In Memoriam

A week ago today, I was lazily scrolling through my Facebook feed in the downstairs office, vaguely wondering when my boys upstairs were going to give up dive bombing from their bunk beds and go to sleep. Then a post from the Craftzine blog came up, and hit me like a ton of bricks. Kathreen Ricketson, author, crafter, blogger and founder of Whipup.net and Action Pack Magazine, and her partner, Robb Shugg, had suddenly and unexpectedly lost their lives that day while swimming at an Australian beach.  Current reports now point to the likelihood that the couple were both stung by deadly Irukandji jellyfish. Their two children were on the beach with friends and watched the nightmare unfold right in front of them. Kathreen's body was pulled ashore, and efforts were made in vain to resuscitate her. Robb's body was pulled under the waves, and the search for him was ended two days ago.

In March I wrote a post here about Kathreen and Action Pack, extolling the excellent qualities of both. Kathreen was a giant in the world of crafting and in the online creative family community. Though I never met her in person, we had exchanged brief but friendly emails, and I admired her to no end for both her creative spirit and the generosity with which she shared it. Though I'm well aware that tragedy strikes families in unspeakable ways every single day around this crazy world, this family's loss hits home-hard, and my heart breaks every day for their beautiful kids.

After taking in the news that evening, I went upstairs and sat by each of my boys in their beds. I nuzzled my face into the folds of their bodies, warm and sleeping under the blankets, and inhaled the scent of them. And I thanked God: whatever, wherever, if ever, he, she or it is, for the very fact of my own living, breathing self, and for the lives of my family. Each day since, I've tried to be more mindful of my words and gestures towards them, and have been able to be more patient and kind than usual, as I've internalized the truth in that old platitude about today being all we have in this life.

Friends of the Shugg family have set up an educational trust fund for the couple's children.
UPDATE: Following my inability to make a donation via Paypal to the fund for Orlando and Otilija, I contacted Whipup to ask for updated information re donations. I received the following reply:

"Kathreen's family are so very grateful for the kindness of the crafting community, and for the support they received in the aftermath of the accident. The family are no longer accepting monetary donations through the trust fund, and have requested that the payment details be removed from Whipup.

If you would like to support the children and the family, very soon we will be posting details of Kathreen's latest and final quilting book, Brave New Quilts. Sales of this book and her other books will benefit her estate, and directly, her children. We will also be reestablishing the Action Pack site and store as soon as we can, and releasing an unpublished Action Pack for sale.

Thanks for your thoughts and support"

Bookmakers

Mommy camp rolls on. Our Easter holidays are three and a half weeks long, so we've been doing our best to find a balance between unstructured downtime and guided creative play. The other day Charlie asked out of the blue if he could make a book, and I was totally game. Like so many craft supply hoarders I know, I happened to have a stash of bookbinding supplies in my studio that I'd yet to use, and finally got to crack open. 

In my craft library, I also have a copy of, "At Home with Handmade Books", by Erin Zamrzla. Like a lot of craft books, it gives basic instructions for simple book binding techniques and then a bunch of projects that use variations of those simple steps. Since we're newbies at this particular craft, we kept it simple, and made cardboard covered (and backed) journals filled with blank pages, bound with a traditional Japanese four hole binding. You don't need to buy a book to tell you how to make this book; Google abounds with videos and tutorials. Supplies are pretty basic: paper, an awl (or hole punch), glue, and some binder's thread (or any string, really).

We went into the recycling bin and dug out some cardboard to make our front and back covers, and cut them down to the size with a steak knife that never gets used since we never seem to eat steak.

Charlie chose a piece of pretty origami paper from my paper stash for the cover, which got glued on. He also wanted patterned paper for his inside pages, so we stuck them inside and laid them flush with the edge of the book. I do have an awl, and a self healing mat, so punching the holes was quick work.

Though I do have a package of binder's thread, any string, yarn, twine, whatever you have lying around, will work for a simple book like ours. I used my binding thread, but wonder if colorful yarn would've been a better choice here.

I followed the steps for threading the pages and covers (which was trickier than I thought it would be, since I don't really like reading instructions all the way through before starting a new project).

