Dearest H,

I know, I know, you told me not to put this on my blog. I understand that you’re nineteen and a college student and all, and being written about on your mom’s little blog could be pretty embarrassing.

But really, buddy, who’s gonna know? I don’t use your real name, so anyone googling you isn’t going to wind up here.  And if any of your friends read this, you can ask them why the heck they’re reading your mom’s blog anyway.

How did you expect me not to write about this? I mean, you come home for Thanksgiving telling your dad and me about this big project that you needed help with.  You knew we’d jump on it—we’ve been helping you with your projects since you first encountered play dough at two and didn’t know how to roll a snake.  We’ve helped you make a trebuchet, a model of the Duomo, scale papier-mâché planets, a Lord of the Rings game terrain, endless costumes. To name just a few.

And we’ve always loved helping you on your films. Whether we’re scouting out the farm location you need, or making a costume for a boy-king, or hitting up friends to act, or doing nothing more than fetching burritos for your crew.

And this project was cool. You know how much I love The Royal Tenenbaums. I fell hard for that quirkfest when it first came out ten years ago, when you were just nine and still worked  up over the first Harry Potter movie.

Ten years later you’re filming a scene from the movie for one of your film classes. Specifically the scene with Ritchie and Margot in the tent in the living room. And you needed a tent.

Not just any tent, but a tent that could be hung from the rigging (is that the right term?) That would be tiny and tent-sized at the back, but would widen gradually at the front, to accommodate three cameras. And that you could fold up and bring back to New York in a duffel bag. No problem, right?

Hey, if we could make a model of the Duomo out of foam core with no plans, surely we could make such a tent. So off to the fabric store we went, with your sketched plans. Twenty yards of purchased muslin later, and we were back in the family room, moving furniture, rolling fabric across the floor and trying to decide where to make cuts. I said I’d sew if you pinned. (I hate pinning.) You thought I was nuts for insisting on a French seam for the back of the tent, but that seam showed up in your film, didn’t it?  Mothers know these things.

I loved watching you and your dad trying to figure how and where to hammer the eyelets. Felt like the old days, watching you build duct tape sabers together.

You went back to school, and we were all happy and hopeful that your contraption would work.

Still I wasn’t prepared for how much this texted photo would take my breath away:

It’s a blurry shot, taken with your phone in low light, but look at that thing! You can see the traditional tent lines at the back, but something about that splayed-open front strikes me as glorious. More impressive than I envisioned. Somehow a sea of muslin, some eyelets, rope and the right lighting came together into something grand.

That tent is some kind of metaphor to me. A metaphor for how people can come together and create something big with very little. Sort of like homeschooling: it’s really just a series of days made up of books and ideas and small projects, but somehow, over time, it becomes something more. It creates a mindset that says, I can make that winged tent that I’m imagining. I can dream something up, and I can make it real.

I’m being sappier than Wes Anderson, aren’t I? I’m sure this whole post seems a little ridiculous to you, but here’s why I wrote it (even after you asked me not to): Many of the people who read my blog are newer homeschoolers. And while they seem perfectly willing to come back week after week to read endless stories about your little brother–because he’s the only one who still lets me write about him–what really seems to inspire many of them are stories of what happens to homeschoolers when they grow up. (And dream up tents for films. And make them.)

Your dad and I loved helping you with your project. And now you’ve helped  me with mine.

Thank you for indulging me, sweetie. I can’t wait to see your finished film.

Love, Mama

I went away for a writing retreat with friends this weekend.

For years we’ve gathered at the coast, but this time we found ourselves on the backroads of Northern California. Instead of looking out over beaches, we had buttes. And a most changing landscape–for a landscape that at first seemed unchanging.

We were astonished by snow.

We drank strong coffee and wrote words on the backs of tickets. Then we made poetry. (An activity that’s as fun to do with kids as it is with adults, inspired by Susan Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy.)

We watched a heron and a hawk face off from a distance of ten feet, and stare each other down for hours.

