In the mornings, we check for sap at Kate’s Garden.
Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
Hiking with Leela on Friday
…then posing for a photo at the overlook…
Family Portrait, Pee-Yoo-Ka Lake
There’s a retention pond near where Mom & Dad live. When I was little, I used to go walking around there with Ari. It’s a pretty place on the outskirts of the city of Syracuse. There are ducks and geese and joggers and trees and dirt trails. In winter, Ari and I used to go skating on it. In late summer when the water is low, it gains the familiar smell of waterlogged decaying vegetation. Sometime in my childhood, I began to refer to the nameless body of water as Pee-Yoo-Ka Lake. At first it was a secret name, spoken only between me and my sister. But good children are not good at secrets. Eventually Mom informed me that the correct term for this small body of water is “the retention pond over by Barry Park,” but by then it was too late. No one excepting her would ever refer to it by such an unpoetic, scientifically and geographically correct name in my presence again.
Akiva, Iris, Mom, Dad and I walked by Pee-Yoo-Ka lake on our way to meet Dad on his way home from work. What with the sun setting and the invasive weeds shimmering like gold in the polarized light, I saw for perhaps the first time ever that this place would probably appreciate a name as pretty and as important as a wetland in the city can be. I directed everyone off the trail and aimed my lens at them for the one and only photo taken on our entire week-long visit to my parents’ house. Maybe the photo would have been better if the smallest person was at the highest point and the tallest person at the lowest, but we’ll never know. I have been impatient behind my camera lately and failed to rearrange them. This is how it is.
Hiking Friday with Grandfather Tree
Above the overlook to the island there are two grandfather trees. You will recognize them. They are two of my favorite trees in the forest. What is the cause that there are two, standing on a high point, with no other trees of comparable size for miles around? What was this place like when they were young?
Above the overlook to the island there are two children. You will recognize them. They are my two favorite children in the forest. What is the cause that they are young and I am old, with no children of comparable size for miles around? What will this place be like when they are old?
The Tea Party Doll Dress
I don’t make many dolls anymore. Despite this, I got the itch to make a new style of doll dress. The pattern company Oliver + S has a cute little dress pattern for 18-inch dolls called “The Tea Party Doll Dress.” My dolls are neither 18 inches nor do they have the proportions of an 18-inch doll, but the style is adorable! I decided to alter the pattern to fit my dolls.
The problem with my dolls is that, unlike a factory-produced doll, they are all a bit different. I therefore have to make a dress for the largest potential doll I might make using my current pattern & let it have more wiggle-room on the smaller dolls. To alter the pattern correctly, I used my favorite method: trial & error.
The first dress I made, using the very last scraps of some lovely polka-dot fabric and a few tiny scraps of batik, turned out to be to small for any of my current, chubbier dolls, but it fits Iris’s doll Peggy quite nicely. Peggy is a beloved doll with a shock of orange hair. She accompanied Iris through the trauma of kindergarten and will forever be the doll I hold closest to my heart.
The second dress I made uses the very last scraps of an aqua batik that I used on a dress I designed for Iris, plus some scraps of an orange batik that I found in my large bin of tiny batik scraps. It fits my current, more full-bodied dolls quite well.
After a few weeks of agonizing over design and fabrics, sewing into the wee hours of the night, and ignoring my children in the name of entertaining them (don’t ponder the conflict of interest: art should not be reasoned out too much), I ended up with two lovely little dresses.
Most likely, I will never make this dress again. The true art is in the design. Production is mere craft.
Akiva was jealous that I was taking a lot of photos of Iris. Here’s one of you, too, Akiva!
On the Playroom Overpass
By the time I arrived with my camera,
the shenanigans had been going on for some time.
It was Martin who built the overpass in the playroom,
but I couldn’t make sense of the commotion.
A loaded bus brings some people to the off-ramp side.
They join what is, in my eyes, a sit-in (or lie-in) of sorts, protesting traffic on the bridge.
A woman— played by the dollhouse mama— seems to be in charge.
A swing set is erected on the overpass.
Deals are made, people exchanged.
Abruptly, the mood turns.
The dollhouse mama, whatever her mission had been, is now cast to the shadows.
Traffic is returning to the overpass!
Engines ROAR as the truck ascends the ramp!
People load up the bus to go. Their blankets are hastily removed.
The arc and the swing set are removed; the ATV is loaded on to the car transporter.
Fully loaded, the great truck begins its perilous descent.
Calamity! On the way down, part of the bridge collapses!
The engineer is brought in to administer repairs.
Brrrm brrrm brrrm…
The arc and the controller return to the bridge.
The truck makes its way under the overpass,
circles on the cloverleaf,
and ascends.
* * *
Later, we go for a walk in the woods.
Iris takes out a magnifying glass in attempt to determine whether the green on a tree is a moss or a lichen.
She determines it is a lichen.
A Driveway Full of Snow
It snowed.
While Iris detailed the front steps, building cairns from crusted icy snow,
Martin cleared (a small part of) the driveway.
Instead of shoveling the snow off to the side, he decided to take it elsewhere.
He filled the sled with snow
until it was full,
then pulled it to the back yard
and released it
down the hill.
He dumped the snow-filled sled
just outside the fence
and went back up the hill to get more.
A Dollhouse on the Shelf
When I was little, I wanted a dollhouse in the bookshelf. I think it was because of the Dollhouse Place. There, they had glass-fronted display cases filled with little dollhouse dioramas. Sofas and chairs, a woman in a kitchen, a man in a bathtub— room after room of people. It was like looking into a glass-fronted apartment house, only one did not have to be afraid of one’s inclination to stare.
In this photograph you will see, on the shelves, the Fisher Price dollhouse. It needs to come off the shelves to be played with. The house opens wide, the garage door opens and closes, and the doorbell rings. To the right of the house is a whole basket full of accessories— a couple of bathroom sets, a few dozen people, six dogs, a knight, king and squire (which are, technically, people), some living room sets, a complete kitchen, a staircase, a handful of beds, some dining tables and chairs, and five cars. Iris used to play with that house a lot. Sadly, my photoblog entries are not indexed for dollhouses, or I could give at least one example. Currently, the accessories for it— especially the cars— are Akiva’s favorite bathtub toys. The Fisher Price houseboat and dinghy live in the bathroom.
In the red storage container to the right of the brown basket are the Creative Playthings wooden dollhouse accessories. In this scene, the papa and the boy are living in the house on the left, in front of Akiva; the mama and the girl are living in the house on the right, in front of Iris. This is my solution to dollhouse on a shelf, and I think it works quite well. There is a connecting door between the two houses and doors to go out the back and sides, but do not let these doors confuse you into thinking that the two apparently linked houses are one house. They are, as the rooms on the selves in the Dollhouse Place, separate apartments.
Walking with Friends
This Friday, we went walking with friends.
We walked home in the dark under a clear night sky with Venus shining brightly above.
