In Her Own Words

Today reached 101 degrees F around home and 103 degrees F in downtown Seattle. Or was that yesterday? I don't deal with the heat very well. Still, a week is a long time to go without a proper blog post.

Last Saturday, Scott of Fishsuit brought his daughter Sofia to my musical storytime at Ravenna Third Place Books. I performed my original song "May I Walk With You?" of which you may view lyrics and felt-board pieces here. I trust that children are picking up on stories and songs they like even if they're not into the participation aspects of the programs (which is JUST FINE, as I tell everyone at the beginnings of the programs), but it's great when caregivers tell me what goes on at home afterward. The day after the program, Scott transcribed what he heard Sofia singing:

I went for a walk in the fields one day
And I met a cat who said "Can I walk with you?"
I went for a walk in the fields one day
And I met a dog who liked to play!
And I fed the cat and the dog and then we walked through the field!
I went for a walk in the fields one day
And I met a shark who didn't say anything!
I went for a walk in the fields one day
And I didn't meet anyone who wanted to play
I was sad sad and I cried and cried
Because no one wanted to play with me!

Scott wrote, "I can't say she got the tune exactly right, but she clearly remembered the idea. I thought you'd get a kick out of that. You obviously made an impression!"

I am thankful.

Too Hot to Think

Seattle is in the midst of its annual heat wave. Many houses in Seattle have neither air conditioning nor proper ventilation, so we endure as best we can with what we have. However, it's too hot to think. I've got a few neat things to post, but I'm going to save them for after Wednesday (July 29), when the heat wave is supposed to abate.

Crafty Thursday: Three Fairy Tales and a Saint with her Star Boy

It's evening as I write this, and I need to prepare for a storytelling gig tomorrow at the Children's Museum. Saturday I have a gig at Ravenna Third Place Books, and then next weekend, I have two birthday party gigs. I'm glad that the storytelling business is picking up again. Even with the economy the way it is, it's unpredictable. You may wonder how I have time to sew! Hint: it's the only work I successfully do while taking care of my daughter at the same time. She provides lots of opinions, and sometimes even gets the urge to try a little stitching. When that happens, I drop everything and work with her on simply getting used to pulling needle and thread in and out of the cloth.

I've started making more dolls based on folk and fairy tales. Currently in the shop is a Briar Rose/Sleeping Beauty storytelling set that features Briar Rose as both a 15 year old and a baby:




About 10 minutes before I started this post, I listed Vasilissa's Doll:




If you are unfamiliar with the Russian fairytale of Vasilissa the Brave and her encounter with the terrifying Baba Yaga, please visit Sur La Lune to read the story. The little doll that Vasilissa's mother made for her before the mother's death is one of my two main inspirations for dollmaking. (The other is M.B. Goffstein's Goldie the Dollmaker.)

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time making a Snow White doll with a little felt box containing representations of the comb, the laces and the poisoned apple. The colors are based upon the dress Snow White wears when she flees through the forest in the Nancy Eckholm Burkert version. Lucia does not want this doll to go into the shop. She wants the doll for her own. I understand. (7/25 edit: She now has a Snow White doll made to her specifications, though she said, "The hair doesn't have much of a part." The doll is white and yellow with blue roses, pink wheat-ear stitching, and a pinch of dried lavender inside.)

Here is the Snow White doll with the felt box of storytelling props:



The Vasilissa and Snow White stories turn me inside out. It is one thing for the hero of a story to start out with parents who have died, but in both Vasilissa and Snow White, the reader gets to meet the mothers briefly and know of their love for their daughters before they die. Trina Schart Hyman's depiction of Snow White's mother in particular gets to me. In her face is so much expectation and longing for the baby she will never get to hold, and who will have such a hard life as a result of the mother's death. Fairy tales are often meant to be two-dimensional archetypes, but the details in these two stories are so rich with significance that I find the Disney version of the movie a little hard to take and hope that no one ever attempts a mainstream version of Vasilissa without consulting me first. (Ha!)

Let us end with light. While Santa Lucia Day is not until December 13, I plan to list this Santa Lucia doll with her accompanying Star Boy sometime in the next few days. (Edit: here is the listing.) May the person who goes looking for it actually find it. While the Swedish Santa Lucia is depicted as a blonde, the girls who dress as Santa Lucia for the procession have all kinds of hair colors. That's why my first Santa Lucia has brown hair:



If you are interested in looking at the listings of Snow White and Santa Lucia dolls when they become available, you are welcome to subscribe to the shop feed here.

P.S. Sometime in the past 24 hours, someone became the 100,000th visitor. Yay! I wish I'd had a screen-capture for that.