We ate well. These pumpkin steel-cut oats were delicious (and will be making a comeback in my kitchen on Thanksgiving morning) and Heidi Swanson’s surprising salad with kale, coconut and farro, from this cookbook, was worth pulling from the fridge, meal after meal.

We stayed warm with a wood stove.

We wrote postcards to each other, from fictional and somewhat emotionally-unstable characters.

We walked alongside fallow rice fields. Then we went back to the cabin and blasted I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got while making barley risotto.

And we wrote. Which is what we’d set out to do.

Getting away like this, once a year or so, matters more to me than I probably realize. It’s about being with friends and being without responsibilities, yes, but it’s also about feeding my artistic self, and keeping it going for the rest of the year, when the time allowed for it comes in fits and starts rather than days.

It’s important for parents to feed themselves this way, especially homeschooling parents.

If you can’t get away for a weekend, maybe you can do it for a few hours. For about fifteen years now, since Lulu was a baby, I’ve gone out to work on my writing in a cafe once a week. Usually Wednesdays. My evenings out have evolved into first eating at a somewhat dive-y Indian spot, where all I have to do is walk in and smile and they write down my order of chana masala and roti. I eat my dinner over an inspiring read (lately Adam Gopnik’s new The Table Comes First.) And then I walk a few doors down to a cafe and work at my writing.

Wednesdays have become a highlight of my week. No matter how busy life gets, I know I’ll have a few hours to indulge my writerly side, and it fuels me. Like that kindling in the wine barrel, in that photo up there.

Chris also takes a night out, generally to rehearse with his band. I’ve known him since (before!) he was a teenager blasting his ears out in a garage band, and I’m only too happy to help keep that part of him alive. (Seeing him play live always makes me feel like a teenager again, even without the thrift store spike heels and leggings.)

Our weekly evenings out have been, I think, one of the smartest things we’ve done as parents. Sometimes it’s hard: the one left at home does all the dinner-prep and parenting duties for the evening, even more of a task when the kids were younger. And I find myself saying no to other weeknight social opportunities because I don’t want to give up my writing night. Still, it’s worth every trouble. Chris and I are helping each other remain creative people, in the midst of a very full life.

What seems secondary, but must be just as important: we’re showing our kids that our creative selves matter. That a week isn’t a week if you don’t find time for writing or music-playing in between dragging out the garbage and doing the laundry. That indulging your creativity is just something you do, like brushing your teeth and exercising.

How do you feed your creative side, in the midst of a busy life?

(P.S. If you’re here via last weekend’s link at Simple Homeschool, welcome! Please consider jumping in and joining the conversation in the comments. That’s where the action is!)

What do you do when your kid saves his money to buy a month-long subscription to the Lego Universe online game, and wants to talk of nothing else?

You go with it.

You look through some almanacs together (another recent obsession) and talk about graphs and charts and brainstorm how Lego Universe might lend itself to an intriguing graph.

That’s when he decides that a chart of the universe’s Nexus Force would be a most excellent diversion.

So you set him up with a blank Creately project page and watch him go to town.

Mr. T and I discovered Creately a few weeks back, when he wanted to make a digital tree of the cat family. We searched for a drawing tool for making flowcharts and found some good links on two pages I linked to recently: the infographics post at Langwitches and Troy Hicks’ informational writing wiki.

Mr. T and I sat together, setting up the chart and figuring out how Creately worked. Before long he was working on his own, toggling back and forth between his chart and the felidae family page on Wikipedia, copying, pasting, linking boxes and choosing colors.

Click on the graph to see a larger image which you can zoom in on.

I never have been able to keep all of those leopards, cougars and mountain lions straight. I’ve never seen them all laid out in such a visual way. It’s a useful document, this thing my kid made.

(I wish I’d started T on a tool other than Creately. I had no idea how much he would take to the platform. It’s free for the first five graphs you make, but from then on you need to pay a monthly fee to use it, which doesn’t seem practical, given that we’d likely use it only sporadically.)

