Bird and Little Bird

Two Hundred Days.

 

When I first posted about our attempts at regular, unwavering, predictable and everyday violin practice, it was a relatively new idea.  Then, we made the hundred day mark.  I figured at that point that if the whole thing fell apart once Zak decided to join us, at least we could say that we had made it that far.  Well, today is day two hundred.  Two hundred days of getting the violin out of the little pink case and playing selections from the first Suzuki violin book (with the occasional inclusion of a fiddle tune or two as well).  Two hundred days of tightening the bow, tuning strings, playing scales.  Two hundred.

Not every practice was a great one, and there were days when it almost didn't happen. Once last month I even picked Mariam up early from school to come home and practice on a day when I knew we would otherwise be getting home late.  At that point we were so deep into it that I knew we just couldn't let it go- it had become almost like a game.  Can we make it today too?  And we did.  I'm fortunate to have the baby on my side in this whole thing.  He clearly has some rememberance of all the in-utero listening that he did and really seems to like listening to Mariam now that he's a member of the outside world.  Playing for an appreciative infant audience turns out to be quite motivating when you are an adoring seven year old big sister.

Mariam is now into Book Two, and the pieces are getting longer and more difficult.  This is actually a great thing because when you have been practicing day in and day out, it is nice to feel like you're headed somewhere with the whole endeavor, right?  There have been some days when she feels frustrated by the difficulty of some of the new music, but I think that for the first time she may also be really understanding that the benefit of all this practice is that each piece that she plays gets a little bit easier everytime that she plays it.  If I had told her that, she probably wouldn't have listened.  She needed to figure it out for herself.

So, tonight there will be broccoli sandwiches for dinner and ice cream for dessert, as requested by my girl.  And I do have a little present for her.  Something that she isn't expecting but will really like. 

She can open it after violin practice. 

 

p.s. If anyone wants to leave a little note of encouragement in the comments, I'll be sure to share it with Mariam.  I think we are going to try for 365. 

In Praise of the Backward To-Do List.

I am a maker of lists.  I always have been.  They help me to organize my otherwise very crowded (and occasionally) jumbled mental space and this is a good thing.  I sometimes write and rewrite the same lists over and over again just to remember what it is that I need to do and why.  Or to help me really think through how I'm going to do it, whatever it may be.  These days most of these lists get put onto bits of paper which are then jammed into my pockets (along with a safety pin or two, some Burt's Bees pomegranite lip balm and the occasional rubberband).  But, I'll admit that I really miss the days when I was young enough for it to be socially acceptable to just print my lists on the backs of my hands with a Sharpie. 

Anyhow, I am finding that life with a new tiny person about seems to go a lot more smoothly with a lot of lists.  The more that I write things down, the better.  Less likely for my fleeting ideas to get sucked into the  depths of my sleep deprived brain. So, to-do lists get made.  And, sticking to said lists like the proverbial glue is a certifiable sanity saver after a particularly sleepless night. 

That being said, I have an admission to make.  Today's list was made in the early afternoon and consists entirely of stuff that I had already done*.  Some days you need that kind of list instead.

 

* except for the part about finding a new dentist- I never did do that.

The Week That Was.

 

This last week...

- Our nearly snowless Vermont winter continued.  Our driveway is now a sheet of thick, solid ice that is hazardous to everyone attempting to walk across it.

- I slipped on said driveway ice and fell down.  Not among my most graceful moments, I assure you.

- Zak turned one month old.  I'm not sure how a month has already gone by, but apparently that is exactly what has happened. 

- I began work on a new website for Alphabet Glue.  This has required some serious brain stretching on my behalf.  I have been writing code, people.  For the record, I have no idea how to write code. 

- I didn't get all that much sleep, but I think it is safe to say that my middle of the night diaper changing skills have reached a whole new level. 

- The to-knit list grew a little longer.

In the Glue Department: A Sneak Peak at Volume Five.

 

The last week has brought some truly horrifying weather conditions to the land where I live.  Our snow has been lost to a yucky combination of freezing rain and black ice, and honestly, I just really have no desire to go running around out of doors doing much of anything when I have a newborn in tow and it is one degree fahrenheit.  Can you blame me? So, we have been spending more time at home than usual.  The result is that I have had some time to start working on projects for the newest issue of Alphabet Glue. 

The projects and printables for Volume Five have all been mapped out in my handy sketchbook, and Mariam and I have started playing around with sample projects and doing some of the photography. Working on this issue has been especially fun because Mariam is really enthusiastic about many of the projects this time around and has been so, so helpful in making them and helping me iron out any metaphorical wrinkles in my design process.  This, combined with her incredibly helpful stance on big sisterhood, has made me wonder how it is that other people get by in life without seven year olds to help them along.

 

I will admit to being in agreement with her, however.  Despite feeling a little guilty about playing favorites, I have to say that I'm really excited about this issue of A.G.  There are some really fun projects in the works around here right now and the dining room table is pretty well covered with cardstock, gluesticks and paintbrushes.  I've received a good amount of feedback from folks about hoping for a more frequent publishing schedule, and although I don't think that I could pull off a monthly magazine, I am going to try to push this next issue up and have it ready for the beginning of February.  Wish me luck!

Library Monday: Gooseberry Park.

I sometimes joke that I should just retitle my Library Monday posts "Ode to Cynthia Rylant."  As anyone who has read this blog for any period of time (or who has read an issue of Alphabet Glue) can attest, I'm a big, big fan of Rylant's books.  Fair enough.  She writes wonderful stories for small folks, particularly for children in the preschool and elementary years.  It wasn't until about this time last year, however, that I realized that in addition to her beloved series (Poppleton, Henry and Mudge, Mr. Putter and Tabby), Rylant also writes chapter books.

