The Wayfaring Wordhack

 ...but following the advice of my pottery teacher, my husband and I created an instagram page to post our work on. We did it for the pottery fair that we attended this weekend--our first time showing our work to the public--and I think it paid off. We did not make a ton of sales (no one did, really; there is a lot of uncertainty in Lebanon right now), but it gave us a lot of exposure and nice validation that we aren't just clay hacks. 😜

Someone told me about cara, so I set up an account there, too, and will probably move the Instagram stuff over if I can get around to it.  In any case, it is a family account and you can find us here: https://www.instagram.com/wayfaring_makers/ and/or here: cara.app/wayfaringmakers

The fair was, overall, a very nice experience, and we are happy we went. We met a lot of fun, creative people.

This piece did not go to the fair because I intend to keep it as a souvenir of our time in this country.  I carved it all over with flowers found in Lebanon:



I had a lot of fun carving it and can't wait to try another form with a similar motif.
( and a montage of it outside so you can get the full experience: )

To say I am struggling to get into a routine here would not be true because I have yet to try, but I do know that when I get around to figuring out what our days should look like, I want to include art. Leaving behind our farm and the responsibilities that go with it, coupled with the kids being older and more independent, means that I once again have some time to pursue my creative endeavors. A goal I mentally made for myself before coming to Lebanon was to finally illustrate my children's book (yeah, I know; you've heard that one before). If I do want to attain this goal, I am going to have to get more serious about carving out art time.

The first thing to carve: a squash:
Do you have a regular creative practice and if so, how do you maintain it?

We could go with:  "Ti'Loup's Crocheted Baby Blanket, Five Year's Coming,"  OR "Well-Traveled Yarn," OR "Better Late Than Never"  OR "Ça Tombe à Pic"*

For each of my babies, I made at least one blanket, and I wanted them all to have one I crocheted.  I so loved Farmer Boy's blanket, featured here (hello, old Egyptian apartment!): 


that I wanted to reproduce the color-scheme for Ti'Loup.  These two boys were born 26 months apart (and their yarn bought in two different countries), so I was unable to get the exact weights and colors.  I had decided on a ripple pattern for Ti'Loup, but I did not get farther than half of the starting chain while we were in Egypt.   Yes, we did leave that country when Ti'Loup was 14 months old; why do you ask? :P  What, you don't think he was still a baby? ;)

So, international move, settling into a new home, farm life, et al, and the yarn was stuffed away in the craft room after only a few stitches added to the chain.  When, over four years later, we moved again, here to Lebanon, I re-packed all that yarn into our suitcases, justifying its presence because of how nicely it filled the empty spaces, firmly lodging our other belongings, aka necessities.  Oh, and because Ti'Loup was no longer an infant and I knew I needed the blanket to be a bit bigger if it was to be of any use to him, I also added any other yarn that might fit the color scheme and buy me a few extra rows.  Mixed bag of yarn in hand, I set out to find a pattern that would play nice with all the factors I was having to juggle for cohesiveness.  I settled on this rainbow baby blanket sampler.

In true me style, I decided upon arriving here that the Most Pressing Thing To Do was finish the dratted patiently-awaited blanket.  After many hours of crocheting, and a couple more of ripping out over 20 rows and re-doing them because I had inadvertently added stitches, we have a blanket!  It might be missing the pattern's border (yeah, don't have enough yarn to do that), but it is a bona fide usable, cuddle-worthy, cozy-making, memory-building blanket.

Sorry for the fuzziness; I zoomed to take the photo from the landing on the floor above:
  

And one with the not-so-little happy owner:


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* "In the Nick of Time" or "This is Timely" or "It's Opportune", take your translation pick, whichever conveys to you that it is freezing here in Lebanon and a lap blanket is a wonderfully useful thing to have about one's self.  

Both Junebug and Sprout are pleased with their brother, wanting to hold and caress him at every opportunity. They are both really gentle with him.

And snuggled around the cute babyness, you can see the blanket I made. I'll try to get around to taking a photo of it laid flat.

( Baby pics )
I don't know if anyone remembers, but before Sprout was born, we referred to her as "Little Bean." Since "coquille" implies the outer shell to hold something, now that our little one has emerged, I'm going to start calling him Ti'Loup* here, which means "Little Wolf." Just because.

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* "Ti" as in petit, pronounced "tee", and the P in loup is silent: tee-lou. If we would have gone with a different first name, we were considering Loup for a middle name.