Back to that Lego Universe chart. This time T wanted to incorporate images, so I showed him how to do a Google image search, and how to save his finds to our desktop, and then import them into his chart. Do kids pick up on this stuff quickly? Only as quickly as they pick up a bottle of maple syrup when faced with a plate of pancakes.

This chart is also clickable.

Mr. T made another graph recently, this time by hand. This one came about during yet another recent fascination: The Avengers animated series, which he’s worked his way through on Netflix. One day, when he wouldn’t stop talking about Hawkeye, I showed him this page on Figment.com, of wacky charts based on the Harry Potter series.

Go look. The charts and graphs made us giggle. I love the notion that kids can take information from something they’re reading (or watching!) and analyze it with a sense of humor.

I asked T if he’d like to make a similar Avengers-themed chart, and he decided that it would be fun to note how much he liked the various characters throughout the episodes (inspired by Potter chart #3.)

(Click it!)

Once again, I was amazed by his tenacity with this project. He researched the name of every episode and transcribed them on his graph. (His idea, not mine.) I appreciate the home-spun, hand-drawn feel of it. He’s still planning to add more Avengers, and to go over all of the episode titles in pen. The graph has led to conversations about T’s likes and dislikes with the series, and the notion of character development. (What’s up with The Wasp anyway, and why does she get so boring as the season goes on?)

So, what has he learned from these projects?

• How to choose a topic that lends itself to a chart or graph.
• How to share information in a visual format, rather than with pure prose.
• How to research information.
• How to structure that information, in a visual that makes sense to the viewer.
• How to work with new platforms, such as Creately.
• How to import various media to his projects, and to toggle between web sources.
• The role of good design in visual projects. (Check out my thoughts on Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind to get a sense of why design is such an important skill for kids to acquire.)

All good stuff. In Mr. T’s mind, though, he was just having fun, exploring some of his current interests in a new way.

Who says you can’t learn from video games and cartoons? Instead of separating popular culture from what kids are learning, I’d argue that we ought to embrace it. I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll keep saying it until I’ve typed off the letters from my keyboard: kids learn best when you start with their interests. Which doesn’t mean that all of their learning has to be based on Thor or Lego space marauders.

But sometimes, it can.

I can never resist a web link about creativity. Clicked on this one recently, about a creativity experiment with undergrads based on thinking like a kid. What interested me more than the experiment was this analysis of it:

From The Frontal Cortex:

Why does age make us less mature? Why accounts for the infamous 4th grade slump in creativity? One possibility is that we trade away the ingenuity of our youth for executive function. As the brain develops, the prefrontal cortex expands in density and volume. As a result, we’re able to exhibit impulse control and focused attention. The unfortunate side-effect of this cortical growth is an increased ability to repress errant thoughts. While many of these thoughts deserve to be suppressed, it turns out that we also censor the imagination. We’re so scared of saying the wrong thing that we end up saying nothing at all.

I had an experience during my teaching days that illuminated that 4th grade slump for me. One year, we had a program in which pairs of teachers visited classes throughout our elementary school, facilitating an activity based on a famous artist. Usually I taught third grade, but for two days I got to teach art in every grade, from kindergarten through sixth.

It was the second grade classrooms that stunned me.

There were two of them in our school, and they were filled with artists. The kids jumped into our Matisse project with glee. They made bold lines, they used lots of color. They didn’t ask questions; they just sprawled across their pages and poured themselves on to them. And then they cried for us teachers to come see what each of them had created.

I couldn’t believe that the kids were just a year younger than my third graders. Already, the third grade kids were doubtful when it came to art. They asked lots of questions. They dawdled. They crumpled papers. They hid them. Most of the kids still seemed to enjoy art once they got going, but they didn’t leap in, with joy and without reservation, as the second graders had. It wasn’t just my third grade class; the other third grade at the school was the same way. (The school’s kindergarten and first graders were avid artists as well. But as a third grade teacher, it was those second graders that captivated me. How could so much creative drive get lost in the course of a year?)

