voila, all done. If you are not interrupted by a sad baby, mad that she wasn't allowed to eat buttons from the button jar, you may even finish this in less than thirty minutes.

Anthology

Do you know about Anthology? I bought a subscription a couple of months ago when I heard about it, and happily found the first issue in my mailbox Saturday. Every page (literally. even the scant ads were beautiful) was a pleasure to read, and the photography was gorgeous. I hope lots of people buy this magazine because I would be SO SAD if they stop publishing this!

(I loved the illustrations that went with their article on making a cutting garden)

internet fun

Hi friends! This week I am having a blast, as my parents are visiting. We've been zipping around with the kids to lessons, making my mom's christmas cards, and of course the most important way of being busy - doing lots of sitting with hot chocolate and good conversation. I'm so glad they are here.

I've been showing my mom some of my favorite links, and thought I'd post a handful:

Heather Ross's brilliantly written mouse story (seems ever so appropriate given a recent unpleasant incident at our house with a toaster. Ahem.)

Dream trip with doll

I love Design Mom - this interview, "The Beautiful Design of Motherhood"

My mom had never seen The Purl Bee! This project has her name written all over it.

My son could watch this every five minutes and still laugh. (OK, me too - I love Bear Grylls.)

How easy it is to download free fonts onto your computer

Is anyone else addicted to this Sunday night show? Inspector Lewis is our favorite. Wait, I take that back, maybe Wallander. And seriously, how can you not feel giddy listening to Alan Cumming's scottish accent?

What are you reading this month?

...only 18 days until Harry Potter comes out in the theater - which means it's time to re-read The Deathly Hallows (what a fun task!)

...just finishing Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Excellent, rich book. So great, especially if you love all things England & Tudors. Might make you hungry for baked mushrooms in cream.

...dying to get More Last-Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. I am still the world's worst knitter, but it doesn't stop me from enthusiastically starting (and subsequently abandoning) a new knitting project about every other week.

...did you know that you can take free college classes online (not for credit, but for personal benefit) from lots and lots of universities? I just finished a great one from my alma mater BYU (here's the link to the list of their free classes) - and here is a link that will take you to a list of other universities' classes, including Tufts, Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT. So awesome!! I think I'm going to start this one next. The best part of course is that there are no grades and no deadlines - it's all for the pure pleasure of learning. I love it.