"Sleeping Beauty" Rewrite Contest

I can't believe I didn't blog this before: Diamonds and Toads is hosting a Sleeping Beauty rewrite contest. The deadline for entries is July 31, so at least I've not totally dropped the ball on alerting you to this contest. Please read the guidelines and rules here. This contest is open only to residents of the United States; however, future contests of this ilk will open up to the rest of the world. (Keep in mind that the prize is from KateW's own funds, and she is not compensated in any way except for the enjoyment of your entries.)

Show-and-Tell of Gratitude

I try to keep the focus of this blog consistent, though the scope has expanded since I first started Saints and Spinners 4 1/2 years ago. It started as a storytelling blog, then expanded to include songs, children's books and sewing. I started out as the relatively anonymous "Alkelda" and then started using my real name after I linked my blog to my professional storytelling website. Every now and again, I share a bit of news that is either joyful or sorrowful, but I've tried to keep the truly personal things private.

It is hard to tell you now that the past weeks have been difficult. Like many of our friends and family members, the downturn in the economy has left its imprint upon the House of Glee. We are grappling with financial challenges that we hadn't anticipated. However, I am thankful for all of the warmth and support of my friends in the blogosphere.

Coincidentally, the past weeks have brought presents! I have thanked everyone individually, but I thought it might be nice to have a little Show-and-Tell.

Tanita S. Davis of Finding Wonderland sent me a lovely package from Scotland delivered by a hedgehog (who, after recovering from jetlag, now acts in Lucia's puppet-shows) that included a signed copy of Mare's War and a beautiful handmade brass ring. I also just found out today that I won the signed copy of Beth Kephart's brand new book Nothing But Ghosts in the contest she posted weeks ago. The contest results were posted just after I returned from vacation, and I'm guessing that I opted for "Mark All as Read" on my RSS Reader and continued to read on from there. The contest question was "How would you paint regret?" My answer wasn't the most in-depth one, but it was the answer Beth's son pulled out of a hat, so how lucky am I? Pretty lucky! I've taken a photo of the two books (Tanita's is the signed copy and Beth's is my library copy, as I just found out today I'd won the contest):



Schelle of Brand New Ending stitched for me a number of lovely things. The star of the show is the stunning blue-footed booby created in exchange for a Seven Ravens doll:





Wow! I knew Schelle was a gifted needle-worker, but pictures don't do justice to the actual work. I've kept all of these photos in large resolution sizes so that you can admire the handiwork. Schelle also made a set of animals for storytelling: koala, platypus, wombat, mouse (with accompanying bag) and a cloth book with lanolin-infused pages to keep my needles from rusting:



I realized after I took the photo that I had the lanolin-book upside down.

Last but not least, I recently received a surprise email from Acorngirl of Silver Acorn whose shop I had blogged about a few months ago. I featured her "purple girl" doll as a favorite. The purple girl doll didn't sell in its initial four month listing time, and Acorngirl decided to send me the little doll as a gift! So, here she is. I cannot help but name her Violet:



Many, many thanks! I realized I have used far more exclamation points than usual, but I'm keeping them in. They are appropriate for this particular post.

The Vanishing Books of Kindle

New York Times article: Amazon erases Orwell Books from Kindle, by Brad Stone:

“It illustrates how few rights you have when you buy an e-book from Amazon,” said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for British Telecom and an expert on computer security and commerce. “As a Kindle owner, I’m frustrated. I can’t lend people books and I can’t sell books that I’ve already read, and now it turns out that I can’t even count on still having my books tomorrow.”

Many of us have had the experience of books gone missing during our travels, lost to water or fire, stolen or misplaced. Visit Jen Robinson's post about her Lost Books, and you will find a long list of sympathetic comments. However, in all of those comments, not one of them had the text of a book vanish before his or her eyes. That scenario is evocative of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels.

Even if I had the funds for it, I haven't had much interest in owning a Kindle. I think it would be handy to be able to borrow books from the library and read them on a hand-held device, but I won't be a potential customer until I can read a book in the rain. (Yes, I know there's a waterproof pouch that sometimes works, but I'm still not tempted to spend my imaginary $300.00.)

"Cat Food Sandwiches" and "The Cat Came Back"

In all likelihood, you will not thank me for posting the song "Cat Food Sandwiches" by David Lindley. Some of you will snicker, but others of you will say, "How could you?" The music is quite good and Lindley's storytelling is compelling but the lyrics will make you writhe in your chair, and Lindley knows it. My uncle introduced me to this song, and told me after a few minutes, "It's okay if you've had enough."

I couldn't turn myself away from it, and after listening to all 18 minutes or so of the song, despite having images in my head that are stuck for all time, I had to pass it on to you. Just be warned: you will never think of poker-chips, gelatin or head-cheese in the same way again. (Actually, you'll probably think of head-cheese exactly as you did before.)

