Summer Days

 The lazy days of summer are winding down and I'm looking forward to transitioning back into our regular rhythm and picking up our school books again :)

We have packed our days full of camping, exploring, playing and enjoying the special moments that summer provides with nights spent on the beach in our cozy camper, collecting buckets full of shells and other treasures that I know we'll find a use for somehow, watching little ones fall asleep in front of the campfire and become brave little swimmers at the lake, trips to the aquarium and special dinosaur exhibits, watching our baby calves grow and making wishes on every dandelion gone to seed in sight.

I think we made good use of our days *grin*.

Hugs,

Rosina

Summer Beach Bums

So where have we been hiding?

Why at the beach of course with nature as our personal playground :)

We've been to a couple of different lakes but I just love being near the ocean and I definitely wasn't disappointed when we found a spot right along the beach.

 

 We enjoyed sunshine and welcomed the cloudy days to recover from the heat..

played with giant bull kelp...

swam in the ocean while tug boats, barges and fishing boats chugged by...

 

scrounged under the rocks at low tide catching crabs and seeing who was brave enough to hold the big ones that threatened to pink our fingers...

dug for clams...

 

watched the cruise ships float by each evening and slept so deeply after each day of play to the lapping sound of the ocean with the rise and fall of the tides :)

Oh how we are counting the days until Hubby comes home from work again and we can do it all over again *grin*.

How is your summer going? What makes you smile during the summer months?

Hugs,

Rosina

Yarn Along ~ Playing around

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

I was hoping that I was going to have at least one completed Lepidoptera sock to share with you but when we went camping just after last weeks yarn along I forgot to bring my pattern! Oh I was so disappointed :(

Not for long though. I still had a ball of yarn and a bunch of needles so I just sort of played around trying out how to knit cables. I'm not sure if I was doing it correct but I definitely got the cabled effect that I had been hoping for and all was not lost as I sucked up the amazing scenery and lounged at our oceanside campground while the kids played in the water :)

For my book this week I had finished Eating Dirt which was sooo good and I spent the week perusing magazines and especially enjoying my new copy of the Living Crafts magazine. Hopefully next week I'll have something much more interesting to share with you *grin*.

Happy knitting!

Rosina

Yarn Along ~ Lepidoptera

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

I finally feel like it's that time of year to pick up knitting needles again and found this great lacey sock pattern called Lepidoptera :)

I had bought this soft alpaca yarn earlier this spring thinking it was going to make a great baby sweater for my sister but alas she had a little boy and the pink was definitely not going to do! So into the yarn stash it went until last weekend when I finally found the perfect use for it. A soft pair of socks for my daughter. 

And she is just itching to get her feet into them! We are constantly having little 'try on' sessions and I haven't even got one sock half finished yet LOL. It's a super easy pattern though. Nothing tougher than making a few extra stitches and it has my all time favorite heel to... short rows. Yay!! If I can avoid doing the regular heel flap type sock heel I will and in this pattern she simplifies the short row process even further by taking out all of those yarn overs that you normally find making it faster than ever and there is a video tutorial to go along with it so you can follow along if you happen to get stuck.

For my book I'm reading Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe by Charlotte Gill and it is a must read!!  It's the true story of her life as a tree planter here in BC for 20 years and was absolutely fascinating to read about areas right here in my backyard and get a peak at what their lives are really like as we see them so often around this neck of the woods and I must admit I've always wanted to know more about them. Her writing transports you instantly into the thick of the BC rainforest and leaves you wanting more :)

I'm looking forward to seeing what you all have been knitting and reading this week to!

Happy knitting,

Rosina

Happy Belated Canada Day

Our Canada Day weekend was spent camping :)

Hubby packed up our trailer along with the two boys and headed out to the lake to meet his parents while L and I stayed home so that we could attend my sister's baby shower on Saturday and then join them the following day. When we arrived at the lake on Sunday they had everything set up.

The boat had been carried down to the waters edge and they had been enjoying rowing it around when the water was calm enough. It got quite windy at times creating to many waves so in between the rain showers and windy bouts they would jump into their life jackets and dash in and out :)

The kids had fun hunting for old train rails and spikes that they played with while we were there. In the past the logging companies used to bring their logs right down to the lake where they were dumped into the water. In fact quite often when we travel this way we will see the loaded trains full of logs being shuttled in and out of the forest as they still move them by train today.

Of course we couldn't have a Canada Day without any sort of fireworks! To our delight the neighbors let off a few...

and the kids had fun waving gigantic sparklers around in the dark :)

I hope you all had a great Canada Day and to all my lovely American friends I wish you a wonderful Independence Day tomorrow!

