The Self-Budgeted Birthday Party

The birthday budget: By letting her kids plan their own parties, this mom helps them learn the value of a dollar, by Pauline Childs:

[Emma] really wanted a store-bought Barbie cake (with a real doll in the middle!). It would cost $40 and serve just eight people. I tried to explain how extravagant this was when you really thought about it, especially since we'd need to buy another cake to have enough for everyone. She looked at me and said, "But it's my birthday. How come I don't get to decide what to spend money on?"

She had a point. Suddenly, an idea occurred to me: why not just set a party budget and let the birthday boy or girl decide how to use it?

Thanks to Lisa Kothari of Peppers and Pollywogs for the link.

So far, we've not had many issues with keeping Lucia's birthday parties small and simple. She's certainly had ideas for larger parties after attending other people's more elaborate shin-digs, but for the most part, has been fine with our simple affairs.

I haven't had a birthday party gig in quite awhile. While that's not great for my business, I do hope that it means families are discovering creative ways to celebrate birthdays that are both enjoyable and inexpensive.

The Little Match Girl--A Disney/Pixar Film

This weekend is Bede's third annual GoPlay Northwest gaming convention, and while he's come home late at light, Lucia and I are pretty much on our own during the day. School's out, camp hasn't yet begun, so I decided we'd do something we don't normally do: watch movies!

Lucia saw Disney's version of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid for the first time on Friday, and we found this short film on the DVD based on Andersen's The Little Match Girl directed by Roger Allers, with music by Alexander Borodin:



You may read more about the film, including an interview with Roger Allers, in an article by Ron Barbagallo called Shedding Light on the Little Matchgirl. I have written permission from the author to link it here.

School librarians reassigned to classrooms

From the Seattle Times article Reassigned school librarians get attention beyond Bellevue, by Katherine Long:

[Sandy] Livingston, the Sammamish librarian, echoed UW professor [Michael] Eisenberg's analysis: that a library without a librarian is just a depository of books. Among other things, school librarians help guide students to credible sources of information on the Internet, and teach them how to decide if a source they've found online is legitimate or not.

When I worked for King County Library System, I visited the Bellevue, Washington elementary public schools for summer-reading program visits. The librarians were knowledgable, in touch with their students, and maintained excellent library collections. Many of the students were avid readers. Had I gone the school librarian route, the Bellevue School District would have been a dream location.

Once upon a time.

Science to Science-Fiction to Silliness

New York Times article: Vatican’s Celestial Eye, Seeking Not Angels but Data, by George Johnson:

Last year, in an opening address at a conference in Rome, called “Science 400 Years After Galileo Galilei,” Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the secretary of state of the Vatican, praised the church’s old antagonist as “a man of faith who saw nature as a book written by God.” In May, as part of the International Year of Astronomy, a Jesuit cultural center in Florence conducted “a historical, philosophical and theological re-examination” of the Galileo affair. But in the effort to rehabilitate the church’s image, nothing speaks louder than a paper by a Vatican astronomer in, say, The Astrophysical Journal or The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

While we're on the subject of outer space, let me call attention to a poem about the astronomer Tycho Brahe that my mom reintroduced to me during my Santa Fe visit: The Old Astronomer, by Sarah Williams. I suspect my first exposure to the poem might have come through Madeleine L'Engle in one of her Crosswicks journals, but I'm not sure. (Those of you with fresher memories, do you know?) The lines that resonate:

Though my soul may set in darkness,
it will rise in perfect light.
I have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night.

When we were in Santa Fe, Bede and I went out one night to look at the stars. We could see them clearly as we were far away from the city lights. Like so many others, we wished we could go out to the stars. We're convinced we're not alone in the universe, but think it's probably no mistake that we're all so far apart. Look what we do on our own planet.

Speaking of our own planet, I just picked up The Many Colored Land, by Julian May. It's a science-fiction novel published in the early 1980's about people in the future who decide to travel back in time on a one-way ticket to the Pliocene epoch in the hopes of living out the rest of their lives without being pestered. Instead, they encounter enslavement by an alien race that landed on Earth as part of their own exile. It's up to our intrepid heroes to save Earth from those dastardly aliens so they don't ruin it for the humans millions of years later.

