Play Moments

A couple of my favorite moments from Kitten's play. I just love these little evidences of how her imagination grows and her play evolves. I enjoy cleaning up after she's gone to sleep because I get to find different play scenes, like little glimpses into what was going on in her mind.

Pencil Roll

We needed a place to store our Lyra pencils and I came up with this roll. It is about 12x7 inches. It would have been better to make it taller but I was running out of wool felt that I used for lining. It really adds nice stability and cushioning to the pencils.

Michaelmas Celebration

Yesterday we celebrated Michaelmas, which is one of the four cornerstone festivals in Waldorf traditions (along with Christmas, Easter and St. John's Tide). Archangel Michael has conquered Lucifer (the dragon) and thrown him down from the Heaven, and this festival helps us gather our inner strength before long winter to conquer our own inner dragons. St. George is thought of as the Earthly representative of Archangel Michael, so his story is often told during this week. Since this is our first year of celebrating it, we kept it simple. I made the Dragon bread and told Kitten the Harvest Loaf story as I made the dough using the recipe and the story in "All Year Round".

The ingredients are added one by one as the story unfolds, for example the frothy yeast mixture is the dragon that destroys the land (flour), sugar and salt is the ice and egg yolk is the sunlight that Archangel Michael throws down from the sky to help people. Kitten really liked the story.

Here is our dragon before baking (I know, he looks a lot like a dinosaur!)

He got quite puffier with baking but tasted great and Kitten ate three slices with butter and milk thus conquering her dragon :)

I also decorated a regular candle with a dragon using modeling beeswax. This is the first time I've worked with it and my sculpting skills can definitely be worked on but I love how it turned out and even my husband was impressed. The flame represents a sword with which Archangel Michael conquers the dragon (as the candle burns).

I tried telling Kitten the story of St. George but she was not interested, she is still quite young for it. I plan to make the dragon and other figures for next year and then tell it properly.

It is amazing how festive I felt the whole afternoon even with such simple actions. Perhaps it was because suddenly a thunderstorm started, it finally felt like fall (it is still 100 degrees down here!), and the smell of baking bread and beeswax along with candle light ought to make you feel good. Fall is definitely my favorite season and yesterday was a great start for it.

Magic Starch

Kitten loves to play with this stuff! It is probably no news to a lot of you but I have never seen it and was as amazed as Kitten. Basically you mix 2 parts of cornstarch with 1 part of water. The resulting mixture looks like liquid but feels like solid. I also like to let Kitten play with the starch before I add water. To play I assemble spoons and cups, sometimes I add a little food coloring and just let her explore.

Last time I added a sheet of blue paper and encouraged her to dribble the mixture on it, it is quite interesting, unfrtunately when it dries it crumbles off paper, so no keepsake value here.

Latest Waldorf doll

I have not realized how hard it would be to go back to regular blogging once you take a break! We've been back from visiting family for a month now and all this time I have been telling myself to get back to blogging. I will try to get back into the routine, I promise!
And for now let me show you my new Waldorf doll, made for Kitten's best friend. I did not give her a name since she was not to be ours and her new Mom has not told me what they named her yet.

She is a medium doll, about 12 inches tall. She had to have long brown hair and blue eyes but otherwise I was allowed to decide myself. She is a jointed limbed doll from Making Waldorf Dolls. For her hair I used almost a full ball of mohair yarn. For the first time I tried knitting a wig cap and figured it out pretty quickly, although I do not crochet (but now want to learn!). It was tricky to achieve full head coverage with hair and allow for multiple hair styles without making her look like a cave person. I ended up putting a strand of hair in almost each loop along the hairline and on both sides of central parting. It would have been better to crochet a chain, put hair in each loop on both sides of it and stitch it on top of parting but I was running out of yarn, so I made it like that. Then I placed the remaining hair randomly and sparsely in between. It turned out very good, you can pull all hair behind or divide it. And even though it still looks like tons of hair when not made up, since mohair is pretty thin, it compresses neatly and makes wonderful hair styles.
I am also pretty proud of her boots, which I made according to directions in Baby Dolls and Their Clothes: Dozens of Projects to Make, but as you know if you have read this book, the patterns are very tiny and there is no way to know how much to enlarge to get the desired size, she just tells you "enlarge the pattern to fit your doll". So I spent probably 2 hours resizing it, adjusting and making trial boots until I found a perfect fit.

 Look at her cute panties!

Kitten understood from the start that this is a doll for her friend and did not give me any trouble asking to play with her or keep her, she would point at her and say "M's doll". She is such a good girl!

Cereal box marble run

I made this trial marble run following the tutorial here. It came out a bit wobbly and I should have cut the holes bigger, soetimes we had to push the marble a little bit, but we had fun with it nonetheless.

St. John's Day celebration

We did not do anything fancy, being away from home and all but I did want to start some traditions going this year. So I made this simple centerpiece with a big golden candle, seashells, rose petals and waterlilies, the lilies being the most exciting part. I found directions in All Year Round and they are closed to start with but when you put them to float in water they slowly spread their petals and look so life-like (well, except for the rainbow one but I couldn't resist)! Even my Dad (who is kind of a mad scientist) was impressed.

We had Berry pudding for dessert, which was very simple but good. It was basically just layers of Italian bread and fresh berries - raspberries, blueberries and strawberries - pureed with sugar, all covered with sweetened whipped cream (after being left to soak overnight).

We left some treats for fairies to dine on after their ball: honey to drink, blueberries and caramel to eat, all served in mother-of-pearl dishes with rose petals for chairs and vases.

In the morning we found that fairies left a piece of moonlight and starlight in the vases (in the forms of Swarovski crystals). I really enjoyed celebrating this day for the first time and hopefully next year, when Kitten is older, we will add some more traditions.