IT’S Keep-It-Simple-SEPTEMBER!!!  Day 2–  YAY!!!!

We have had a great big weekend of craftiness!

The 30 days of nothing = something is going to be a challenge for sure.  Mostly like this though:  I paid more to debt than I usually do in an act of unreasonable faith. :)  I took care of stuff at the outset that usually gets left in the category of  ” If we have money left later in the month, I’ll take care of that.”  You know we DON’T ever… it runs right into other cracks.   So we have a budget for the rest of the month that would make a great  challenge/subject for a t.v. reality show.  I am optimistic nonetheless.  What else is there ? :)  “Happy” wins right now!

One of the completely awesome things we did this weekend was to build simple frame looms for team-sleepover.  I found the idea here. The idea was to use scraps and make rag rugs.

It is easy as can be– even making them for a whole team!  It takes about a half hour and around 8 bucks to make one. WAY less if you happen to have scraps of wood, screws and twine hanging about.  The frame in the tutorial is 4 feet tall, but you can apply the idea to any size frame.  You can use old picture frames– and your imagination to come up with other ideas of “found frames” that make it even easier!

So, you  get it built and then warp it.  We used cotton/polyester household twine– but you can use any strong fiber.  Upholstery cord is apparently very strong and a good choice.  I took a look at the rag rugs I was sitting on at the time and noticed that their warp threads were the thinnest looking cotton.  They have been washed, used and abused for a couple of years now–I decided then and there that twine was fine.

For the youngest ( Rosie) we color coded the strings so that she knew to either lift the blacks or yellows.  It made it much easier for her. She had limited patience for it– but likes it.   Self portrait….

We used donated old sheet and clothes that were wrecked– t shirts, pants and skirts.  Another really handy tutorial to have for this project is this which shows you how to spiral cut t-shirts and any tubular fabric so that you get a nice long strip.  You can also use these long strips for knitting, crocheting, braiding or making a really big web.  It was so much fun and something totally accessible for all ages.  It would be cool to use clothes that are memorable, but otherwise ready to retire.  Then you would make memory rugs much like they make memory quilts. Imagine– A maternity clothes rug, and “I used to be this thin” rug, a “these were my college t-shirts that I can’t throw away” rug.

The older girls were completely crazy for this.  They sat around the kitchen talking and laughing for hours! It made me think of our ancestor-women who likely did similarly.

I dyed some of the fabrics once we got tired of neutrals.

Where would my blog be without that clothesline?

After the friends left, Marigold spent the rest of the day listening to a book on cd and working like mad.  It was hard to get her to stop!  The cool thing also is that the looms are very lightweight and portable, so you can take them outside, or wherever you want to be.   They talked about all of the different things they could weave with– yarn, nature materials, twisted paper…. they tried plastic bags and decided that while it might be good for a decorative weaving, it would be really slippery and sweaty.

I’d like to try crazy -or otherwise- quilting with the girls too.  We are going to make an effort to be extra crafty this Autumn and Winter– with an emphasis on recycling/reusing.  For this month I think it will help as an adjunct to the 30 days experience and also as a -diversionary tactic.

The kids took the idea of 30 days really well.  We are talking more about what is “necessary” and not, and what we want to keep as really important to us.  It has been helpful to present it in a way that also included looking at how we can make our own personal contribution to helping with poverty, and the environment, not just ourselves.  It’s sort of funny…all of these topics are naturally occurring/converging for us right now with the kids.  Helping out with chores and They wanted an allowance, so we are dealing with that– what’s appropriate, and how to teach them about spending while we are learning about doing it smarter ourselves. That’s always a tough one– the dollar aisle at Target.  There are things that we rarely do anyway that are all of the sudden outrages– ” You mean we can’t go to the movies this month???!!!”  The truth being that we haven’t been all Summer!  Lot’s of kids’ questions about the environment and climate change.  Big areas of land in our area have been cleared recently and are now big bare areas to become office parks or something else awesome.  In a more trivial sense, we have had some book and movie discussions about life being different from ours as we know it– Fact / fiction, historically/ futuristically, as well as culturally.  Little House on the Prairie, The City of Ember, My Side of the Mountain….

