What There's Time For

He's Drawing!

And loving it! Daddy got him this great creative doodle book and I don't know if Mr. P is most thrilled that he can read most of the simple prompts or that there are no rules about coloring inside the lines or that his sister doesn't have such a book (and very much wants one). But he is thrilled.

For the boy who loved chalk and markers as a two-year-old and then nearly stopped drawing for three years out of frustration, this is a big deal.

And look, although he did just the other day illustrate himself "pooping on the carpet" (before the book), today he is drawing a garden. With flowers and, later, a fence and a house.

Abstract

By Shmoogie. :)

Shmoogie Paints

I save many of these, of course.  But what my heart really wants to save is my amazement at her new way of asking, "Can I paint?"  Her excitement as she climbs in her chair and waits for me to get the watercolor set, the brushes, and the little cup of water.  The way she dips the brush and wipes the drips on the rim, then pauses to pick just the right color.

If she sees me watching, she will ask, "What's this?"  For every single color.

She strokes her brush gently across a choice, then touches it delicately to the paper and watches it bleed through with the solemn air of a calligraphy master.

When the picture has reached the point of being "so pretty" (on account of having "all the colors"), the brush looses its allure and it is time for "dots".  "I make dots!" she says, putting her fingertip in one color after the other and carefully choosing where to put its impression on the paper.

She stops, holds a glistening green fingertip in the air towards me and asks, "Dis red?"  No, that's green.  "Gween."  She makes a dot, admires it, and rubs her finger into the purple.  "Dis lellow?"  No, that's purple.  "Purpoo."

It is such a marvelous thing.

Done!!!

Some kind of record, I think, but the Christmas cartoon is ready for the copy shop. (Almost. Not absolutely. Nearly absolutely. I'm sure you care.)

Mr. Pants noticed this panel right away, "Who is that?"

"Well, let's see... He's sitting on a chair, next to a nightstand, and it's nighttime, because - see - it's dark... And he's got a box of Cheez-Its in his lap..."

Mr. Pants started smiling...

"And there's a melting ice cream cone on the floor..."

"It's me!!"

Of Course

You already know what kind of a week we're having.  So you won't be surprised that while I was doing a few minutes of prep work on Shmoogie's new wood high chair before staining it in the garage, Mr. Pants first stole my last secret stash of Halloween candy and hid it in his bed, then took his cars and racing ramp into the bathroom and "washed" them with most of a tube of toothpaste and both sinks full of water.

You also won't be surprised that while in timeout for that offense, he found a chunk of sidewalk chalk in his bedroom (birthday party favor!  sneaky!) and drew on every single wall with it.

You might be surprised, though, that what he drew was not his usual random scribbles, but at least three perfectly written copies of his own name (the **first time** I've ever seen him write his name perfectly without assistance, of course) and two "space ships" that actually look rather like space ships (also a major first).

Oh, the tears (his) as I scrubbed his masterpiece off the wall!  "I WON'T EVER GET TO DRAW SPACE SHIPS AGAIN!!!!!!"

"I really liked these space ships, too, hon.  You can draw them again on a piece of paper and we can hang the paper on the wall."

"I WON'T EVER HAVE BIG ENOUGH PAPER!!!!!!"

Oh, but, HO! HO!  I have big paper.  Just didn't know that's what it took to interest this particular recalcetrant artist.

***

Shmoogie was desperate to join in.  A first for *her*, she drew something and announced what it was a picture of.  It is...

A POTTY.

Shadow Puppets on Canvas Tutorial

When I was a kid, we had family slide show nights, because all our family photos (including from back when my dad was a kid) were on slides and you couldn't look at them, really, unless you pulled out the slide projector after dark and took that one picture down to make a big blank wall and waited patiently while Dad fiddled with the boxes of slides and the inevitable jams of the projector.

It was big fun.  Sitting in the dark, choosing which events to go back to, smelling the heat of the projector's lamp, listening to the loud ca-chunk of the next slide dropping into place.  And in the blank spaces between boxes, our parents showed us how to make shadow puppets with our hands.

When I first thought of immortalizing shadow puppets on painted canvas for Shmoogie's room, it didn't really occur to me that our kids have never seen a shadow puppet.  Ever.