Among Rylant's longer books is Gooseberry Park, a tale of a grand and dangerous wintertime rescue mission conducted by a labrador retriever on behalf of a dear friend of his: a squirrel he met in the park one day.  With the help of a bat and a hermit crab, our loyal hero sets out to find his friend after an ice storm destroys her winter nest and leaves her separated from her baby squirrels.  Gooseberry Park is, among other things, a creatively woven tale of friendship, loyalty and bravery.  There is just enough dramatic tension to keep the tale moving along at a good pace, but not so much that young readers will fear that the story might end badly.  It also gets points at our house for incorporating a bit of humor in just the right places.  Rylant's ability to weave in funny moments is one of the reasons that Mariam enjoys her writing so much, and she does a fine job of it in this book, without losing the thread of the narrative as a whole.

The weather here in Vermont has suddenly turned very, very cold and icy over the last few days.  Because of the baby's relative newness, this has meant that we've chosen to stay in for the last few days rather than to brave subzero temperatures with a newborn.  Too bad that it took me until this morning to realize that we might have used the time to reread Gooseberry Park- it really is the perfect book for these icy afternoons! 

That Kind of Friday.

 

It was really a very, very busy week.  Not in a bad way, but most definitely in a "now it is Friday and we will eat pizza while watercolor painting and making cardboard telescopes" kind of way.  Happy weekend, all.  We made it.

These Days.

I've been making plans, lists and sample projects for Volume Five of Alphabet Glue.  I am considering the posibility of changing the publishing schedule a bit, and hope to have the new issue ready for early February. 

 

 

I've also been carrying my knitting with me everywhere I go around the house.

 

 

 

Because I never know when we might take up residence on the couch for an hour or two at a time and find that it is best to be prepared...

Library Monday: The Moomin Family.

I had lately begun to feel that Mariam and I were in a bit of reading rut.  We read a number of really fantastic books together last year, but towards the end of my pregnancy I was super exhausted and fairly grumpy (especially towards bedtime) so we had kind of moved back in the direction of rereading favorite (short) picture books instead of the chapter books we had been using for nightly read-aloud time. Then, my dad sent Comet in Moominland to Mariam as a gift.  Just a few chapters in, it was clear that picking up the other books from the Tove Jansson series was a must-do.  We quickly read two, and then ordered four more.  We've been reading them day and evening both, and plans are already in the works to reread them once we've gotten through the first pass.

 

I'm not sure how I previously missed the thorough and amazing genius of the Moominland series, but there is certainly no time like the present when it comes to remedying such an unfortunate situation.  These books are good in the way that Pippi Longstocking, The Phantom Tollbooth and From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler are good.  They are fantasy for the whole family; gentle, subtle and clever.  Full of understated adventure underpinned by subtle lessons about friendship, loyalty and flexibility in the face of life's unexpected, the Moomin family tales might be my favorite kids' literature find in recent memory.

 

The books have a mid-century Scandinavian sensibility about them that will likely appeal to fans of Astrid Lindgren and Elsa Beskow and I especially like the fact that the natural world plays a starring role in the series.  I also like that there is much that happens in each story that is inexplicable, magical and strange and that for the most part, the inexplicable remains that way.  Jansson doesn't make too much out of trying to clarify every mysterious event that takes place in the stories, and the result is a feeling of enchantment that is enjoyable, funny and unique.

 

I haven't had much success finding books from this series in our own local libraries, perhaps because the titles seem to be just beginning their renaissance as popular children's literature.  However, I believe that Amazon has a deal going where you can get the fourth book free when you buy three of them, and they are certainly worth having copies of your own for reading again and again.  Speaking of which, Mariam is home from school today with a sore throat, so off I go to read her another chapter of Moominsummer Madness.  I better hurry too because I'm pretty sure that she's reading ahead without me right now. 

Tools of the Trade.

 

I've been saying that I would really, very much like a yarn swift for a long time now.  It has existed on a list of permanent "wants" but couldn't quite be justified as a "need."  Then I cast on for this sweater.  I'm knitting it out of Quince & Co. Tern, which is just about the nicest yarn I've met, but I don't find it fun to wind by hand.  At all.  In fact, thanks to my uncanny ability to always pull the wrong thing in the wrong direction, the last ball that I wound by hand took me about two hours.  Things got a little complicated, you see. 

So, the yarn swift.  It's like happiness made out of wood.  Sigh.

Big Socks on Tiny Needles.

I've said it before, and I'll say it yet again (because it is as true as always): you have to really, really like someone to knit them socks out of fingering weight yarn on size two needles.  So, in the event that I have been at all unclear in my intentions over the last decade, Dan can take receipt of these socks as a sure sign that I'm kind of a fan of his.

I knit these socks out of self-striping yarn, and used this sock pattern, which was recommended to me by my friend and personal knitting advisor, Sarah.  I'd recommend it as well.  It is very well written and easy to follow, even for people who have no idea what they are doing, like myself.  I stole a pair of Dan's favorite wool socks to help me with the sizing for these, which seemed like a great idea until one of the socks came flying out of my purse in an elevator at the hospital when I went to dig around for my car keys.  I assumed that this would lead to Dan putting two and two together, coming to the realization that the knitting I'd been hiding under my basket whenever he came into the room was actually a pair of socks for him.  Particularly since I'm pretty sure that Mariam had already accidently told him that I was knitting a pair of socks for his birthday present.  But, no! I guess he just thought I was a complete nut for having his socks in my purse for no apparent reason at all, and since me being a weirdo was nothing new, he decided to let the whole thing go without remark. 

Anyway, the point of all of this is just to say that now that I have knit up a pair of socks that actually look kind of normal and can be comfortably worn in public without significant embarassment, I have a pronouncement to make: 2011 was the year when I officially became a knitter.