If I’d just watched a single second grader work, and a single third grader, I wouldn’t have realized the magnitude of the difference. It was the palpable change in creative energy between the second grade and the third grade classrooms that was impossible not to notice.

And the fourth graders? That was the end of it all. Many of those kids had pretty much given up on art, and simply made half-hearted scrawls on the page. There were still a handful of artists in the room, but it wasn’t a roomful of artists. It was a little heartbreaking.

All of this got me thinking about one of my theories about taking dictation from kids. If you’re newer to this blog, you may have missed my posts about dictation. I’m not talking about dictation in the Charlotte Mason sense, but dictation in the secretarial sense. In other words, writing down what kids want to say. You can read much more in my series of posts, The Dictation Project. Or here it is in a nutshell: Dictation is a fantastic, underused tool for helping kids learn to write. By simply transcribing  for them for a few years, you can help them develop their writing voices while they simultaneously learn the mechanics of writing–slowly, organically and painlessly.

Dictation is especially effective, I think, because it helps kids express themselves on paper while they’re still young and, well, expressive. The creative energy that bubbled in those kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms isn’t limited to art. The kids speak with the same unbounded joy and imagination. All we adults have to do is transcribe those words to see the vivid, original writer already living within the child appear on the page.

Here’s the sad irony: if we wait for kids to become proficient writers to translate their unique voices to the page, it might be too late. Because guess how long it takes to develop from being a beginning writer to becoming a fluent one? One who doesn’t have to think much about letter formation, spelling and grammar, who can focus on the thoughts at hand? I don’t have a scientific, proven answer, but experience tells me that it tends to take three or four years. Might happen faster for homeschoolers who start later, and surely it happens faster and slower for different individuals, but I’d say that three or four years is a pretty good average.

Calculate that. If kids start writing at five or six, when will they become fluent writers who can fairly easily transcribe what they want to say? That’s right. Their writing skills will come together right in time for the 4th grade slump. Right when, quite possibly, their prefrontal cortexes are becoming distracted with new functions, and beginning to censor the imagination.

If you don’t think this is an issue, pick up any book for adults who want to write. There will nearly always be a chapter on voice. A chapter trying to show adult writers how to find their own unique styles. How to put their personalities on the page. Such a chapter is almost always there because voice is so important in writing. It’s a big part of what engages a reader. Yet many of us make it to adulthood without any sense of our voices as writers. It isn’t something cultivated in traditional English classes.

But young kids already have voices! Quirky, expressive voices—each and every one of them! They just don’t yet have the skills to put those words to the page at any length. Dictation helps young writers discover their voices and develop them, long before the 4^th grade slump hits. Which makes it much easier to hold on those voices as their brains move on to new skills.

My youngest is nine. If he went to school, he’d be a fourth grader this fall. Which gives me pause. This kid has an endless imagination; the notion that his prefrontal cortex might start getting sidetracked by “impulse control and focused attention” gives me pangs. I’d always thought that dwindling creativity had more to do with peer pressure than anything else, and that homeschooling might help prevent it. I still believe that, to a degree. But I suppose I can no more stop T’s brain from changing than I can stop the sea from sending in waves.

At least his writing voice is intact. The kid is a storyteller, and no future crank of a teacher with a red pen will ever drive that out of him. Phew.

I’ve been meaning to report back on how Mr. T’s ultimate guide turned out.

Rather than writing The Ultimate Guide to the Trojan War as he’d planned, he titled his opus The Ultimate Guide to the Ancient World. Why just cover one little war when you can take on the entire ancient world? His plan is to add more sections as he pursues more ancient history.

He had a good time making that cover.

We talked about what he might want put on the front of his book, and looked through a stack of books on the Greeks. We admired photos of Greek pottery engraved with characters from their myths. I thought a scratch art technique might give a similar look, and found instructions here.

T took a goofy pleasure in covering that cardboard in pastel–first the terra cotta color, and then the black. His hands became satisfyingly blackened.

The fun part about scratching the art is that if you make a mistake, you simply reapply more of your upper color and try again.