But now they have.  And they both chatter excitedly in their own way about watching me trace DiDi and PaPa's hand shadows of a mama and baby lama (that's what we're calling them).  The bunnies and bird (the old stand-bys of my childhood) were done after bedtime.

This was a simple project, so if you'd like to try it yourself...

Supplies:

• pre-streched artist canvas (I got these at Michaels in "value packs" of two)
• acrylic paint in your choice of background color and black (also from Michaels)
• brushes you feel comfortable with
• a pencil
• a light source (we were actually able to use the chandelier in the dining room, but a flashlight, bare bulb, or projector(!) would give a clearer shadow)

Instructions:

1. Paint the canvas with your background color.  You'll need at least two coats for a reasonably even coat (like you see here).  More coats if you don't want to see any variation.  Remember to paint the edges!
2. Let dry.  At least overnight, to be safe.  These sat around for weeks before I had willing helpers for the next step.
3. Get at least one helper.  Prop the canvas up in front of your light source in a dark room.  
4. Arrange your hands or the helper's hands into the puppet you want (you can google "hand shadow puppets" for ideas).  Remember that you can move your hands in three dimensions to change the two dimensional shape that lands on the canvas.  Try tilting towards or away from the light source to make the shadow as long as possible or foreshortened.  Move closer or further from the light source to change the overall size of the puppet shadow.  Take rings off or use them in your design.
5. Trace the shadow onto your canvas with your pencil.  Work quickly because your model will have a hard time holding perfectly still for very long!  (You should have them prop their elbow on something to help stay steady.)  Try to keep the pencil line light and accurate and just inside the shadow, because you will want to paint over it so it doesn't show.
6. Mix a bit of black paint into some of your background paint to make a shadow color.  You will need much less black paint to make a good shadow on a light color like the yellow than on a dark color like the purple.  (From my experience: the yellow turned very green looking with black in it, but dried more grey.)
7. Use a small brush to paint the outline of your shadow, then fill in with a larger brush.  Let dry (this won't take long) and add a second coat or more until you are satisfied.  The darker your shadow and background color, the fewer coats you will probably have to do.  I only needed two coats on the lama and bunnies, but four on the bird and that shadow is still not very even, but we've decided we like it that way.  Remember to extend the shadow around the edge wrap of the canvas!
8. Let dry and hang.

Have fun!  I like how these turned out, especially the sentimental factor of my childhood memories and the shadows being the hands of family members.

 

Teach Your Children Well

In the focused, intentional surroundings of his pre-K classroom, Mr. Pants has finally begun producing artwork that actually somewhat resembles the things he says they are.

I find myself relieved (he's a little old to still be just scrawling randomly, right?), excited (what will he come home with next?  where will his journey with art eventually take him?), and self-obsessively worried about feeling relieved and excited.

We'll just assume that's because I was raised at the height of the true-art-must-have-NO-rules/abstract-expression-is-the-highest-form-of-creativity era.  As I remember it, real coloring books were a much-desired treat; we hardly ever had them because the idea of pre-provided lines inside of which to color was considered hideously stiffling.

Anyway, as dubiously thrilling as it was to unfurl a composition of squiggly green topped with a blob of yellow and think, It looks like a tall yellow flower just before Mr. Pants announced, "It's a sunflower!", my favorite so far is this abstraction in red and green:

It's my favorite because when I asked what it was, he explained matter-of-factly, "That's a whole bunch of apples falling from a tree; some of them have chemicals on them and some of them don't."

Look who's been paying attention at the grocery store, eh?  I might actually count this as the first time I've been depicted in his artwork.  ;)

Every Day

At the breakfast table this morning, Mr. Pants looked at me and asked with true curiosity, "Do you like me every day?"

"Yes," I said, with an eyebrow raised.

"Yeah," he said, suddenly quite nonchalant, "I like you every day, too."

***

And I like you, dear readers, every day.  Especially yesterday, because you made me feel just great, which helps slightly reduce the terror factor while I wait.  :)

New banner and blog layout today, for those who are reading via RSS and might not know.  :)

Surprised by Fun

Today is a liminal day.  Our last guests left (sniff!) early this morning and no one slept well.  Friday is a bizarre day to start back into a regular routine, so when the clock just kept ticking right on past school start time, I took Mr. Pants along on my planned morning outing - a photo exhibit at the Wien Museum with a friend.