I'm surprised that no one has yet made a television series out of this concept. I suspect that if they did, they'd change the epoch so they could fit in dinosaurs somehow a la Land of the Lost.

Young Enough for Nancy Stewart

From a conversation I had with Lucia yesterday evening:


Me: Nancy Stewart is coming to the Madrona Library on July 1. Do you want to go, or are you too old for Nancy concerts?

Lucia: I'm still young enough. [Pause.] I will never be too old for Nancy concerts. I will be one hundred and two.

Fairy Hut and Double Rainbow

I didn't take many photos of Santa Fe this time around. However, I did document my first clay fairy house:


Only my 2 inch child-sized dolls fit in the house


The roof comes off

On the way home from a potluck, we saw a double-rainbow break forth from the clouds. Photographing rainbows is rarely satisfying, but I couldn't help trying nonetheless:


Can you see the second rainbow? It's outside of the main rainbow.

Santa Fe 2009

Greetings from Santa Fe, New Mexico! The first few days we spent in recovery mode: recovery from sickness, financial stress, the long lists of things we have to do, plus the long months of soggy coldness that have pervaded Seattle (though the last week of school was quite warm). We've gone to a birthday party and a potluck. Sunday, we went to Mass at the beautiful St. Francis Cathedral, which so far is the only Catholic church I've visited that rings bells during the Consecration of the Eucharist. (Last year, I had to ask Lucia not to sing along with the bells.) Yesterday, we visited with two of my mom's colleagues and worked with clay. I created a small fairy house with a removable roof, which I had been planning ever since I found out that we were going to have Clay Day. I'll post a photo after we return to Seattle.

Today, we walked two miles in a nature conservancy and tomorrow we're going to Canyon Road to look at art galleries and visit the Tea House. For Canyon Road, Bede and I are planning to leave Lucia with her grandma while we explore.

I've worked on some dolls while I'm here. I finished the Night Queen with her Star Child, and made a Cloud Child for the Day King. I've also stitched my first saint doll: St. Rose of Lima, patron of embroiderers, needleworkers and gardeners. In the St. Francis Cathedral, I noted that Rose of Lima was depicted holding a guitar. It turns out that in addition to her other talents, she was noted for composing mystical poetry and playing it on her guitar. Take a look at this photo, and you'll see the icon. It's second from the left on the top row.

Song of the Week: Quelqu'un m'a dit

I heard the music of singer/song-writer Carla Bruni four weeks ago in a local shop. She was born in Italy, but became a French citizen. Two years ago, she married the French president Nicholas Sarkozy. Her music has been circling through my brain, and in particular, the song "Quelqu'un m'a dit" has taken up residence. Here is Bruni performing the song live:



I found an English translation of the song which you may read here. While the particulars are helpful to know, I don't think one needs the translation to understand that the song is about hope and longing.

Next week's postings will probably be sparse as the family is going on vacation to Santa Fe for a week. However, I plan to spend some time with my blogroll and catch up on your lives and books.

Crafty Thursday: Poor Robin's Shop

Just so you know, Poor Robin, Blogapotamus Rex's joyful, colorful shop of button bracelets and other adornments is having a "Yart Sale" (yard+art) in which she is offering free shipping until Sunday, June 14. Blogapotamus is shipping from England.

Even though I hardly wear jewelry these days, I gave into temptation and bought her Panic Under the Big Top bracelet with some of my shop earnings:


Photo by Lucia


I admire the Spotty Dotty Hanky Panky but I shall resist in the event you become smitten with it.

I'm not posting any new dolls in my own shop because I'm going to put it in vacation mode from June 11-21, but this Day King doll will go in the shop after I return:





The plan is to make a cloud child, and then also have a Night Queen with accompanying star child in a separate listing.

Low Tide

Today's field trip

Fourth Annual 48HBC Results

It's past 1 pm, and my part in the Fourth Annual 48 Hour Book Challenge is done. I'm glad for the chance to have given myself permission to read in lieu of other activities. For awhile now, I've focused on guitar and sewing to the exclusion of reading, and while I don't regret that focus, reading has always been my first love. When I was very little, I was puzzled by grownups quietly holding rectangular objects in front of them. When I grew older, I memorized books so thoroughly that I thought I knew how to read. I was a bit disgusted in first grade when the teacher called me up to read to her and I didn't recognize the words. My mom told me that she said to someone, "I'm afraid Farida will never be a reader." [Edited to add: What I should have clarified with this vignette was that she was worried I wasn't going to be a reader because I didn't show much interest in reading in first grade, not that I wasn't going to be able to read. My mom at first didn't recall this vignette, but once she realized the intent of my words, the memory started to come back.]