Hugs,

Rosina

Raising Painted Ladies

 Early in April I received an email letting me know that one of the resource companies that I purchase homeschool material from occasionally was doing a big butterfly larvae order and since it had been a few years since we had raised any butterflies and they were willing to ship them to me I was all over it :)

 Two months nearly passed and one day there was a surprise package that needed to be picked up at the post office. Of course silly me had completely forgotten all about the butterflies by the time we reached June and it wasn't until I saw the red 'live specimen' tags on the outside of the box that I finally remembered that we were waiting for them *grin*.

Our caterpillars were well on their way when we placed their container on the mantle in the living room so they could happily munch away. Only a few days later it seemed they started to hang from the fabric top and spin their cocoons....

and the beautiful metamorphosis from wiggly caterpillar to butterfly began resulting in six pretty orange and black painted ladies. We were all captivated by them as they slowly stretched their wings, pumping blood into them and learning how to make them work. 

 We got this little pop up mesh enclosure the first time we got butterfly larvae a number of years back and it has been fantastic for housing other little creatures besides butterflies that the kids bring home to visit... like frogs, salamanders and so on :)

 It was tempting to keep our little visitors longer so that we could enjoy their beauty but today the sun was shining and it was time to let them take their first big flight.

Each of the children took turns helping one of the butterflies out of their temporary home and enjoying the tickle of its feet on their palms before it flew away.

Butterfly and Flower

See the flower open
Its petals one by one -
Butterfly wings upon a stem
Waving in the sun.
See the flitting butterfly
In shimmering colours bright -
A flower free and flying
In the warm summer’s light.

~ Paul King

Hugs,

Rosina

Summer Solstice 2012

As we celebrated Summer Solstice it was a perfect sunny day, kissed by a light breeze as it swayed through the fields of tall grass surrounding our home. The wildflowers were all bursting heavenward in multitude and beauty as their new life that had sprouted in early spring is finally coming into its fullest :)

And just in time to!

We picked clover, buttercups and daisies to decorate our sun shaped solstice cake with.

The children enjoyed cooking hotdogs over hot embers as the fire burned low...

and warming toes chilled by running through damp grass that wasn't quite dry from the wet days before.

No one really wanted to wreck our cake by cutting into it but you know that didn't last long *grin*. I think a few even had seconds and perhaps thirds LOL.

But all the extra energy was quickly burned off by having a snowball fight in June. Oh how I love the fluffy ball shaped clusters of flowers that my snowball tree provides and they really do make for a fun summer snowball fight :)

 

As the sun finally dipped below the mountain range, streaking the sky with pinks and purples, we waited for the darkness to come so we could stoke up our fire and sit in its glow...

keeping warm, roasting marshmallows and setting our sticks aglow :)

Hugs,

Rosina

Blue Ribbon Rosette ~ Tutorial

My daughter has a fun little my first pony book that she was given on her birthday a few years ago and inside was a game to play and little paper award ribbons to give to the first, second and third place winners. Well over the years the paper rosettes have grown rather worn and we've replaced a few ourselves but this time I thought it would be fun to make a really nice one out of felt that would really last and share the tutorial on how we did it with you :)

As this was supposed to be her project with just mama supervision I got her to do all of the tracing and cutting so you might see in some of the photos that there is a little bit of black ink showing on the tips of the felt ruffles :)

We started with a glass that was 3 inches in diameter, using it as our template for our ruffled rosette and traced twelve of them to be cut out of our felt.

Once our circles were all cut out we moved onto the next step of folding them into little triangular sandwiches by folding the circle first in half and then in half again just like in the photo above for just 10 of them....

and then started to space them as evenly as we could around one of the leftover circles.

This part is a little tricky so I helped her out and to make it a little easier on myself for the spacing I took four of the folded circles and placed them onto the base at the north, east, south, and west compass points so that I had a rough idea of how far apart to put the remaining pieces.

As you pin each one down you want it to overhang your backing by about a 1/4 to 1/2 an inch. You definitely don't have to be precise! But you do want to have that extra space so when you sew on your final backing at the end it will hide any embroidery stitching and so on that will be visible on the underside.

With all of the pieces pinned down she used a bit of regular cotton sewing thread and hand stitched all the way around the base of each of the points to tack them down in place.

DON'T remove  your pins yet! Trust me keeping them in will keep your rosette nice and stable as you continue to work on it :)

So with everything stitched in place we used a smaller glass, this time 2 inches in diameter, to make our rosette center. It really doesn't matter what sizes your glasses are as long as they are both roughly 1 inch different in diameter from each other.

She thought it would be nice to use a darker blue felt for the center and I agree that it really did make the rosette pop! 