In a strange parallel to yesterday (we went for the Michelangelo exhibit at the Albertina, which was crowded and hard to appreciate, and decided to speed through Picasso afterwards, which I think we all preferred, plus we learned shocking facts like, The Spanish Civil War was in the 1930's!  Picasso lived into the 1970's!  Picasso painted the iconic peace dove!  He lived in occupied Paris throughout WWII!  Lots and lots of his paintings (not just Guernica!) are political/anti-war!  Who knew?  Not us.)... hmm... let's start that again...

In a strange parallel to yesterday, the "Window Shopping" exhibit we went to see was a little dull.  The permanent collection of Middle Ages statues, altar pieces, and stained glass from Stephansdom, though?  That was amazing.  I had naively assumed that all that stuff was either still in Stephansdom (it's not exactly an empty-looking cathedral) or had been lost forever.

And, much more importantly in the kids' opinion, there is a children's play area set up for the winter months based on one of the current special exhibits.  This year it's "Alphabet Soup," interpreting the work of Ernst Jandl (who I've never heard of, but I read was famous for his "sound poems" and "blurred the boundaries between poetry, performance, music, and visual art").  The poem on the poster is titled the mother and the child and it says roughly, i/want/to play//play/my child, except the vowels are all warped in a fun way.

Shmoogie spent most of her time climbing from one hole in a giant tipped-over letter B to the other, playing peekaboo with me every once in a while.  Mr. Pants tried everything - collecting all the letter A's, stacking alphabet cubes into adult-height-help-required/impressive-when-knocked-over towers, using the giant foam letters as slides and jungle gyms, and building forts from a bounty of huge magnetically self-attaching foam triangles.  And then, just when we thought the fun was all over, he found a Lego table in the gift shop (printed with a minimalist map of Vienna, no less - see the river and canal?).

The Surprising Truth

Last year, Mr. TalkyPants kept secrets very well.  We even told him Shmoogie's (real) name before she was born and he didn't say it to anyone until an hour after she was born and Aunt Doula asked him what his baby sister's name was.  Boy, was she shocked to discover he'd known the secret all along!

This year, he actually understands the concept of a secret and promises solemnly that he will not tell, but as soon as he came home with Mr. Right and a secret present for me and one for Shmoogie and I asked, "What did you get for Shmoogie?" he blurted out, "A scarf!"  Which I would know (even without the look of dismay on Mr. Right's face) was actually for me.

As you might guess, Mr. Right is big on presents being complete surprises.  My family?  Not so much.  My mom asks me what I want, I send one or two ideas, and then - since isn't the cat already out of the bag? - she typically does away with even the figleaf of potential surprise by updating me daily, "Your graphics pad hasn't gotten here quite yet, but they say it's been shipped,"  "It came!  I'm going to wrap it tomorrow,"  "I'm getting out the wrapping paper right now, hopefully I'll get it in the mail by the end of the week," and etc. until actually there is HUGE suspense because SERIOUSLY, WILL IT GET HERE IN TIME???  (Probably not, but did you know that it used to be traditional to exchange gifts on Epiphany, rather than Christmas, to celebrate the arrival of the Three Kings in Bethlehem with gifts for Jesus?  See, it's not procrastination, it's *education*.)

Point is, I try hard to keep Mr. Right's gifts secret, but it's not something I'm really very good at.  My best idea this year was for warm mittens, which was first given away somewhat by my measuring and tracing his hand last week.  And then trying the first one on about a hundred times in progress to check the fit.  Not to mention, I was so keen on seeing how they'd work out that I totally gave up on not knitting in front of him.  He'd been so good about keeping his eyes closed during fittings, though, I figured he'd just have to not look at me.  For most of the day.  I tried to help out by knitting with my back turned to him, but he didn't seem to like that.

Ok, so then I finally finished one mitten on Sunday and I was really really pleased with myself.

(back of hand)

(palm)

I tried it on him one more time and then pretty much bullied him into spoiling the surprise completely, forcing him to admire it while I explained every last detail.