For those of you who don't even want to chance the possibility of being disgusted, avert your eyes, skip past parts 1-3 of "Cat Food Sandwiches" and rejoin me at the paragraph that begins with "This week...."

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

This week, I had a great time hanging out with my uncle. We strummed guitar together, which was a treat, and also got to listen to him to play his bluesy finger-picking songs. Lucia's favorite song was my uncle's rendition of Harry S. Miller's The Cat Came Back. You may listen to children's musician Fred Penner perform it here. Penner also covers the song Sandwiches, so now we've come full circle.

What My Teenage Self Wants

Colleen of Chasing Ray has an interesting post called What a Girl Wants: Representing All the Girls #3 . In both the main post itself and the comments, the discussion about which writers can represent what cultural group in literature is going strong. As I scrolled through the comments, I was reminded of the era in which I searched for books about children like me, i.e. the product of a marriage of mixed religions. My mother was Mennonite, my father was Jewish, and I wanted books in which the main character had to deal with the different religous traditions. I came across a couple of books: Mixed-Marriage Daughter, by Hila Colman and Davita's Harp, by Chiam Potok. With both books I felt a little cheated. Conveniently, the mother in both books was Jewish, so that if the characters decided to embrace their Jewish heritages, they didn't have to go through the fuss and bother of conversion. LoneStarMa reminded me in the comments that Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret has the main character as the child of an interfaith marriage AND the setup has the mother as Christian and father as Jewish.

I've requested some memoirs and essays from the library including essays edited by Laurel Snyder called Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes, and Bloomfield Avenue: A Jewish-Catholic Jersey Girl's Spiritual Journey by Linda Mercadante). I would like to have some recommended fiction titles in which children of interfaith marriages are main characters. Do you have recommendations? Please share in the comments.

Thanks to Tanita of Finding Wonderland for highlighting Colleen's post.

P.S. Like Davita, I too have a doorharp.

Library Lady raises her own kids

Blog post: Library Lady is bringing up her kids

As someone who used to do library storytimes as a children's librarian and is now bringing her own child to library storytimes, this post resonates with me. There are no good terms for parents who work for a paycheck outside the home, those who work for a paycheck inside the home, and those who work without ever seeing a paycheck. "Working mom" implies that mothers who don't get paychecks aren't working, and "full-time mom" implies that mothers who work for paychecks outside the home aren't their children's mothers all the time. More important than labels, though, are the choices we've made, the decisions we've had to make, and the challenges that come up no matter what we do.

I'm going to do my best to avoid articles that lay guilt-trips upon mothers who work for paychecks outside of the home regardless of why they do it, or upon the mothers who work as parents without the benefits of paychecks, health insurance, etc. I'm also going to stop trying to justify the professional and personal choices I've made. All along, Bede and I have worked to make decisions that were best for our family.

I'm curious... when someone tries to undermine a decision into which you've placed a lot of thought, how do you respond? When it happens, I'm so taken aback that I come up with my witty response long after that person has gone on to something else.

Children of Summer, by Mariah Boone

Mariah Boone of LoneStarMa has a pertinent article in We the People News about The Children of Summer:

...Summers are sweet when you’re a teacher and a parent because you finally get to try to make up to your children all that time that you spent grading and planning and going to other kids’ extracurricular activities when they really wanted you at theirs....

For far too many other parents, however, summers are a special kind of nightmare. Working parents of school-aged kids who do not have handily unemployed and loving relatives nearby do not have many attractive options for keeping their kids cared for in the summer.

For the whole article, please visit this page.

Crafty Thursday: Math Gnomes

I know, it's Friday. Between having my daughter with me all day long until French camp begins next week and preparing songs for French camp, I've had a full schedule. I've also started getting up early in the morning to exercise. That means going to bed early. Here and there, I've had some time to sew, and thus I finally created a set of royal "math gnomes" inspired by the Waldorf tradition of math education. While many math gnomes sets have the four processes of Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division as subjects of King Equals, my mom told me about the story setup of the royal math gnomes: King Addition loves to collect things, Queen Subtraction likes to give away her wealth, Prince Multiplication likes to do things fast, and Princess Division is a staunch social advocate who wants the resources to be divided fairly. Lucia came up with the idea of Equals as a Jester. Here is Lucia's drawing of the Royal Math Gnomes:



Here is the set I've made for the family:





If you do a search for "Math Gnomes" on Flickr, you'll come up with some other lovely representations like this one and this one. Two nice sets I've admired on Etsy are by julieblanchette and mamaforearth.