The effect really did resemble ancient Greek pottery.

T had become fascinated with the Greek alphabet–we listened this song a gajillion times–and decided to write his title in Greek letters.

I had to spray the cover with a stinky, undoubtably toxic acrylic spray so that readers of T’s book wouldn’t wind up with hands like his.

Many of T’s ideas from our initial brainstorming session wound up in his book. There were several writing-intensive pages with interviews, history and such. But there was also some graphic fun. Such as character cards:

Any work of T’s wouldn’t be complete without a Pokemon-esque analysis:

And because this was T’s book and not his mama’s, there needed to be weapons.

This is my favorite page. Both the concept and design were entirely T’s.

It’s a chart of the Iliad’s gods and who they favored. T did lots of re-reading of a kids’ version of The Iliad to get this right. The alliances are mind-numbing. I’m glad I have a chart to help me out.

We decided to “bind” the book using Circa discs from Levenger. What’s neat about this method of bookmaking is that you can add and move around pages at will, which allowed T to insert pages as he finished them. It’s a rather expensive way to make a book, but I’d already gathered many of the supplies for my own Circa notebook.

(Check out that notebook, two years later. This is where I’m organizing ideas for my book. It’s a good two inches thick already, and that’s just notes! The book-writing is happening on my computer.)

Mr. T enjoyed writing his guide, and was proud to show it at our history fair. (Although, as we’ve learned in the past, a book isn’t always the most eye-catching display at a fair. There’s so much to see that you really have to captivate visitors with big and showy! Next year.) These days we’re having a fine time learning about the Aztec, Inca and Maya. I asked T if he might want to incorporate this into a new section of his guide, since it is The Ultimate Guide to the Ancient World, after all.

“Nah,” he said. “I want to do something different. But I don’t know what yet.”

Bright idea to come, surely.

A few things that have me worked up these days:

eggs! They’re wet and just-hunted for in this photo–you may even spy a tiny slug on one or two of them. (Which is what comes of them spending a few pre-dawn hours hidden in the backyard.) We used natural dyes on all of them but those green ones. I do love the pop of that phony green. Looks like it’s egg salad sandwiches for dinner tonight. I’m trying a new recipe, which uses yogurt instead of mayo, and comes from…

super natural every day. I’m loving this cookbook. I have Heidi’s first cookbook, which I’ve enjoyed as well, but this one may be even better. For Easter breakfast we made the Baked Oatmeal with blueberries. Yum. We’ve also prepared and lapped up the Farro Soup and the Harissa Ravioli. I took a big chance on Pan-Fried Mung Beans with Tempeh, knowing that it sounded like something from a 70s commune, but was unexpectedly directed by the resident teenager to please make this again! At Heidi’s signing at my local bookstore, I told her that as a longtime vegetarian, I have my gourmet cookbooks and my hippie cookbooks–and am very grateful to now have her cookbooks, which elegantly combine the two. Heidi knew just what I meant. She was absolutely lovely and gracious.

teenage style. Easter afternoon. Love their independence.

more teenager appreciation. In the form of a note, left on my desk.

ollalieberries and honey in my future. My girls are so busy these days. This one’s working our ollalieberry bushes. I have one strong colony (the swarm I so comically captured last year) and am hoping to catch another.

a simple, tasty recipe for said honey. This one comes from the classic The Cheese Course, by Janet Fletcher. It’s basically honey and walnuts on little Cabecou goat cheeses, but there’s one special, somewhat time-consuming trick, which removes the tannins from the walnuts. You pour boiling water over the walnuts and let them sit for half an hour. Then you put them on a triple-thick paper-towel-lined pan, and bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes, and for an additional twenty minutes at 250 degrees, until the nuts are dry throughout. You toss them with the honey and drizzle over the goat cheese. I’ve also done the same over gorgonzola; both got raves at parties. Let me just say that when the cheese was gone, fingers were seen swiping plates.