Here are a couple of ideas I had– things that Matryoshka and I do with each other and would be good to share and learn with more people. One thing we can do is make a list of kids crafts or activities as a resource for all of us.  Books, resources, ideas– I’ll post them as a page on the sidebar for all to use.  Be a guest blogger if you read but don’t have your own– Just let me know!  I’ll start it anyhow, even if it’s just me.  It would be fun to do this with our favorite kids books too.  Matryoshka and I have one of those that I can share as well.

Here’s something that I have had a link to on my desktop for a really long time, but just hadn’t gotten around to watching it.  I just did, and it’s pretty great.  It’s around 20 minutes long and really worth the time. It’s got me really thinking about “stuff”.

“What a difference a day made
Twenty-four little hours
Brought the sun and the flowers
Where there used to be rain”

How about 30 Days?

30 days hath September.

30 days to build a habit.

“30 days” gets a lot of use in our world.

I stumbled upon a post on Salt and Chocolate– one of my daily reads– and in it was a little green button  “30 days of nothing” it said.  I was really interested in what this was all about.

She linked back to a challenge on Owlhaven.

“For one month we drastically cut back on our spending, to see just how much we could live without. Different families played along to different degrees. But for our family that meant no new clothes, no books, no eating out, and only the absolute essentials when it came to groceries.

Just to clarify the ‘rules’, this is an extremely personal project. I’m not going to say you must do ‘xyz’ to be involved. The purpose of the month is to look at each and every decision and say, ‘Must I spend money for this? Can I live without it? Is there a cheaper option?”

Grappling with your own personal set of ‘rules’ IS the project.

When you scrutinize every penny coming out of your pocket it can get really complicated really quick.”

Now I am even more interested….

We are, like many, challenged as a single income family.  By design, or default, we have chosen this to keep family life the way we needed it to be while the kids are young.  Change is coming, but we’re still pedaling.

Always grappling with a shortage in the financial district.  You likely know what I mean.  Price of gas.  Price of food.  BGE.  SCHOOL SUPPLIES! There are a million variables.  So we do this never-ending and exhausting dance of trying to get a grip on what IS and also to harness the flow and turn it around.  To find a way to pay it all.  To have a little extra. To find a way to save for the ever (b)looming future.  You can see how through this challenge you would likely find that “little extra”!  I am imagining a lot of issues arising–  dealing with our own wants v.s. needs.   Our habits.  Our comfort zones.  The kids and their desires…. yeow.

I mentioned Simplemom last post.  I have been exploring her site, and finding it inspiring, comforting and very very helpful.  She is an organizational mastermind!  She is teaching me.  I am soaking it up.  If you haven’t checked her out, go on now.  She is so generous with her ideas and resources.  That’s what it’s all about, right?  Giving the good stuff away?  Spreading the love.

The 30 day thing seems like a very interesting and revealing exercise, whether it is done personally or as a family/group.  For me there’s that “Doing the same thing over and over– and expecting different results= madness” thing.  I am excited to explore what comes up and see if I can make some changes/create new habits that make our life a little less MAD.  I want to become more resourceful.  I want us to have some room.

If our family  plays along together in the experience  of it, I think it will be an even richer experience.  RICHER– and not just the saved/found money.  We will grow closer through talking about what’s going on with it and problem solving.  I hope that the kids will learn to think about value and  money and needs/wants differently

It’s a lot of something for nothing, that’s what I think.

THEN…

I thought I would dig a little deeper and see if there was any other reference to the challenge online.

Wow.  It is been around the net for a while in various forms.  It seems to have sprung forth from the 30 days of nothing blog.  The application of the concept here is much more intense.    She presents not just a campaign for tightening up the belt around the household or Finding a little extra cash to use or put towards your existing debt.  These are certainly good things.  She takes it much deeper– A sort of “fast from consumerism and the grip that materialism has on our hearts and minds”.  Here is the opening of her blog (with permission)  I encourage you to read through her families experiences for the month.  There is also a separate discussion page where others who were participating could talk about their experiences.

The beginning

We’re out of touch. Let’s just be honest about that right up front.

Today, across the world, 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day; 3 billion live on under two dollars a day; 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation; 2 billion have no access to electricity.¹

Think about your children; about the hard work you put into raising them. Now imagine doing it with no electricity.

No bathroom. No garbage service.

No clean water.

On $2 a day.

