roaring, cawing, bellowing, and hissing

It’s a zoo here! Literally, as we are preparing for our big day at the zoo tomorrow – in preparation, we’ve each chosen an animal to ‘be’ for the day. Not only does that mean coloring pictures of our chosen animal brother or sister, but also learning lots of facts about the animal and even (to a degree!) eating what that animal eats. Because you know, animals have food pyramids, too! Not to mention digestive tracts …. LOL!

A heads-up on some really gorgeous free patterns that have been adapted from vintage DMC booklets (so hard to find these of decent-quality and still affordable) over at Handmade Adelaide. There’s also a group for enthusiasts of DMC vintage designs, for those who are interested. Lots of cute so-called baby patterns in there for any special babies in your life. And speaking of special babies, look who didn’t need a tea-bath for his eye today.

I’ve had a few questions about my tea-dyeing process – and I have to laugh right out loud at calling what I do a process. Talk about flying by the seat of one’s pants…. This week, I’ve simply stuck the crumpled-up bit of linen in a plastic bowl with the brewed (overly-strong) tea. I’ve used a bowl that’s a tad on the small side, and enough water to just barely cover the linen. I’ve also kept the teabag(s) in there, and made sure the bag(s) is in contact with the linen for some darker splotches. Then I take it out later, when the kids have reached a point that I can duck away for a few minutes without a Major Incident occurring. I usually iron the linen immediately with a pre-heated iron on the highest setting. I’ll warn you, this is awful for the surface of your iron and you’ll have to spend some time scouring the tea stains off before you use that iron on real clothes! Also be careful not to let the hot iron rest in one place, or you’ll wind up with a weird pattern on your linen (if not a scorch mark). I keep mine slowly and gently travelling in the same direction. And in this way, I dry the linen and set the tea coloration in one step. You can diffuse dark dye spots by using the steam setting or spray setting on your iron after the fabric has dried out a bit. In fact, you can do a lot to further personalize the dye job at this stage – iron in wrinkles, for example, which will set with a dark crease, or get a gently mottled look by using your spray setting, or iron on something that has some sort of a texture as that texture will come through in the way the tea sets and dries. Play around. I guess you could say it’s more of an art than a craft, LOL.

Between being totally tied up with the kids from 8 am till nearly 9 pm (Max stays up later now) and trying to balance the other things that need to be done, I have not done very much stitching. I’m working on a sampler of my own design, but progress has been slow. I tend to stitch straight from the fuzzy idea in my head, using graph paper only when counting in my head becomes a problem. Coincidentally, Max is also working on a design of his own and I could not resist taking a picture of our design pages side-by-side. It’s so embarassing to be upstaged by one’s ten-year old child!

Thank you so much for continuing to visit with me even though this is much more a kids-and-family blog at the moment! I love reading your comments! In quick answer to a couple of questions about the homemade peanut butter – yes, commercially-prepared peanut butter is readily available here (that’s what we usually eat) but I thought the kids would get a huge kick out of making our own (they did). It’s really easy to make – just chuck a pound or so of shelled peanuts in a kitchen-aide-type mixer (with metal blades) and slowly dribble in peanut (or sesame, in our case) oil till the peanut butter begins to resemble the consistency you like. I like mine kind of thick and still crunchy. Couldn’t be easier! I’d love to hear your results if you give a whirl.

Thank you!

Thank you so  much Staci and Jenna for nominating me for the Kreativ Blogger award! It makes my day to know that someone enjoys what I try to do here. I’m terribly sorry to (again!) break the rules, but I simply can’t choose just a few blogs to nominate. I enjoy everyone’s so much!