collaborating brothers. My boys have a long history of working together on H’s film projects. I figured those days had ended for the time being, given that H is at school clear across the country. But never underestimate the power of Skype. Last week, Mr. T did some voice work for an audio story for H’s sound class. We loaded up Skype and H sent the script as a Skype transcript. He gave T direction via headphones and I recorded it on Garage Band. It was sweet to see them working together again–and fun to see how H’s direction class has influenced his abilities to get what he wants from an actor. And he’s always baffled at how T manages to nail what he asks for–yet the two of us can’t convince the kid to try acting for others. Someone’s missing his calling.

an alphabet glue winner! The giveaway issue goes to Wendy, who answered my request for a favorite shared book with, “How could i forget one of my all time favorites – barn dance – by bill martin jr. and john archambault. it is like singing a song!” I’ll send your email address on to Annie, Wendy, and she’ll send along your e-magazine. Congratulations! For those of you who missed out on the giveaway, I hope you’ll still check out Alphabet Glue. You can read more on the website, or in my last post. It’s good, book-loving stuff!

So, what has you all atwitter?

I’ve never sponsored a giveaway here on the wonder farm. I’m giddy to see how it goes.

I first heard of the new, downloadable quarterly magazine Alphabet Glue on my friend Molly’s blog, A Foothill Home Companion. (Molly never fails to inspire.) As soon as I read about the magazine, I wrote to its creator, Annie of Bird and Little Bird, to see if I could offer a giveaway here too–because I know I have readers who would appreciate it. And she kindly agreed.

You simply need to read the magazine’s tagline to know why I like it so much: activities and inspiration for kids who love books (and their grown-ups). If I could give one bit of advice to a new parent, it would likely be love books together. Which is not quite the same advice as read books together. Although if someone asked me to distinguish between the two, I’d have a hard time putting words to it. But no more. I could simply offer an issue of Alphabet Glue to show what I mean.

The magazine is full of ideas for loving books together. There’s an excellent spring reading list. A library scavenger hunt. A full-of-potential template for creating houses for favorite story characters.

And bookmaking! There’s little I love more than making books with kids. In this issue you can learn to make a felt bracelet book.

Or a tiny box accordion book.

But Alphabet Glue is more than a series of fun activities. Annie really understands the role that stories play in a child’s life. In her introduction, she writes: Children spend much of their waking lives immersed in story of some kind, and this is part of what makes childhood so very special. Yes! Annie also understands that loving stories is as much about creating them as it is about reading them. In one activity, Mix and Match Story Cards, she has kids shuffle up cards with characters, places and problems to make up their own stories. I love that she includes blank cards for kids to add their own components. And I especially love that she includes a list of books with “magical places”, “wonderful characters” and “fantastic problems” for inspiration. (I may try this one with the kids in my writer’s workshop.)

Scrolling through my issue, I felt a little sad, knowing that my own kids are a little (or a lot) too old for most of these activities. I wished I could post photos of my kids doing the activities, as other giveaway bloggers have done. Then I remembered the tiny box accordion books that my own kids have made over the years. Sometimes we made the boxes ourselves, as Annie’s project suggests; sometimes we used old matchboxes.

This one is called The Doll’s Tea Party. Made by Lulu about ten years ago.

Made way back when H was obsessed with Pokemon.

Looking at these old, beloved projects, I realized that Annie and I are kindred spirits. I hope that you read Alphabet Glue and feel the same way.

(Edited to add: to get a sense of how these activities can inspire, check out this lovely post at Time to Craft.)

You can get your own copy of Alphabet Glue here for $4. You can also take a chance to win a copy!  To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment, and tell us the name of a book that you and your child have loved together. Next Monday, April 25, I’ll randomly choose one commenter to win a copy. Good luck!

I know I’ve written a few times about the history fair our homeschool group hosts each spring. (Last year I wrote about Lulu’s One Hundred Years Of Food project.) This year I thought I’d describe in more detail how we structure the event, in case any of you might like to try something similar with your own friends.

And you should. Because it’s a whole lot of fun.

