stone age fare - or adventures in homeschooling during a lockout

is this what they mean by a stone age diet?

there's a little meme circulating on facebook (tho' i think it originated on reddit) - it asks: what was the coolest thing your parents did for you as a kid?

~ the first thing that leapt to mind was that they didn't baptise me as a baby, thinking that when (if?) i was baptized, it should be something that i chose for myself, because i wanted it and understood what it meant. i did eventually choose to be baptized and join st. andrew's presbyterian church in iowa city. it was at a time when i needed to believe there was something else after we die - i'd lost my favorite uncle and my favorite cat, bob, around the same time and since my uncle was a veterinarian and bobby had suffered horribly with kidney cancer, i needed to believe that they were together in heaven. so i got baptized. now i'm no longer sure about all that, but at the time i made the choice, it was the right one for me.

i've been pondering that question today, as the government and the teachers' union in this country cannot agree and today a lockout of the teachers around the country began. with some reluctance, i told my child that we were going to do a homeschool assignment (do you know how hard it is to find some ideas/curriculum that aren't religious if you google it? shocking, but the stuff of a different post.). she has two friends here and i told them they could pick the topic they wanted to work on and we'd find ways to do a whole range of things - reading, writing, science, cooking, art, history, maybe even math (not my strong suit). i was thinking vikings, but they chose food.

i've decided to have them look at different time periods and the food that was common then. with the prevalence of the paleo diet at the moment, i asked them to research (google) it a bit - what did they really eat in the stone age? what sweeteners did they use? was there loads of meat? were there any grains? what root veggies were available? was there really as much cabbage as in my new paleo cookbook by danish hottie chef thomas rode? i told them they could use google and the cookbook and that they should create a pinterest board with what they learned. i want them to create a presentation about it and then, tomorrow, i want them to cook a paleo meal. they're sixth graders and tho' only 12, are starting to be a bit teenager-agtig (that's that danish suffix that's just better than -ish), so they were a bit reluctant to start with. one of them developed a fever of 39 and i'm not sure how far they got. but they do realize that i'm serious and that this has to end in the kitchen.

next food time period i want them to investigate is the viking era (see, i will get vikings in there). after that, i'm going to have them read the chapter about maple syrup in the little house books and then make a meal ala little house. they say this lockout will last for at least two weeks, maybe longer. but there's no reason not to learn something in the meantime. and hopefully, sabin will eventually look back on it as one of the cool things her parents did for her as a kid.

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i love REI's april fool's joke - adventure kitten gear.

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i happened on the boxes of driftwood today in a search for something else, which i undoubtedly don't remember (yes, i'm at that age, where i frequently go to another room to get something and stand there bemusedly wondering what it was). i'm easily distracted, what can i say? so i located my dremel tool (it's just like new, funnily enough) and decided to play. wood has a personality and a mind of its own. and i'm not known for my coordination skills. so there's a way to go. let's suffice it to say i probably shouldn't have been playing on the good dining table. but it was a nice way to spend an hour. the buzz of the dremel is oddly therapeutic.

that's all for now. if i write more, it will be a rant about the new law in the state of my birth, allowing (encouraging?) teachers to carry a weapon to school. i want to say something a bit more reasonable (and reasoned) about it than what's on my mind at the moment, so i'll restrain. for now.

collecting stones

the latest addition to my lisa collection arrived today.
they're shaping up to be as plentiful around here as bobbaloos.
there's a fine line between obsession and collection.

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clever cheese writers are making me hungry.

hol(e)y stones

while watching the oprah + lance armstrong interview (more about that in another post), i began stitching on my hol(e)y stones. i can't decide what to call them - peephole stones or hol(e)y stones, so i'm trying out both.

they're definitely going in the direction that i had hoped.

i'm learning a lot about different types of wool - this one got all stretched out as i stitched it, making the holes even bigger and becoming very loose on the stone. i had to felt it again to make it tight on the stone. i like the effect it made, with uneven, wobbly holes.

this one, which molly suggested looked like a ski mask (she called it a gimp, which was a new word for me).  i went with that and now it's a bit of a sugar skull.

one of the little bowls got an edging of beads i once bought in manila, plus a few little paper beads with a poem on them that i got ages ago from field & sea on etsy.

