Big News!

We are moving to a beautiful place far, far away!  Can you guess where?  If you have been reading this blog for a while, you might remember this picture.....

The Young Engineer

 An electrician was working at our house yesterday.  He let me take a picture of some of the beautiful thingamajigs which he uses in his work.  I loved the primary colors of the different do-dads separated into little compartments.  While he was here I showed him the broken doorbell.  He said that the button and plate needed to be replaced, and that my husband could do it himself.  The wires are very low voltage.  The electrician showed me that it is safe to touch them,  and told me that it is a simple job.  I decided that my son could do it with my assistance.

 My youngest has been taking things apart since he was two years old.  He loves to figure out how things are put together and how they work.  Instead of an art table in the kitchen, he had an electronics table.  It was always piled a foot deep with dismantled mechanical and electronic things.  When he was in kindergarten, his teachers supported his interest by asking parents to bring in broken things which the students could disassemble and explore. 

 Toys have two lives in our house.  First, they are played with.  Later, when they break, they are dismantled and studied, and recently, sometimes repaired and reassembled.

 In this pictures he is pressing the screwdriver onto the contact points to make the doorbell ring. 

The project took a long time because we were learning.  We saw how the doorbell works.  We chiseled the hole in the wood to make it the right size for the new mechanism.  My boy found the wire stripper, because the wire broke a couple of times when we were trying to wrestle it back into the hole.  We stripped the wire, wrapped it around the contacts and tightened them in place.  He brought the portable electric screwdriver/drill, drilled pilot holes, and put in the screws.  There was a lot of exploring and investigating and experimenting.  Every time I went to look for a tool, he would make the loud old-fashioned mechanical bell jangle non-stop, making my teeth rattle.

 I love to watch children concentrate.  My son was gloriously absorbed and completely lit up with the excitement of repairing something our family needs.  His intense expression in this picture reminds me so much of my husband. 

 In this pictures he is telling me all about it.  He loves to tell us what he is learning and how things work, very much like a little professor.

 In this pictures he is popping up and down like a jack-in-the-box to make it hard for me to take a picture!  That's why he is smirking.

What a joy to watch talent develop and unfold.

Wrapped in Color

I showed my daughter her new quilt this weekend while she was home for a quick visit.  Doesn't she look happy?  And there is so much to be happy about, a colorful quilt we made together, very soft on the inside because of minky, and just the right size to wrap all around, sunshine streaming in through kitchen windows, smiles and love.

Lovely Lovey

 Look at this beautiful little lovey which my friend designed and created for her four year old daughter!  It is made of soft cotton flannel decorated with little stars. I love the way my friend used different colors of embroidery thread in different areas.  I adore the sparkling eyes and sweet expression.  I also like the size.  It is just the right size for a small hand to grip around the waist.

I once visited a doll museum full of very elaborate and valuable dolls from different times in history and different countries, in Shelburne, Vermont.  The dolls and automata were all creepy, with their frozen faces and staring eyes.  There was only one doll I liked.  It was the simple cloth one which had been created by a mother for her daughter.  It was beautiful.  Love adds something indescribable to handmade things, something you can see and feel.

Operation Backpack Update

 Anisa from kidoinfo told me today that shipping to a U.S. military base overseas costs the same as shipping stateside!  Hooray!!!!  Now we can send even more backpacks to displaced children in Japan!

Scroll down to the next post to learn more about how to help out through the Misawa Girl Scouts troupe.

These beautiful illustrations are from "Nora's Surprise," by Japanese author and illustrator Satomi Ichikawa.  By the way, Benjy is fine.  He is just having his wool sheared.  Read this lovely book!

How to Help Japanese Children

Emily, who lives on an American military base in Japan, wrote to tell me about Operation Backpack. 

It sounds like a wonderful project to do with our children.  Find a new or gently used backpack, and fill it with items listed by Misawa Girl Scouts, the girl scout troupe on the base.  To see the list, click on the title of this post, or copy this...http://www.misawagirlscouts.org/1/post/2011/03/first-post.html 

I will ask my son if he wants to fill a backpack for a girl or a boy.  He can help pick one out.  He can read the list and help choose the items.

If you are mailing the backpack from the United States, use the United States Postal Service and this address:

Misawa Girl Scouts
attn: Jessica Payne
Unit 5027
APO, AP 96319

Emily's blog is called Acte Gratuite, http://actegratuit.blogspot.com/  You can visit to find out how her area and her family have been affected by the earthquake and the tsunami, and how she is trying to help her neighbors by reading her recent posts.

These beautiful poems and drawings are from a vintage book, "Little Pictures of Japan," first published in 1925.  It is edited by Olive Beaupre Miller, with pictures by Katherine Sturges.

Color Joy

 I can't wait to wear this hat.  It is a simple roll-brimmed hat knit in some colors which look nice with my hair and skin.  I don't usually use these sorts of colors, so I have worked slowly, and frogged a lot of it as I experimented with the combinations.

 I used this scarf as inspiration for the color combinations.

 The purple looks very dominant in the basket, but there will only be one thin stripe of it.

 I may remove the gold and orange.  I love the way they look with the other colors, but with everything happening in the scarf already, that streak of sunshine in the hat might be too much.  Something more blended might look better.  What do you think?