Between first and second grade, I moved from the suburbs where I'd lived at my grandmother's house back to the house on the mountain in the middle of the woods. I looked at the familiar books on the shelves and realized that this time I really did know how to read them. I was seven years old, and still stumbled over a lot of words, but knew enough to be able to figure out words in context.

My mother brought home a stack of books from the library, and I read them. She brought home more books, and I read more. Books became an escape. I trust that plenty of good readers have had satisfying school experiences, but I was not one of them. In looking back, I wonder if I would have been such an avid reader had I not been so miserable in school. Summers were a welcome relief. Aside from one interesting week at a Brethren bible study camp*, I had unfettered time to read.

Enough preamble! Here is the finish line and here are the results of my 48 Hour Book Challenge:

June 5, 2009

The Princess and the Goblin—George MacDonald
I first read this book as a child, and enjoyed it just as much as an adult. I didn’t realize as a child that Princess Irene’s great grandmother in the book was a powerful Mary figure, but I do remember then as now longing for such a wise, magical presence in my life. I’d forgotten some of the humorous bits in the story. My favorite one is when Curdie, the miner’s son, grabs at a goblin’s foot and the goblin thinks a beast from the wall came out and licked him.

Total time: 1 hour 10 minutes

The Lizard Cage—Karen Connelly
Months after it was loaned to me, I finally read this gripping story of Teza, a Burmese prisoner jailed for his political songs and the 12 year old boy he befriends and helps set free. I’ll be thinking about this story for awhile. It’s beautifully written but brutal. My friend begged me not to rush through this book, so I slowed down a bit so I could prove to her that I retained important details.

Total time: 4 hours 20 minutes

June 6, 2009

Salt: A World History—Mark Kurlansky
I grasp history so much better when I read about it with a particular focus. The history of salt is as much a history of condiments as it is about the one rock we eat. My favorite apocryphal story told in this book: a shepherd in France left his cheese and bread sitting in a cave for a week. When he returned, Roquefort cheese was invented.

Total time: 2 hours

The Story Biz Handbook: How to Manage Your Storytelling Career from the Desk to the Stage—Dianne de las Casas

I wish I’d had this book two years ago! Fortunately, I’ve already done some of the things de las Casas recommends in terms of the website and online social networking. However, why did it never occur to me to have a preprinted introduction card to give to presenters? I am going to read this book more in-depth after the challenge is over, make notes, and begin to implement some changes bit by bit. I need a boost to my storytelling career, and this book is going to be key to helping me. I think Adrienne Furness would appreciate this book.

Total time: 2 hours

Colman—Monica Furlong
I bought this sequel to Wise Child when it first came out, read a couple of chapters, and then put it down because it didn’t engage me. Years passed, and library books took precedence over purchased books. I loaned this book out twice without having read it myself! Now, for the 4th annual 48HBC, it’s read. I didn’t love it, as I still wasn’t engaged in the way I was with Wise Child and Juniper. Was that because this one was largely plot-driven whereas the others allowed for time to discover the characters? Is it because I am reading it as a 37 year old instead of as a teen? I don’t know. It’s Furlong’s last book, and I want to love it more, but as it stands, I appreciate it for bringing some closure to the Wise Child and Juniper stories.

Total time: 70 minutes.

By These Ten Bones—Clare Dunkle
This spooky story about a werewolf in a Scottish town was published between Dunkle’s 2nd and 3rd books in the Hollow Kingdom trilogy. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the HK trilogy, but I appreciated Dunkle’s weaving in of the supernatural with Catholicism. I found the werewolf love story to be evocative of how women can rationalize relationships with dangerous men. There’s always a gentle side to them that no one else sees!