it's itty bitty and i'm quite enamored of it. and pleased to finally use some of these sweet little wooden beads gathered on my travels.

this one feels a little like a talisman of sorts now. i got the beads at some point from numinosity. i, of course, have been saving them for a good use. this seemed like it.

i loved working with these bright colors on these cold, grey-toned winter days.

the color combination on the red/orange stone is my favorite. the colors sort of jumped out of the bowl where i keep the clothespins of embroidery thread and i had to use them together. they feel warm and happy to me.

these are getting close and i'm working on more. i'll be putting some in my long-neglected shop sometime this week.

update: the first five stones are in my shop now.

peephole stones :: work in progress

when i'm at the beach, i love to look for stones with holes in them. i also love felting stones, tho' i do always have a pang of anguish over covering up my carefully-selected stone. so last night i decided to experiment with felting a stone with peepholes, so i could have the felt and still enjoy the stone.

i ran a couple of experiments - wrapping the stones, cutting holes and then felting. that doesn't work too well. you have to wrap the stone (use lisa's great tutorial), felt it a bit, so the felt is tight around the stone, then cut your holes and continue felting.

i got a bit fancy with this one, using two colors. i felted the orange around the stone first, then added the red, felted a bit and carefully trimmed the red layer away from the orange before they got too stuck together. i loved that the stone had a little hole started and i wanted it to show.

a couple of them came off the stones and i ended up with these little felty vessels instead. i'm going to play with them some more to see what they might become.

i'm also going to add some more embellishment (stitching, beads, painting on the stone) to these, so they're still works in progress. but i just had to share them already now. i feel like they're a breakthrough in making the felted stone notion my own. and they're getting me closer to a picture that's in my head. stay tuned.

i played a bit with my new inks yesterday as well, painting a few feather stones and even a bit of driftwood (the inks bleed on it in unexpected ways). i am madly in love with the paynes grey. the sun has gone again and there's a light sprinkling of snow on the ground, so it's a perfect day to stay inside with a cup of tea and play with felt and stones and ink.

a rolling stone gathers no moss

i've had this little fluffy bit of  moss on the windowsill for awhile now. i found it on a walk in the forest some time ago and brought it home. i liked the color of it.

yesterday, i was watching the river cottage, i learned that it's called oak moss and that you can eat it. i also learned it's not actually moss, it's a lichen.

it's also a key ingredient in lots of different kinds of perfumes. and i can see why - i sniffed my dry little sprig of it and it smells all manly and woodsy.  oh, and how awesome is this stone? husband found it for me on our christmas day walk on møn's klint - those white "eyes" are actually another kind of stone within the stone. we'll definitely be doing something with that natural face when i find the right piece of driftwood.

after learning oak moss was edible, i set out into the yard to see if there was more. it's such a gorgeous color - not quite as aqua green in it looks in this shot, but lovely nonetheless.

they call it oak moss for a reason, as i found it almost exclusively on oak trees, tho' i also found some on a birch that is standing right next to an oak tree. it seems to mostly grow on the older trees - the big, oldest one in our yard is covered in it, tho' much is too high up to reach. luckily, it's been a bit windy and a few sticks of it had blown down.

mostly, tho', i left it where it was. the smell is quite striking, so i imagine that using it in cooking requires very little. on river cottage, they fried it quickly in hot oil and used it as a garnish.

heston blumenthal has some fancy dish where he puts a dish of it in the middle of the table and creates an oak moss fog. i'm not going to get quite that fancy about it, but i am going try the river cottage way.

these sticks had blown down on their own (it's a very old oak tree in the back yard). i've got them in an old cupboard, drying a bit.

i'll definitely report back as to how it turns out. and in the meantime, don't you love that color?

my happy place

still processing the whole christmas experience (and not really done cooking yet), so in the meantime, some shots of one of my favorite places in the world - møn's klint. when we got to the bottom of all those steps and onto that stone beach, my molecules hummed in perfect alignment. more soon.