We call our event the Trip through Time. Basically, kids choose their own historical topics of interest. Anything goes, from feudalism to the Great Depression; from the history of Broadway musicals to the history of Hot Wheels. Kids prepare displays on their chosen topics.

Some kids dress up.

We encourage kids to come up with not only a visual display, but also a way for visitors to interact.

They might give visitors a chance to dig for dinosaurs.

Or play a harp.

Or make a chariot.

Or take tea in the manner of Jane Austen.

We also provide passports for the exhibitors. These are small booklets in the size of an actual passport. They hold about 40 pages, and also include a photo of the exhibitor. (I’ve taken to using Instax instant photos because I can take them the day of the event.)

After kids visit an exhibit, that exhibitor stamps (or stickers) the visitor’s passport.

Some kids use the same passport year after year, which makes them seem particularly well traveled.

We divide kids into three groups ahead of time, and designate those groups with a color dot placed on their passports. Then we take turns visiting exhibits. The first group gets 20-30 minutes to visit exhibits; the other two groups stay at their displays and receive visitors. Then the next group gets to visit, and the other two groups speak with visitors. And so on. This set-up encourages interaction. In the early days, we tried a more free-form history fair, in which the displays were set up, and everyone visited them all at once. This meant that everyone was visiting, and no one stayed at his or her own exhibit and discussed it. And the kids were finished looking after about ten minutes and ready to move on.

With the rotating set-up, presenting one’s topic becomes an integral part of the event. My favorite part of the day is chatting with kids who are fired-up about something they’ve learned about!

We also leave time for performances related to the exhibits. This year we were treated to a performance of Klezmer music.

I especially love how this sort of a fair provides an audience for a homeschooler’s work. Over the years, all three of my kids have passionately dug into topics, and spent much more time than usual creating interesting ways of displaying those topics, knowing people beyond their own family would see them. (Remember H’s model of the Duomo? Or Lulu’s Indian kitchen?) The fair has always been a tangible motivation.

One year our group hosted a science and math fair, but really, there are infinite possibilities: how about a literature fair, or an art fair, or an invention fair? Just pick a date, find a space, and send out an invite. The kids’ enthusiasm will take over from there.

…he might not have needed that forge.

This is Mr. T’s costume for our homeschool history fair. (More on the fair coming soon.)  Like any good fan of The Iliad, T wanted his own hoplite armor. Like any good bricoleurs, we figured we could make it.

We started talking duct tape, and suddenly I remembered some instructions in Custom Knits for making a personal mannequin from duct tape and an old T-shirt.  And no, this knitting book has nothing to do with armor-making, but I thought a similar technique might work for T’s project.

T put on an old T-shirt–with nothing underneath–and I began to wrap duct tape around him. Lots of duct tape. After I’d wrapped the shirt in two or three layers of tape, I loosed T from the contraption by cutting straight up the back, through both the shirt and the tape. I cut off the sleeves and shaped the neck, armholes and bottom a bit with scissors, and then added a smooth layer of duct tape around the edges. Here’s what it looks like from the inside:

It worked! It’s fairly lightweight, it has a soft T-shirt lining, and it forms to T’s shape perfectly, just as hoplite body armor would do.

We decided to try the same technique for the helmet. This time we used the hood from an old hoodie. Again, T wore the hood while I taped around his head. Once I’d built up a few layers, I added a duct tape nosepiece and cheek guards, and shaped the helmet around the eyes with scissors.

T wanted a “horsehair” crest, but our hardware store quest for attachable, flexible broom bristles was fruitless. Eventually crepe paper came to mind, and a Google search for “crepe paper fringe” pulled up some easy instructions for stitching together layers of crepe paper with a sewing machine. Perfect! I suppose I could have tried gluing the layers together but the sewing machine trick turned out to be incredibly simple and durable—and look at the cutesy-pie things you can make with crepe paper and a sewing machine!

For each bunch I stitched together six strips of cheap-o crepe paper streamers. I made six bunches, then glue-gunned them together into a single thick bunch, and attached them to the helmet with yet more duct tape.

