There is a place, beyond this place... A week of thankfulness {Multitudes on Mondays}

There is a place, beyond this place.
Sunlit strands curve outward and onward,
Evoking the soft sting of a memory.
Sighing deep as a teardrop drawn from the dawn.



Weary heart don't forget, all colours are birthed,
From the light that finds you here in the dark.
In this fractured moment, Love beckons unflinching.
"Cup your hands and hold the weightless gold of eternity.
Release all else,
This is the way,
come."



Here, in this moment with all it's flaws,
The sodden clay, the tear stained pores,
Lies a germinating soil.
From which grain can grow.
*
In that moment,
when life reveals its true purpose,
let go,
and Love will break like a wave, trembling,
Over the bare ground of your soul.



Seek that pearl. Sell all else!
Abandon your heart to the deep.
Beneath, and beyond the endless fields of desire and fear,
The seed waits for water.
Earthy, pure.

Making A Wet Felted Flower Picture {Saturday Artist}

This week, we had lots of soapy, mess making with a nice big stack of rainbow coloured roving!
Read on and you can make your very own :)

First select some natural wool roving.

• Tease out some thinish strips of base colour roving onto a sushi mat.
• Place the first layer of wool roving in vertical strips to form a squareish shape.
• Place the second layer of roving horizontally over the first.
• Place the third layer vertically over the second.

Tease out the pieces of felt you want to use for your design. Make sure that they are not too thick as they won't bind to the base so well.
Lay them over the base in the pattern you want.

{tip}... Choose a simple design as the colours will merge a little during the felt making process.

Cover the design with a piece of netting. Spray a generous amounts of soap over the netting. Rub and "mush" the felt for around ten minutes. {Really invest in this part of the project, it makes all the difference to the end result}

The littest kids loved this "soap mushing" part! It is so tactile!

Remove the netting carefully and lay your design in the sink. Carefully dribble boiling water over the design. This will help bind the fibres together. You will want to be careful at this stage as the pressure of the water can distort the design.

Allow your felt to cool before rolling it up in the sushi mat. Squeeze out the excess water and soap.

Roll, squeeze, rinse repeat...Continue to rinse your rolled up felt under a hot tap till the water runs clear. Carefully unwrap the felt and hang it over a radiator to dry.

Now trim the edges of the felt to neaten them up. Or leve them frayed if you like them more natural :)Once completly dry you can frame your felt, embroider it, embelish it with sequins, buttons and the like, cut it into place mats or coasters or cut it up to make garlands...

My daughter embellished her felt with a little embroidery.



Blanket stitch neatens up the edges nicely. The girls made simple three plied cords to hang them...



A pretty Spring decoration!



Visit "Ordinary Life Magic" for more Saturday Artists!

{This Moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Visit Soule Mama for more "moments"

{Passion}

‘Calling is where our greatest passion meets the world’s greatest need’.
~Frederick Buechner

Yarn Along...

Joining Ginny today for another lovely "Yarn Along"
I have finished the little jacket and leggings from the simple garter stitch pattern I started last week!

They look so snugly I can't wait to wrap a little baby bundle in them!
Emmy has been working on a little turquoise hat for the baby. She really prefers crochet to knitting but I'm pretty sure this simple pinwheel beanie pattern will win her over :)
As for reading. Well Matilda received a beautiful copy of "The Root Children" from a dear friend for her birthday.

This simple, magical tale of the seasons has been our staple story book this week. The girls really love the little characters and the gentle tale of how spring awakens beneath the earth.

" The Flowers more Fragrant"

How true it is that,
if we are cheerful and contented,
all nature smiles,
the air seems more balmy,

the sky clearer,
the earth has a brighter green...

the flowers are more fragrant...

and the sun, moon, and stars


all appear more beautiful,


and seem to rejoice with us.

quote by - Orison Swett Marden

• Random splashes of colour.
• Crisper, brighter mornings. The promise of Spring on the lips of the dawn.
  
• Memories that linger in photographic pigments
• Little girl stories
• Little girl drawings
• Still wearing those birthday crowns...
• Paint boxes
• "Fairys" dancin' in my living room

Saturday Artist {Exploring Cubism}

We have been learning a little about cubism this week. We found this site really helpful in simply explaining some of the concepts.
Then we looked at some examples of cubism. I asked the girls what they thought about the pieces they saw. It is always interesting to hear the thoughts of small children on art :)

Bujana really took to cubism, she liked the geometric shapes and the sense of movement they create.
For example in Picasso's "The Guitar Player"(below) Boo said she could see the hand of the guitar player strumming, his foot tapping and the music literally vibrating through the lines and shapes on the canvas. She couldn't believe how she could see all this in only a few lines and shapes!
But that is exactly what cubism aims to portray."Cubists wanted to show all the sides of an object in the same picture." The internal, external, physicality, movement and character.
Picasso obviously has many examples of this in his work.

To get the idea of how simple colours and geometric shapes can create designs we started by sticking coloured paper squares onto simple line drawings.

As many of the paintings we had looked at contained a musical instrument of some sort. I thought it would be cool to have the girls draw their guitar in different angles on their canvas.

We used oil pastels to create strong definite lines.

Then we rotated the guitar in different angles and positions. The girls simply drew the changing contours and shapes as they saw them. They tried to include all the angles in the one drawing regardless of how much their picture "looked" like a regular guitar.

The girls used a muted, minimal colour palette like many of the cubist paintings we had talked about. The minimal palette, really helped to emphasize the lines and shapes.

But Bujana loves purple so.... :)
Once the paintings were dry we cut the canvas into strips and glued the strips back together onto a piece of thick card in whatever order we wanted. (i.e) "The paintings looked like someone had cut them up and glued them back together."

Here is Bujana's "Guitar" :)

For more Saturday Artists head on over to "Ordinary Life Magic"

{This Moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Visit Soule Mama for more "moments"

Yarn Along...

Getting ready ot join Ginny for another lovely "Yarn Along".

I have found a lovely simple, free baby knitting pattern which includes hat booties, leggings and a little jacket....wait for it.... in garter stitch! \0/ Yes that's the complete set!

Now I do love to have a pattern that I can get my teeth into but I'm running out of knitting days before this little baba arrives so a pattern I can knit up quickly while "on the run" is simply perfect for me right now:)

For beginner knitters... or those who simply love garter stitch...or those who want something they can knit while boiling an egg, standing on one leg and chasing a toddler... here's a link!
Happy knitting.



As for reading, well as of late, we have been having great fun dipping in and out of " The Shirley Hughes Collection of poems and stories".
I highly recommend it for small children and mamas alike!
It is fun to read and contains the most gorgeous characters such as the famous "Annie Rose" and "Alfie" painted "to life" by the magic of Shirley Hughes' pen and brush.