Total time: 50 minutes

Urn Burial—Robert Westall
This book always makes me hope there really are aliens in the universe. I first read it as a teen. A shepherd discovers a gravesite of an alien that looks like a cat, only much more evolved, and soon after, large dog-like creatures start terrorizing the village where he lives. The big revelation about the nature of the universe is not unexpected, but it's still exciting nonetheless.

Total time: 1 hour 45 minutes


June 7, 2009

The Herb of Grace (also known as Pilgrim’s Inn)—Elizabeth Goudge
This is the middle book in the Eliots of Damarosay trilogy, reprinted by the Elizabeth Goudge society. Goudge has a knack of giving her characters far more prescience than most people would have in real life. It’s an alternative to third-person omniscience that is sometimes intrusive but mostly works. Whether writing for children or adults, Goudge’s best stories involve children in some way.

Total time: 3 hours

***
Total Reading time: 16 hours 25 minutes
Social networking time: 1 hour
Writing time: 90 minutes
TOTAL for 48BC: 18 hours 55 minutes

*Regarding that camp: On day five, I asked a camp counselor, "Are we ever going to learn any regular camp songs?" I'd read Yours Till Niagara Falls, Abby, by Jane O'Connor and expected from camp a large assortment of new songs. The "Austrian went yodeling..." cumulative song was the only non-Praise song I learned that whole week. Don't even get me started on the Letter from Jesus that a camp counselor read and my nine-year-old self took quite literally. Oddly enough, I didn't have access to a chapter-book that whole week.

My 48 Hour Book Challenge begins

Our cat Mercedes went missing for two days. She is a dim-witted furry beast who freaks out in open spaces (among other places) and when Bede opened the doors in an attempt to cool off the house, Mercedes got out. She's usually so skittish that she'll peep her nose out and then pull it back in again, but this time curiosity must have triumphed over fear... momentarily. We noticed the next morning that she was gone, but we should have noticed sooner, as she usually wakes us up with her mewing EVERY NIGHT.

Coyotes venture into our neighborhood quite a bit, looking for small, tasty morsels. We thought certainly that Mercedes was gone for good. It's hard when a cat goes missing, because there's no closure, but despite holding out some hope, I began to think of her in the past tense just to get some distance from what I thought was the inevitable.

Last night, we woke up a number of times when we heard mewing a number of times, but found no cat outside. Then, around 4 a.m., Bede saw her on the back porch. He went out to get her, and she ran away. We got out flashlights, and eventually found her under the neighbor's porch. Bede stayed very still and finally she came out from the porch around 4:45 a.m.

I dropped Lucia off at school this morning, drove home, and went to bed. Now' it's 1 p.m. and I'm ready to start MotherReader's 48 Hour Book Challenge. I'm starting out with George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin, which I first read as a child. Over the next 48 hours, I will have a storytelling gig, preparation for our bedroom painting, care of Lucia, guitar practice and maybe even some breaks for sewing. Still, I will read. I will keep a running tally of books read, pages read, time spent reading, and time spent blogging. I will do a final blog post Sunday, June 7, after 1 pm PST.

Here I go!

June 6 update at 6 pm:

Total time read: 11.5 hours
Number of books read: 6

11:24 pm update:
Total time read: 12 hours 45 minutes
Number of books read: 7
Time spent writing down notes: 30 minutes
Time spent reading other blogs and commenting: 90 minutes

As tempting as it is to spend a couple more hours reading, I'm going to bed. After having my sleep wrecked by a cat, I am not going to stretch out my circadian rhythms even more when I'm probably not going to be in the running for the 20 Hour Club. If I'm focused, I'll get 3-4 more hours of reading in tomorrow before I stop at 1 pm.

Labels and the Future of the Shop

This blog post has been edited since its original publication.

I wonder if my shop will be able to exist past August 14, 2009. According to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, by August 14, all items intended for children will need to have permanent tracking labels attached that indicate the source of the products, the dates of manufacture, and batch or run numbers. According to this article by Ron Chamrin, on May 13, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) denied a request to extend the enforcement date of tracking label requirements. The exact requirements can be found at the CPSC website here.

I don't know how I could place permanent labels on my dolls. I'd have to affix each detailed label to a one-inch circle on the base of the doll. While I can make stitches that are fairly small, my skills at etching the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin are nonexistent. MaybeI could write on scraps of cloth with fine-point permanent markers, but the marker ink wouldn't fall under the "natural materials" category along with wool and cotton, and I'd have to have third-party testinig done on the ink.