While I predicted this past week would be a wash on the creative front, I secretly hoped it would not be so.  I even took the time before our trip to download a scad of reference photos to my hard drive so I could work on my children's book illustrations.  'Twas not to be, though; I only managed one sketching session with Sprout while Junebug napped on our second to last day.

This is a view of a succession of terraces at our hotel as seen from our terrace.  The perspective was so cool that I started to do a very precise sketch with pencil and then realized I wouldn't have time to finish something accurate and detailed. I defaulted to a charcoal stick. Sadly, I had only my "cheap" sketchbook with me; its smooth paper doesn't have any tooth to hold charcoal so it is very smudgy and loose:

With a big sis like Sprout, Junebug has to learn fast; he has to get mobile!

To that end, this has been a very busy month for him.  The day before we left France (Aug 29), he pushed up onto all fours.  He was moving about then, but only backwards, not having figured out how to advance.

Our first day back in Egyt, he pushed up onto hands and toes. He can take wee "steps" like that, but prefers "the wave." He has mastered an inchworm or seal-flop type motion and gets about really well, following me around the house.

On September 24th, our first day at Anafora, he pushed himself into a sitting position. The 25th he pulled himself onto his feet. He's been practicing every day. Sprout walked at 1 year and 10 days; I think her bro will beat to that milestone by several months if he keeps this up.

In other milestone news, he cut his first tooth today.

I haven't forgotten Snippet Sunday the past two weeks; I just haven't felt like updating. :P I've been busy, as you can imagine, with the countdown really counting down (today we are 39w1d), and I've had my nose to the grindstone fingers to the crochet hook and sewing machine.

I've crocheted two lambs, using this pattern, one for Junebug and one for Sprout, who declared she definitely needed one, too. In fact, I think *I* need one, and in my downtime (cue hysterical laughing), one of these days, I'm going to crochet the ram model for myself using a lot of different colors (probably the leftovers from my hexagon blanket) and he shall be christened Rainbow Ram.

I also crocheted a border on a fleece blanket, made a jersey knit newborn cap, a cloth diaper (actually more like quick-remove underwear since the point is more warmth and protection for Junebug and not wetness-proofing) converted a tank top into a nursing top, and took in the elastic on my pj pants for after the birth.

In other prep news, I packed the bags for the clinic, washed all the coverings for the car seat and bassinet, made some high-protein snacks (might help with nausea) for the labor, and helped J rearrange the kids' room. Junebug won't move into the room with Sprout until after this summer, but we are going to use a Montessori bed and wanted the space ready because we hope to have the baby nap in there from the start. On Friday, but especially Saturday, I was afraid I had brought about Junebug's "early" arrival by a (unfruitful) shopping trip to IKEA. Almost everything on our to-get list was out-of-stock.  The twinges have subsided, though, leaving me hopeful that Junebug will hang in there a few more days. I'd like to sew Sprout a dress and make a nursing top...

It's a miracle.

Two for the price of one, pajamas and nursing pillow!

Well, not J's pajama bottoms; he took them to work.  But they are made out of the flannel that you can see on the bottom of the pillow. You'll just have to picture a handsome, well-built guy modeling lounge pants for you. :P

( pics )

Tonight, I was reading some books with Sprout that we picked up at the library. One of them was a Baby Einstein book entitled, Van Gogh's World of Color.

On the first page, she listened to and answered the questions, but on the second page, she pointed to the goat (Vincent Van Goat) and asked, "Why does that goat have a bandage on its ear?"

What do you tell your 3-year-old in response to that? I know why. Is she too young to know or understand why?  Maybe, but a) I want model honesty and helpfulness to my children; b) I don't believe in fielding a child's "why" questions with variations of "just because." "I don't know" is a valid answer, but as I said, in this case, I did know why.

So I gave a very general answer about the painter being a person who wasn't always happy and how he hurt his ear during the one of his very sad times. And she kept asking, "Why does he have a bandage; why was he sad?"

We ended up talking about how some people need to have help when they feel very bad, about how it is important to try to understand and help those who seem to be going through a rough time, about the existence of mental illness, about how her father and I will always be there for her to help her when she needs us. Still she asked about the bandage. I finally pointed out that yes, he has a bandage, but he seems to have found his smile again and is apparently happy now. That satisfied her. She needed it articulated that there could be a happy outcome.

And she was thrilled to discuss doing her birthday painting on Tuesday after looking at the artwork in the book. :D