See, they're flip-top, so you can, say, buckle children into their carseats without having to pull them off completely.

And I got better at the tubular cast-off, isn't it nice and smooth?

And the thumb has it's own little top so you can use your touch-screen phone.

And isn't the color manly?  How about the seed stitch?  And the ribbing on the thumb?

And check out that applied i-cord that forms the edge of the flip-top!  Note that it ties into a snazzy manly knot over there at the side of the hand!  Do you recognize which knot that is?

He did!  The bowline!  (pronounced like bowlin').  A knot he loves... a knot which gets stronger the more it's pulled on... hopefully the kind of knot which you (figuratively) tie on your wedding day.  He's given at least one wedding toast to such effect and I have always wanted to work a bowline into a present for him somehow.  It works quite well here because the bowline forms a loop, which serves as the pick up point for the flip-top all the way around.  It was fun figuring out how to knit the i-cord just the right length and attached an unattached in just the right places to be able to tie the knot at the end.

Anyway, I'm really really proud of myself on this one (I'll be even prouder if I finish the second one by Christmas and it matches).  I mean, how often do you find a handknit that's romantic AND manly?  (Am I kidding myself?  It is manly, right?)

I should have made the cuff a smidge longer.  And the whole thing may be a tad large in circumference (that's my hand in the pictures, though, so don't judge from that), but it's an awesome prototype, if I can just continue to toot my own horn for another sentence or two (did I mention that the ladies at the yarn shop were *very* impressed with this mitten?)...

New Year's Resolution:  Write this (and the coordinating women's pattern that is so far only an idea) up in actual multiple sizes like a real pattern - er, AS a real pattern - and offer it for sale before Christmas next year.  I think a his and her's set of bowline mittens would make a lovely winter wedding gift.  Right?  Any knitting readers here?  I'd be including detailed/illustrated directions for the tubular cast-on and -off, the applied i-cord, and the bowline knot, as well as the main flip-top and the (slightly different technique) thumb flip-top.  I think it will be awesome.

OK, so enough about me and my knitting ego.  The 'truth' part of this post is about the tree.  And the Christmas card.  My international mail recipients have already gotten the card, but I haven't heard from anyone at home, so I'm still trying not to spoil the surprise, but I think I need to post the very last panel, because the truth is...

...the picture isn't true.  We always do the cartoon in the week after Thanksgiving, which is way before we get a tree.  But the last panel is always some sort of Christmas decorating scene and this year I figured we'd probably do like last year, buy a tree a half-mile down the hill and let Mr. Right carry the thing all the way home and up the three flights of stairs.  I might or might not (probably not) be carrying a wreath during the whole thing, but carrying a wreath looks festive, so.

Then, Mr. Right became completely committed to the idea of a HUGE tree, which became clear to me when he brought home the German-engineered and German-made "V8" Christmas tree stand, which proclaimed proudly to be suitable for even "the biggest" trees (there was plenty of fine print about that inside, but our tree is quite sturdily mounted, no worries).  And then I scoped out the trees and got prices and remembered to ask at the last minute, is there delivery service?  

O, ja!  Zehn Euro!  Ten Euro is so much less than I was expecting for delivering a 12 foot tree (which, yes, MarMar, cost significantly more than 10 Euro itself) up three flights of stairs that I assumed I'd misheard.  Really, only 15 Euro?  I asked ("fifteen" sounds a whole lot like "ten" in German).  No, no!  TEN Euro!  Up to the third story!

You'd better believe we had it delivered (after some confusion about when we wanted it - we were expecting to give a time for that day, but they were expecting us to give a *date* and then have to argue with us because obviously we would want it delivered Christmas Eve - the cherub Jesus-child is supposed to deliver a glorious surprise decorated tree on Christmas Eve exactly, so the Austrians are apparently upset to have to hide a 12 foot tree for a day...).  We should have tipped the delivery guy, but we'd given every last scrap of our cash for the tree itself.  We'll get back there with a tip eventually, I think.  (For the record, it was a two-man job getting it up all those stairs and Mr. Right was one of them.)

Anyway, sorry about the artistic license/inaccurate prognostication in the Christmas card.  And would you buy that knitting pattern?