I’m moving house! I hope you like it. Follow me to the new are so happy here.
I’ll be keeping this version up for a while, but be sure to update all your links! Thank you!!!
xo, K
I love the month of August. I love knowing that the frenzy of summer is drawing to a close, and that cooler weather and many festivals that I love dearly are in store. All of this begins, here, with blackberries, wild and sweet. I admit, I was a little early (they’ll be much better next week), but once I began to see some ripening, I couldn’t resist. My favorite herald of the changing of the seasons.
Looking for the ripest ones.
Thistles just beginning to lose their lavender fluff.
A handful of late summer.
Wild rosehips (we’ll be back for these — rosehip tea!).
Almost really ready.
Just enough jam…
to have over ice cream, with sliced peaches, fresh from the farmers’ market. Yum.
Every person is an artist. Art is not about painting a picture which sells for millions but about expressing the images alive in the soul. It is about finding the spirit in all its beauty embedded and embodied in material things. Our house and home, our garden, our environment is the canvas on which homemakers express their art. Creativity is imaginative thoughts and feelings offered to the glorious world for ourselves and others to perceive and enjoy.
Veronika Van Duin, Homemaking and Personal Development: Meditative Practice for Homemakers
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I was waiting until I made Birdie’s nightgown to do this post, but strangely in this heat wave all I could think about was knitting! I started a new knitting project instead of finishing her nightgown, though I’m sure I’ll finish it soon, and then I’ll show you. In the meantime, I wanted to give you the details on Bunny’s nightgown.
It’s made from this pattern. This option is the one Bunny chose; Birdie chose option C (but I will probably do the top from A with the bloomers — she won’t remember, fortunately).
I think nightgowns are really coolest for summer nights, don’t you? I used some dotted swiss from JoAnn’s. It isn’t as light as I would have liked (certainly not as light as a batiste) but it was still nice. Next time I want to get some of this.
I have a whole bag of vintage shell buttons I’ll probably be using forever. They have such a lovely weight to them, not like plastic at all. Buttonholes on the sewing machine are still tricky for me, even after many years of sewing. I often handfinish them just to avoid doing them on the machine. I did these on the machine, and they’re still not as tidy as a handsewn buttonhole!
If you’d like to try handsewing a buttonhole, here are a few links:
- How to hand-sew a buttonhole
- Stitches for buttonholes
- Sewing Buttonholes (good tip here — always put interfacing under where you will be sewing buttonholes!)
- Hand sewn (period!) buttonholes
Work is love made visible.
Khalil Gibran
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This is what we did last weekend, before the heat wave hit. We always go to the same place (here, for you locals) and try to get there early to beat the heat. This time around we stayed about 30 minutes or so and were able to pick ten pounds of berries. Bunny and Birdie are both extremely industrious pickers, and love it. I hardly managed to pick a thing because I was slinging Bee and, you know, taking photographs. Like these:
My husband and Bunny, headed out to the ripest row.
Happily picking away.
Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk. I can’t be the only one whose mind sings this as the berries begin to hit the bottom of the bucket.
Some for the basket, and some for the mouth.
Bunny was sure that Birdie needed some in her pockets, as well.
Yum.
I loved this.
Whew. It was already getting pretty warm by the time we got out of there.
Our haul. Pretty good!
Heat wave here. We left our hot house behind and set up camp at my parents’ place. Air conditioning and a saltwater pool? Yes, thanks. Fortunately they’re only a five minute drive away, so we’re not far from home.
Yes, I mean literally set up camp. There isn’t an extra bed, so we put up our tent. Inside. It’s awesome.
Such a novelty. We could hardly get them out of the tent.
That is, until the cabin fever hit. Seems strange to get cabin fever in the HOT weather, but I guess it forces you inside just as much (more?) than cold would.
Much of their property is shaded, which is nice.
My mom left this “treasure” for them to find in what we call the “woodland area”. “Jewels!!!” was the first thing Birdie said.
We brought just a few beloved things along to play with. The farm,
some books, animals, baskets. The baskets are probably the hottest commodity, actually — they can be used for so many things!
The current favorite baby.
(I got the nightgown done ages ago and forgot to show you!) Bedtime is so much more fun in a tent.
Thank you so much for contributing your comments and thoughts on this post. One of the main things that came through in the comments and emails following was the concept of delayed academics, and I definitely want to address that in another post. But today it is H-O-T, hot and we are going to visit someone with air conditioning (anything over 100 degrees is just not fun).
However, I can’t leave you with just that, so how about a little chubby cheeked baby?
{hat handknit by me from this pattern in this yarn; details on Ravelry}
To go with this photo, a few Waldorf links about hats for babies:
- Waldorfmama’s handknitted hats on Etsy
- Let’s Hear it For Hats!
- Dressing the Young Baby
- Learning Through Imitation (look under the heading Protecting the Senses for the info about hats, but this is a wonderful article all the way through)
Full disclosure: I am not perfect about this, but it’s definitely something I strive for. One thing that I think has helped a lot: I have a sunhat and a cold weather hat, too. Remember, imitation is one of the driving forces of early childhood!
Luxury need not have a price — comfort itself is a luxury.
Geoffrey Beene
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{Glad to be back into the groove with Quotable Sunday! I think I may have missed a few new participants — just comment on this post and I’ll add you for next week.}