Before I started up the Etsy shop, I wondered if I could simply gear my storytelling dolls for people over the age of 12. However, if you read the guidelines for the definitions of children's products, you'll see it's not that simple. These two factors in particular stand out:

Whether the product is represented in its packaging, display, promotion or advertising as appropriate for use by children 12 years of age or younger.

Whether the product is commonly recognized by consumers as being intended for use by a child 12 years of age or younger.

My dolls are no Madame Alexander collectables. While it could be argued that the needle-felted hair on the larger dolls determine that the figures are for people over 12 years old, the smaller dolls are definitely appealing to young children. Sometimes in the park or the coffee-shop, a child will call out, "Look!" at my dollies lined up, or come over to ask me what I'm doing. Still, my dolls do appeal to grownups, and I think that is how I will officially have to market them in order to stay in business.

I've contacted my congressfolk, and I'm blogging about the issue now. You can find an earlier post about the CPSIA here. It is my hope that someday I will legally be able to make dolls for children besides my daughter. For now, I am going to gear my dolls for storytellers, therapists and other grownups who need dolls in some capacity. As Bede pointed out, we may allow our daughter to use a butter-knife, but the butter-knife was not created for children.

In order to end on a cheery note, here is a photo of a cape I just completed for a doll who will be King of the Day:



I'm going to make a cloud child for King of the Day. After that set is done, I will start work on Queen of the Night with her star child. After I made the cape, I realized that clouds around a rainbow are usually not white and fluffy. They're greyish because they've just finished raining. There probably wouldn't be a kite around the rain clouds either, because of concerns about lightning and electrocution.

Whoops. I really did mean to end cheerfully. I don't know what gets into me sometimes. Quick, look at the Blueberry Child! Blueberry Child's good friend Strawberry Child was in the shop for only a few hours before heading out into the world.

Late in the day addendum from the Etsy forums, seller FayeMalloneDesigns does a good job of breaking down what exactly goes into the labeling:

The thing to realize about the labeling is far more than just attaching a label. Let's face it, most of us cut labels off things anyway, the gov at this point can't make you keep a label on something that you have purchased and now own, especially garments etc. But some may actually keep those labels to refer to. And yes I have no idea how you are going to label a bow or hairclip.

The record keeping that goes with the batch# and the rest is for you the manufacturer to be able to keep complete records of every supply that you used in that item. Like I make a OOAK [One Of A Kind] dress, I use 10 fabrics, 3 colors of thread, 2 trims, 1 style of button. When I assign that number, I have to keep track and be able to identify everyone of the products that went in to that garment. And if there is a problem anywhere down the food chain, I have to be able to identify the person who bought that dress with the purple button, that la mode recalled and contact them. That is my understanding of the nightmare of this law, over and above how to actually label the item.

48HBC in 4 Days

MotherReader's Fourth Annual 48 Hour Book Challenge is just four days away! Two years ago, I attempted to participate with humorously disastrous results. Last year, something was going on where I couldn't participate, but this year, despite one gig (not two, as one got rescheduled) and the painter coming, I am going to take part in the book challenge. I don't know how much reading I'll get done, but I plan to read! I have a number of books stacking up and more that I hope will come in time. Here's a sample of what I have waiting for me:

The Lizard Cage, by Karen Connelly (borrowed from a friend 5 months ago)
Salt: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky
By These Ten Bones, by Clare Dunkle
School as a Journey: The Eight Year Odyssey, by Torin Finster
Colman, by Monica Furlong (bought when it was new)
Black Ants and Buddhists: Thinking Critically and Teaching Differently in the Primary Grades, by Mary Cowhey
Improving Your Storytelling: Beyond the Basics for All Who Tell Stories in Work or Play, by Doug Lipman
The Story Biz Handbook, by Dianne de Las Casas

I know, some of these books do not look like escapist pleasure-reading. They've been on my "to read" list for a long, long time. I need to read them. If I have some dedicated time in which to read them, then they will actually be of use to me.

I plan to do some rereading as well. Urn Burial, by Robert Westall, and The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald, are in the stack.

What about you?