reflections of the shadows within

it's raining and i wanted to capture a photo to depict this wet day. as i was snapping this big bowl of stones, i noticed my own shadow in them, distorted by the surfaces and the rain. i had the hood of my raincoat up, and thought the shadow looked quite monster-ish. it's fitting since i'm reading peter ackroyd's the house of doctor dee, a novel based on the real john dee (a 16th century alchemist). there are a lot of shadows, ghosts and monsters in the book, so perhaps i'm just seeing them everywhere. the atmosphere of the book is wonderfully dark (also fitting for a rainy day). it seems to be out of print as copies are £99 on amazon, so check your library.

in addition to making you see monsters and shadows everywhere (or monsters in your shadows), it will also make you want to go to london. immediately. it's like london is one of the characters in the book, with a life of its own, going on underneath the people that populate its streets. it's wonderful in an ominous sort of way.

my recent encounters with a compulsive liar have me thinking about the shadows we all have within. i wonder a lot about her shadows, the ones driving her to tell so many lies. i think at the bottom of it, she knows she's in way over her head, but has so built her identity on where she is and what she does that she can't face the thought of it all coming crashing down. so she lies. and frankly makes it ever more likely that it's going to come crashing down. because the lies are easy to disprove at every turn and they are piling up. but she hides those shadows quite well by having a bubbly and winning personality. but i predict that the lies will catch up with her. probably sooner, rather than later. and it's so unnecessary. i feel a bit sorry for her, really.

sometimes the shadows are just baggage that we carry with us and it breaks open once in awhile. or shows very clearly to others, even if it doesn't to ourselves. i actually had to photograph my buddy the troglodyte this week and funnily enough, he chose himself to pose with a sculpture of suitcases that's on display in town. it made photographing him so easy because i don't think he saw himself the delicious irony of it - that his photo puts his baggage on display for all to see. my photos of him underline it perfectly. and that makes me rather happy in an admittedly petty and mean way.

most of the time tho', i think that no one else can truly know the shadows we carry within. no one else can know what's really going on inside of exactly me - how i feel, what i think and the whys and wherefores. sometimes i think that even i can't really know it - it's too complex and elusive. i guess that's what makes it all the more interesting to catch a reflection of the shadow within. 

feeling a need to be grateful

the best part about having a lot of heart-shaped stones lying around is that they make you think about things you love. because you can't help but think happy, grateful thoughts when your windowsill is full of hearts (even if it is also full of spider poo and dead flies).

right now, on this rainy day, i'm grateful for:

~ that at least one of our chickens (i think it's the same one) has begun to lay eggs.

~ baby hedgehogs.

~ having a really good riding teacher.

~ hedgehog sneezes.

~ leaves that are changing color.

~ acorns on the ground.

~ and have i mentioned the baby hedgehog?

~ potato and bacon omelette for dinner.

~ the fact that people love to tell their stories.

~ that my life is my life and not that my job is my life.

~ eggplants and tomatoes in the greenhouse.

~ elderberries.

what are you grateful for today?

stop harshing my mellow

i read that phrase - harshing my mellow - the other day on facebook and it's totally stuck in my head. one consequence of living outside your native language is losing touch with what all of the cool kids are saying.

but i get it, i get that phrase. my mellow has been harshed a bit of late. and i'd just really like it back, please.

this basket of meaningful stones normally sits on the shelf beside my desk, tho' i've moved it to my standard windowsill scale for its photoshoot. it's raining and wildly windy outside today. and dark. but as always, these stones help me get back my mellow - they're calming and soothing somehow. except when people pile papers and books and assorted lint (and screws) from their pockets on them. people who shall remain nameless, but who may or may not have been formerly known as the keeper. that totally harshes my mellow all over again.

i suppose the prime thing that can harsh one's mellow is one's own expectations. when we expect things...behaviors, levels of intelligence, stuff to make sense - we can only be disappointed. because people will never behave as you expect, nor be as smart as you'd like, and the world will ultimately never make sense.

thankful thursday

homemade blackcurrant soda

homemade blackcurrant cordial

a beach scattered with <3 stones and an old ball jar to put them in

a variety of flowers in the garden

flowers - the one good thing left behind by the old owners

a bit more sunshine today. it helps.
i hate that i've become one of those people.
those people who obsess about the weather.
but i need regular sunshine.
cloudy days just don't do it for me.

i promise to blog about something else soon.
but first, a dose of sunshine.