If I post a set of math gnomes in my shop, it would definitely be a big-ticket item. (August 21, 2009 Update: here they are.) I don't really know what the market is for math gnomes. Of course people admire the sets, but chances are that the people who need math gnomes the most are probably working with small budgets. I've joked about branching out into having different singular math gnomes be available to provide encouragement for teens working on Algebra, Geometry and Calculus homework:

Newsflash: Children Want More Bedtime Stories

This just in from GrowingYourBaby:

Study: Kids Want More Stories at Bedtime

New research shows that almost two thirds of children want their parents to read to them more often.

While I question some of the statistics uncovered by Disney/Cars Storyteller’s Collection, the premise seems to be so obvious at first. Of course children want their parents to read to them. Of course they want more stories. But then, I have to remember that I'm trained as a children's librarian and am the daughter of a children's librarian. I'm thinking from a position of privilege:

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be --
I had a mother who read to me.
-- Strickland Gillilan (1869-1954)

Add "father", "aunties", "uncles" and more benevolent grownups, and that poem pretty much sums it up for me.

Make of this article what you will. Spread the good news.

Thanks to Mama Lisa's World for the link.

Birthday Party Favors

After my post on the Self-Budgeted Birthday Party, I asked Vivian of HipWriterMama what she used for the birthday party favors to which she alluded in the comments. With her permission, I shall share with you what she wrote:

Here are some party favor ideas--I start shopping for these a few months ahead of time, so I can catch sales and have time to make things, if needed.

Paint pens are awesome, because you can personalize anything--which goes a long way. Plastic containers, cosmetic bags, etc.

For the younger crowd:

-Plastic pencil boxes in different colors (from Target, Staples, etc.) - on sale, you can get them for around 50 cents to $1.

-Box of 24 count Crayola crayons - again, you can get these on sale for less than $1.
-Assorted Sticker Sheets

I assemble these little goodies in the box and then paint the child's name on the box with the paint pens. Once the paint is dry, gift wrap and you're good to go. This usually costs less than $3 per child.

Beauty goody bag:
-Nail polish
-Bonnie Bell Lip Smacker
-Special Playlist CD's (you can make cool CD labels with the birthday child's name and date, etc.)

Cosmetic Bag ($1 bin at Target)
-Paint name of child on it.
-Add something simple in it. Lip gloss, nail polish or something unusual a child can collect in it.

Journal goody bag:
-Cool pen
-Journal/Notebook/Diary
-Special Playlist CD

Rock Star goody bag for the younger crowd:
-There are these great plastic microphones over at Target about $2 each.
-Add special CD and you're good to go.

Books (Check for book sales, Amazon, Scholastic Book Club, etc.)

Use your imagination! You can find lots of great things for small $$, if you plan ahead.

What are your ideas? Please post them in the comments. As I told Vivian, other than the one year we handed out little harmonicas, party guests have always received seed packets.

A Father's Day Story by Amish Guitar

Amish Guitar writes about how he spent Father's Day with his father. By the time I read the last paragraph, I had tears in my eyes:

What I did for Father's Day with My Dad

Song of the Week: Five elephants on one spiderweb

I'm learning French songs for my summer French camp gigs. In two weeks, I'll lead 2 storytime circles twice a week for 20 minutes apiece. Many of the songs have 2 or 3 chords, but a song like "Le Bon Roi Dagobert" for Bastille Day has a bouncy, boisterous rhythm with not much repetition, so I'm definitely stretching myself. My French is not spectacular (my college professor can attest to that), but I know enough to compose simple songs. If I can ever figure out my new video editing software, I'll share my new composition about colors and clothes.

In the meantime, thanks to the fabulous Mama Lisa's World, I rediscovered a variation of a circle game song I learned in Cote d'Ivoire called Un éléphant se balançait ("An Elephant Was Balancing on a Spider Web"). You may listen to the MP3 here. The midi is the more standard tune, but I really like the jazzy version as sung on the MP3, and that's what I've based my guitar chords upon:



Translation:

An elephant was balancing
On a web, web, web, a spider web,
It was a game that was so much fun
That he called.... a second elephant.

How many elephants can balance on a spider's web? I hope that the humor of the setup will be apparent with the felt-board figures I'm planning to make.

Some of you may be familiar with Sharon, Lois and Bram's recording "One Elephant, Deux Éléphants" which had a variation in both English and French to the tune of "Five Little Ducks Went Out to Play":

One elephant went out to play
Upon a spider's web one day
He had such enormous fun
That he called for another elephant to come.

Deux éléphants allaient jouer
Sur une toile d'araignée
Ils s'amusaient tellement bien
Qu'ils appelaient à un autre, viens!

Three elephants went out to play
Upon a spider's web one day
They had such enormous fun
That they called for another elephant to come.

Quatre éléphants allaient jouer
Sur une toile d'araignée
Ils s'amusaient tellement bien
Qu'ils appelaient à un autre, viens!

All the elephants were out at play
Upon a spider's web one day
They had such enormous fun
But, there were no more elephants left to come!