Is it any wonder that 30,000 children under the age of 5 die every day from poverty-related issues? That’s 210,000 a week or over 10 million a year, if you’re counting.²

I have four children. When they woke up this morning I kissed them and made them a good healthy breakfast. 30,000 other children died.

Americans spend $110 billion a year on fast food, ³
39 billion dollars a year on their pets. ⁴

We are carrying over 2 trillion dollars in credit card and auto debt.⁵For 30 days, my family will buy nothing except our basic necessities. No clothes or books. No movies, no trips to the ice cream parlor. No paper, or pictures, or magazines. No fancy hair gel or take-and-bake pizza. Lattes? Nope. Nothing except what it takes to live. During that month, I will journal our experiences, and blog my thoughts about poverty and hunger and our response to those issues. I’d like to try and identify with some of the “least” (economically) of the world. We will try and live without electricity for a day; eat only rice for a day. Perhaps the family will sleep together in one room for a night - on the floor; or walk six miles one day - the distance some African women walk daily to get clean water.

The goal of this month-long fast is to break the grip of materialism in our hearts and minds. We want to live in gratitude, not discontent; and we want to live with awareness of the great responsibility our affluence has laid on our shoulders.

It’s all so much to think about.  I have a few days to think about how I want to approach it….  To see if we’ll be doing it as a family.  As Matryoshka pointed out to me this morning– I think ultimate rigidity and deprivation in this would be a mistake.  I want to think about it.  Seems to me though that “30 days of nothing” has the potential to reward us with a “whole lot of something”!  If you decide that the money you find/save would make a good donation to a charitable cause here are a couple of sites– there are so many

Network for Good

Kiva

Let me know if you decide to try this too!  I’d love to talk to you about your experience.  I will let you know how our journey progresses occasionally.

If you want to give it a try too and would like a button for your blog– here’s the code for mine ( courtesy of Jim)

<a href="http://knitting-gnome.com/blog/?p=715"><img title="30 days" src="http://knitting-gnome.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/30-days1.jpg" alt="Thirty days of nothing" height="133" width="176"></a>

WOW– getting up early is GOOD!

So this is Simplemom’s focus–  “Live Simply, stay sane.  Life hacks for home managers.”  I am all over that!

http://simplemom.net/gift-basket-giveaway/

get yerself over to this amazing giveaway and one of my new favorite blogs!  Hurry, the giveaway entry ends tomorrow.  If you win, please organize me!

next on our show–

September–30 days of nothing.

The fate of our dear character “el crabby pants” ?

dead.

I am not sure if he’s happy or crappy… I’d like to think he’s happy climbing spirit trees in the Caribbean with little Barbossa.

The hermit crab experiment hereby concludes.

To quote the famous Lilly of the plastic purse– ‘Wow,’ said Lilly. That was just about all she could say. ‘Wow. ….

W.o.w.

That seems to be the essential question.

Happy as an act of faith and something to be worked at rather than an entitled state of bliss and contentment. Or just NOT. It is a choice all the time. Every second of every day.

It has been on my mind and in my face all the ding danged day.

Like rainbow pie?

or bloody vampire pie??

( please click on either for recipes from Instuctables)

2 very different pies!

It is just so freaking hard to choose sometimes.Rainbow or vampire? Happy or crappy? And how do you know which choice is the RIGHT one. Crappy is the place to be sometimes.

Either way you can probably find a good taste if you try, right? It’s just the presentation. But that’s tough to get by sometimes. Work. And sometimes the presentation is too nasty.

Pies, dying hermit crab number 2 ( or maybe just a molt?) A back-hoe hitting your husbands (empty) car. Frankenstein.

Rosie was reading her copy of MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN. She picked it up off of a book give away table yesterday. “The guy with BOLTS in his NECK.” She wants to save it for when she is older. She has slept with it under her pillow for 2 nights. I just took it to photo it. ( I will put it baaaaack!)

She was sitting there trying to find the small words she knew and tell me them. Like “I” and “AND” and ” THE” and then I encouraged her to try stringing the sounds together– not just the little sight words they were stuffed with last year. She said “W-O-N. woooooooon. won.” She was grinning so big. I was flipping out with happiness for her. The she said ” I WAAAAAAANNNNNNTTTTT… TO BUY A HAMBURGER!” You know– like from the Pink Panther movie?? I almost cried I laughed so hard. Who knew that line came from Frankenstein, and that it took a 5 year old to break the code.