And Charlie had his new book. He wanted the title to be "Nevero's Land" for reasons I can't understand, but, okay. He wrote the story inside in his own special secret typography, so I'm not sure what its about. But I hope someday he'll tell me.

Happy Easter 2013

It was on Easter, two years ago, that I first started this blog. I am amazed, looking back, at the changes I've made in that time in my life, both personally and creatively. I have continued to try to make more, buy less, and cultivate the creative spirit of my family life, and this blog has helped me stay true to that pledge to myself. I've also had the amazing fate and fortune to find myself living some sort of crazy city girl's dream; of settling into life on the farm here in beautiful England, and raising my boys among our growing menagerie of farm animals. All of which means that this year I colored my Easter eggs without the help of Craypas, and with eggs laid by my very own chickens. Right off the bat I must credit Megan Anderson of radmegan for the inspiring post she did for Easter last year on natural egg dyes. I used several of her recipes, and experimented with a few colorants of my own.

First a word about the eggs: our hens are Light Sussex and while they're beautiful birds (see two photos up), their eggs are kind of meh. In the box above, the tan colored ones are from our chickens. But just for some variety I also tried some Old Cotswold Legbar eggs (readily available in the supermarkets around here), which have a slightly blue tint to them. 

In addition to the red cabbage leaves, yellow and red onion skins, tumeric and beet dyes that Megan suggests, I tried a moss bath, hoping for a lovely green egg. Henry is the one who suggested this to me, swearing that Scottish wool dyers used urine soaked moss to get their best green tweeds. I couldn't quite bring myself to get a sample from anyone, and lo and behold my moss dye failed completely. Then I googled "moss dye urine", only to discover that Henry was totally right. (Never doubt an anthropologist whose uncle lives on a sheep farm in Scotland.) Look for a future post on green textile dye baths.

Above is a tumeric dyed egg, below it is one dyed in both tumeric and paprika. The blue came from red cabbage leaves, the brown from (I think) yellow onion skins.

I can't remember the dye I used for this amazing speckled creation, which makes me think of a dinosaur egg. It was my hands down favorite. I think its from a combination of Nigella seeds, tea bags and onion skins.

This chalky looking egg was dyed in a bath of blackcurrant tea. All eggs were dyed for about twenty four hours.

I also made the boys some new easter baskets this year, using the pattern I already had from designsmayamade on Etsy. The pattern is for four different sized baskets, I used the medium one here.

We had Easter lunch with Henry's brother and his wife and their kids, and broke from tradition by roasting a leg of venison. Henry shot this deer himself a couple of weeks ago, and we've been eating a lot of it lately, buying less and less meat from the grocery store. We're so lucky that we have easy access to local meat that's raised by people we know, or in this case, wild game.

Obviously, we couldn't have lamb for easter lunch. But we did take them on a walk.

Into Action

This is a back issue of A.P., but just in time for the coming holiday.

Two more days to go til the kids' spring holidays from school starts. In spite of my best intentions, I never did get it together to plan a family trip somewhere, even though we're all getting pretty desperate to see the sun. So, mommy camp it is.

Fortunately for me, and you too if you're like me and need some help planning your April holiday, there is Action Pack Magazine. If you don't know about super cool Aussie mom and blogger Kathreen Ricketson and her equally awesome e-zine, you're in for a treat. Filled with very cool, theme based projects for kids and their grownups (with ideas and even entire issues spanning a range of ages, like the special pre-school edition, see photo below), these downloadable PDF magazines are affordable, free of advertising and support the belief that kids are fundamentally self-directed, innovative problems solvers, and should be given opportunities to explore and demonstrate those traits in fun and creative ways. Read the Action Pack philosophy here. 

Can't wait to try out some of the pre-school projects with my two younger boys.

This is the most recent issue of A.P., which is water themed.

Michael is a little obsessed with my lip balm, so we're definitely going to be making some of those.

There are many other issues available too, so be sure to check them all out.

For the record, C.A.B.L. remains ad-free, and my endorsement of Action Pack is unsolicited and unpaid for by anyone. All photos used by permission of Kathreen Ricketson.

Happy making, and happy spring!