I helped again with this part, embroidering the first place onto the felt with white embroidery floss and just using a running stitch to secure it to the front of the rosette.

You will notice that you still have one of your 3 inch circles from the very beginning left over and this is going to be your backing. You will also need to cut three strips of felt 5 inches long and 3/4 of an inch wide for your ribbon tails.

Position your three ribbon tails how you would like them to look and pin them onto the backside of your rosette with their ends far enough towards the center that they will be fully  hidden when the backing is stitched on.

To finish we just used regular cotton thread again and my daughter used a simple whip stitch to secure the backing to the underside of her rosette hiding all of our knots and not so pretty stitch work *grin*.  The final touch was to add a brooch pin that I luckily had but you can easily find them at any hobby/craft store or even your local dollar store may have them down the craft isle.

And that's it!

A super cute blue ribbon rosette for the winner in your household :)

You could personalize these with pretty much any little saying. They would make great birthday boy/girl ribbons, or don't forget about Mother's day that is coming up this weekend. I can see this with #1 MOM on it just for me *grin*.

Have fun making some :)

Hugs,

Rosina

Bento Box Quilt For A Special Boy

My sister gave birth to her very first little one on May 1st making me a Tante (aunty) for the very first time! Yay, so exciting and to celebrate I want to make him his very first quilt.

I've been looking for the perfect pattern or idea for a boy's quilt for quite a while and when I saw these photos for a Modified Bento Box I sort of fell in love with it *grin*. So much in fact that when I started digging through my fabric stash I had my ipod in hand so that I could consult with her photo to match up similar colors LOL.

So far I've cut all of the center blocks out but since I don't have a pattern to give me exact amounts of fabric to cut I'm sort of just winging it when it comes to how many strips of fabric I will need. I didn't want to cut too many just in case I don't use them all so I may have to stop and do some more cutting before I get to the end but I'd rather do that then end up with a bunch of three inch strips I don't need later.

I had planned to spend the entire morning sewing away but my daughter seemed to have other plans and ended up pulling me into a little sewing project of her own so this is about all I got finished today :) I think I have about a month and a half to finish though so that should give me plenty of time to finish it... should being the operative word as I have been known to be a bit of a procrastinator. I just may end up at the baby shower with bright red blood shot eyes from pulling an extreme all nighter to get it finished in time. Let's hope not though! *grin*.

Hugs,

Rosina 

May Day Celebration

I am just bursting with joy today as I reflect on the amazing amount of fun that we had yesterday sharing in the celebration of May Day and the welcoming of Spring with a nearby Waldorf school that so generously allowed us to join in with their families.

We had never been to the park that we were all to meet at and I wasn't quite sure what to expect as we made our way down a gravel path leading behind the industrial buildings along the roadside. Not far along we crossed a wooden bridge with a small creek running below it and just beyond was a wide open field surrounded by forest.

It was as if we had stepped out of the city and directly into a country field as the surrounding brush and trees closed out all signs of the bustling streets beyond.

  

There were colorful blankets placed around the field with a cluster of children and parents in the center busily working together creating flower wreaths to be worn in their hair. The children and I found strings of ivy that had been cut into long lengths just perfect for creating the sturdy bases of our wreaths and we settled on a rainbow colored blanket to weave our ivy and flowers into wonderful floral creations to wear :)

It was so cute to see all of the little ones running around and playing in the sunshine with their flower crowns on and as everyone finished up we joined in a large circle around the May pole to get started. The littlest children in kindergarten were first as they sang and weaved around one another, sometimes into each other, but so bright were their faces as they performed what they had learned for the special day.

As each group of children took turns skipping around the May pole and winding up the ribbons in different patterns it was finally time for any visitors or parents with tots to join in and my little guy in the photo above was beyond excited as he had thought he wasn't going to get a turn *grin*.

My oldest son even took part in one of the rounds with his crown of flowers upon his head :) 

He's 13 years old and growing up so quickly but I'm so thankful that he still enjoys joining in with the younger two and has fun doing it.  

When all of the children had taken a turn around the May pole it was time for just the adults to try something a little trickier. We were all numbered either a '1' or a '2' and then both groups moved in different directions around the pole as we weaved over and under one another as the waldorf teachers sang White Coral Bells. What a challenge that proved to be *grin*. Once in a while there was a little mix up but we all giggled and smiled as we fudged through it while creating a lovely braid down the May pole.

With the festivities winding up for the afternoon we shared a lovely snack of fresh fruits and veggies, raw brownies and other goodies and made our way back home where the children have been talking about it ever since :)

Hugs,

Rosina