Anyhow. Which pie would you choose?

Should we have a taste test? I bet the girl-baker would love to whip them up, or explode them.

(Story and Photos by thing 1 and thing 2.)

Mama’s yarn ladies came over.  They brought  reeeeeeally good food.  My favorite was the  asparagus quiche and both of us LOVED the BERGER COOKIES!!  Here they are.  Kellie and Bonita couldn’t come.  I hope your poison ivy is better.

berger cookie for the little girl

I baked a cake, and guess what??? It DIDN’T EXPLODE!  ( see a few posts back for that photo)  I wrote knit on it with m&m’s.  It fell apart a little when my mama “helped” me with it.  It was delicious though.

I liked looking at the African safari pictures but my favorite part of the night was eating my cake.

Once you eat fairy food, you can never leave the fairy realm

AAAAAHHHHHH! ( she’s staying!)

So is mama.

nice dogwood picture

tiki torches

experimental photo of the candelier.

The evening was fun and extravagant.  I wouldn’t say it was elegant because I kept tripping in very un-elegant ways.  I am sure that was entertaining at least.

Rosie says she had fun.  she swam in the moonlight and the booger cookies were awesome.

the end.

Getting ready to trade books again– Here are my sketches for this time.

Tomorrow, KIDs-BLOG-DAY!! Don’t change the channel!!

Hermit Crabs.

Were.

A.

Bad.

Idea.

1.  They bite little kids. ( Rosie– “It bit a HOLE in me!”)

2. They sometimes die, despite your best attempts at a nice, homey “crabitat”.

ugh.  We suspected that Captain Barbossa was having an issue of some sort… was fine one day, next clammed up and limp.  Still, being a caring crab owner, I read all about molting and how sometimes you just have to wait and watch.  If the crab was still nicely colored ( skin/shell) and did not stink of the depths of Hell– it might just be a molt.  So we watched and waited.  It’s been maybe 5 days.  Tonight I lifted the edge of the shell and if I could get a sound file of a scream right here, you’d be hearing it!

R.I.P you stinky ol’ devil, and your undead monkey too.

The gnome friends have arrived at their new homes– In New Zealand and the Netherlands.  Here they are– Rowan the eccentric ages-old mister gnome.

And the sassy gal-gnome who seems to have a bit of other magical creature mixed in from her features and size.

They were born on vacation by needle felt, and were lots of fun to make!!!  My sister and I spent some really nice time at the lake poking the wool into gnome-like form.  The gnome swap was so much fun;  I can’t wait to do one again!  I hope that Matryoshka won’t mind me pointing you to her most amazing creations on Flickr.  She was also in the swap, but also take note that an Etsy shop( Felt Forest) is in the works and she makes some WAY magical things.  Check them out, leave her comments– and let her know if you’d like to see her blogging her wonderment-O-life.  I keep telling her it’s a good idea.  She needs some encouragement!

Here is a lovely yarn I was given by my friend Cat.  It was such a nice surprise.  It was one that I didn’t get at Sheep & Wool due to the hole in my pocket :).  It is so gorgeous.  Came from Ellens Half Pint Farm. Also I got a set of those fancy- pants multicolor double pointed needles to knit it with.  Right awai I cast on the Spring Forward socks Thanks Cat– I love it all!!  I will love these socks BIG!

I have been spinning, spinning, spinning. Still keeping with the 10 minutes a day thing.  I keep my weel and fiber set up, and everytime I get a phone call– or even just have 5 minutes free– I sit and do some.  You would be surprised how fast those little bits add up!  Tomorrow I am going to soak and set all of the yarn that I have spun lately and start thinking about what they might want to be.  Another good FALL activity.  I am still trying to focus on those positives!

Lastly for today, here was our very lovely sunset over the garden last night.

I am pretty excited– the seeds I planted are all popping up– I hope we’ll have a bounty of fresh veggies before winter.  Have a great night!

BECAUSE SHE BAKED A CAKE!!!

Mmmmn.

Gave the kids a little independent kitchen time.  They looked up their recipe, put it all together.  (I was there for the hot part.)

Marigold– ” Well I COULDN”T find the baking powder so I just added more baking soda!”

Then, best of all, Hedwig flew right in to the goopy mess whilst it sat on the counter waiting to be disposed of.

Completely awesome.