Voila!

Mr. T and I envisioned making a shield or hoplon from something like a garbage can lid, plus foam and duct tape, but alas, no surplus lids could be found. We decided instead to start with a small round of cardboard because we had it—and because the painted Cyclops was the part of the shield that mattered most to T anyway. Then we maximized it by adding—yup—more duct tape to the edges.

Of course the hoplite needed a spear. And yes, you can make a spearhead with duct tape. You just can’t kill a boar with it.

T is quite aware of the fact that hoplite armor would have likely been made from bronze, but our hardware store lacked bronze-colored duct tape. (No bronze duct tape, no flexible broom heads, no spare garbage can lids–and they call themselves a hardware store!) I Googled around for a type of spray paint that would stick to duct tape, but decided that any product with such an ability would probably not be a good thing to breathe. And anyway, when your helmet has a horsehair crest crafted from crepe paper, you aren’t really going for authentic.

This was definitely a shared project. I would have liked it better if the design and the carrying-out belonged more to T. But building armor from stuff you find lying around the house is no simple task. Nor is cutting through multiple layers of duct tape. Plus, much of the costume required T to stand unmoving and play mannequin. Still, it was T’s vision: he did the research on what the armor should look like, he sketched and painted that fearsome Cyclops, he made lots of the little decisions. And he is very pleased with his new Greek gear.

Achilles, there’s a new hero after your heel, and his name is Mr. T.

Look out!

Recently I got a new itty-bitty 11-inch macbook air. I pretty much ran my last laptop into the ground. I actually typed many of the letters right off the keys, and that spinning rainbow wheel and I spent far too much time together in the past year.

I thought it might be nice to cloak such a high-tech baby in some low-tech handmade.

I’ve never felted anything before. It always seemed too much of a gamble: you knit something far huger than what you need, only to have to shrink it, crossing your fingers that the size comes out right. But I’ve always admired the laptop cases in Alterknits, so I thought I’d give one a shot. A very scientific shot.

I had to adapt the pattern because these air laptops are smaller in size and wafer-thin (and so don’t need a gusset), and I wanted my case to close. I knitted a 4″ swatch and felted it. I measured how much it shrunk, both widthwise and lengthwise. I figured each ratio of shrinkage and applied it to the final measurements I hoped for. And then I promptly forgot that to make the stripes come out vertical, you have to knit the case sideways, meaning that I’d mixed up my ratios when I cast on, and I had to start over.

Anyone who says that you never use algebra in real life has never tried to plan a felted project.

Guess what? Algebra works. The fit is perfect.

(details on ravelry)

I did do some actual baby knitting as well. Cashmere socks for a friend’s new baby. Doesn’t every baby deserve cashmere socks? (Although I don’t have a pair of cashmere socks.) This pattern came from More Last Minute Knitted Gifts, a real drool-inducer of a book.

I’m also knitting this pattern from the same book, the Big Lace Scarf, on size 17 needles. Lace on 17s? Crazy! But fast. And cozy.

It was funny to be knitting the tiny socks and the gonzo scarf at the same time. Sort of like knitting in Wonderland, growing larger and smaller.

After slogging through a single project for months, it seems I am on a knitting binge.

This was the sloggy project, and I love it so much it was worth it. I’m calling it my Look At Me! cardigan because the color and the pattern can’t help but call attention to themselves. The pattern is the Que Sera cardigan, a free pattern from Knitty.

I promised to knit Chris an Icelandic sweater, but while waiting for the (real! Icelandic!) wool to arrive, I’m distracting myself with this.

It’s the Simple Yet Effective Shawl. I’m making it in a smaller, kerchief size. And since those jelly belly colors aren’t gaudy enough, I’m planning to add bobbles to the edges. (But I promise not to wear it with the Look At Me! cardigan. I have my limits.)

More ravelry links here.

Oh, and we actually do have a new baby around here.

Meet Sorrel. I’d knit him some socks, but he already has some very sweet white ones.