Sketch Book: Carnival and Conjunctivitus, The Hungry Caterpillar's Fat Tuesday Feast, and Gorty

Two weeks ago, I found myself once again at the website of illustrator Sophie Blackall.  I love the poetry of her "Missed Connections" series.  Seeing her illustrations, with their pithy juxtaposition of text from Craigslist personal ads and watercolor illustrations, reminded me of my intention to make some captioned sketches for the blog.

We don't have a scanner here in France, so please forgive the photos.

{Carnival and Conjunctivitis}

 

Me:  Oh!  There are the neighbor girls, all dressed up for Carnival.  Guess we missed that...Too bad we don't have white bunny costumes.

On Mardi Gras, Maria stayed home from school because of pink eye, missing the school festivities.  If we had some long ears and fluffy tales, the girls would have made convincing albino rabbits.  

{The Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar's Fat Tuesday Feast}

Maria: "Fat Tuesday is the day the caterpillar got a stomach ache."

(To those who are not reading a lot of kid lit these days, The Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar follows a caterpillar as he eats his way through a week.  In the book, the caterpillar eats two pears on Tuesday.  But that wasn't Fat Tuesday.  On Fat Tuesday its all crepes all the time.)

{GORTY}

This one is a little thank you note to my friend Kelly, who sent us a lovely package.

Caption: Dear Kelly, thank you for all the lovely gifts.  Maria loves the turtle puppet so much that she really only needs one mitten these days.  She has named him GORTY.

Pre-Christmas Marketing

Here's me playing catch-up.

After Mass on the last Sunday of Advent we went to the Palaiseau  market to buy some fish for our Christams Eve dinner and a roast for Christmas Day.  A few pictures from the trip:

A Boulangerie and Patissier displaying Buche de Noel in their window.

A fishmonger's shop decked out for the season.

Capon and fattened hens for sale, heads and feet on.

The poultry stand where we buy our Christmas roast.  We are pleased to find the same vendor who sells at our neighborhood Lozere market.  She's friendly, greeting us in her rolling, Spanish-accented French (she's from Columbia).  Today we buy a trussed goose roast.  She gives us a few artisan chicken nuggets for the kids. 

The fishmonger's stall, where we purchase two flounder.

Pretty fish.

On the street, heading back to the Palaiseau train station.  It's a gusty, cloudy day that threatens rain.  There's an urgency and furtive character in the movements of the shoppers.  Vintage Christmas airs are piped in over the loudspeaker system, the quavering voices adding a note of melancholy---but maybe that was just me being hungry.

{pretty, happy, funny, real} Infant of Prague Illustration, Crepes for Candlemas, Pickle Elevator, and Thank God for No Super Powers

Pretty,Happy, Funny, Real

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Every Thursday, over at Like Mother, Like Daughter!

{pretty}

At my grandparent's parish church in Berlinsville, PA there's a replica statue of the Infant of Prague--a doll-like figure of a toddler Jesus, dressed in shiny robes and wearing a crown.  The statue fascinated to me as a young child (though I remember being thinking it must be Mary, since the statue was wearing a gown.)

After finishing the angels coloring book, I wanted to do another piece of child-oriented devotional art--this time something to be hung in the nursery.  Casting about for a subject, I remembered the little statue.

Traditionally, the statue is dressed in vestments according to the liturgical calendar.  In keeping with this, I've made five versions of the illustration for the the different seasons: green (ordinary time), red (feast days of Our Lord and martyrs), purple (Advent and Lent) and white/gold (Easter and Christmas), thinking that the pictures could be swapped as a new season or feast day arrives.

The images are 5" x 7" so they can easily be printed as photos.  They are available  for free download here.

The picture was fun to draw once I gave up on making a likeness of the real statue and opted for a looser representation.  It's a pencil drawing, colored in Photoshop, using the same techniques I learned working on the illustrations for Dominic's Gift.   I'd like to get away from digital and try water color in future projects.  When working with Photoshop, it's too easy to get caught up in fiddly, inconsequential changes!

{happy}

The French tradition is to eat crêpes for the feast of Candlemas as well as for Mardi Gras.  I took this as an excuse to cook nothing else over the weekend.  We are sans Donnie for two weeks, and it turns out that crêpes are a nice treat for times when it's just me and the girls.  We crowd into the kitchen (there wouldn't be room for all of us with Donnie here).  I make a batch of crepes, we eat them hot off the pan, then I make some more.  The fixings are simple: ham and cheese or spinach and feta for dinner; nutella or honey for dessert; egg and cheese for breakfast.   There's no ferrying back and forth between the kitchen and our normal eating place in the living room.  It makes for a pleasant, non-migratory dining experience.

{funny}

Album of Anticipatory Nostalgia

Item 1: The Pickle Elevator

Caption: The Pickle Elevator as seen on our cluttered lunchtime table.  On the bottom right hand corner you can catch a glimpse of Galaxy Girl's star leggings.

We've got six months left in France, but it isn't too soon to look forward to fondly looking back!  One thing I will fondly remember are the pickles--or cornichons.  They are very tasty--tiny and more subtly spiced than their American counterparts--but beyond their taste, the large jars come with a plastic strainer hickey that sits under the cornichons and has a handle so you can  lift the pickles out of the brine--no fishing necessary.  Very civilized.  Today Maria coined a term for it:"pickle elevator."  Apt, Maria, apt.

{real}

This has been a week when I've been grateful that Maria has no super powers.*  If she could control the weather, summon fire, or make things move with her mind, our building would be a smoldering ruin many times over.  The kid has been outdoing herself in throwing terrific, grand-mal tantrums.  

This is close on the heels of Louisa being sick with a sore throat and ear infection and deciding that every diaper and clothing change was a heinous assault on her person.  Between Maria's meltdowns and Louisa's sore throated shrieks of distress, there have been many screamy, screamy moments with some whiny, whiny ones thrown in for variety.

I was not surprised (but nonetheless upset) when our landlady and neighbor pulled me aside in the laundry room to ask me whether I'd spoken to a doctor about how much the children cry---Maria in particular. Our landlady has known many children and it's "not normal."  Perhaps it has to do with the [enormous] quantity of milk we drink.  (Brackets are mine.)

There are a number of things that may be contributing to us not being in top form:  Donnie is away.  The  girls have just begun sleeping in the same bedroom.  It's February--we're probably all suffering from vitamin D deficiency. But do these things account for it?  Maria is pale.  Her emotions are fragile.  She has a perpetually runny nose.  It seems like it has been this way for a long time.  Perhaps there is something more sinister gnawing away at my girl's health and happiness--a food sensitivity, for instance.  Poor Maria, she's my first--my burnt test crêpe.  Unlike my landlady, I don't know what's normal.

I did ask our doctor about it today--we went in because Maria now has pink eye.  Our doctor's condensed response:  "She's three.  She's in a country with a language she doesn't understand.  She is jealous of her younger sister.  It's her temperament. No need to medicalize the problem."  She followed this up with a prescription for nose drops, eye drops, throat syrup, vitamin D, and a daily vitalizing vitamin syrup.  Vive la France!

This state of things has had me feeling downhearted and fed up--fed up with my hobbling French, fed up with our cluttered, thin-walled apartment, fed up with sick, temperamental children, perhaps fed up with France, but most definitely fed up with February.

So I was grateful when this sight greeted us on our return to the flat today.

There it is, like an early Valentine from fate--a defunct bidet, symbol of all the difficulties of our life here--ripped out and ready to be taken to the curb.  If only fate had also provided a crow bar.  I might have it in me to smash the thing to bits.

Now, I'll end with this picture--because this parenting gig isn't all red eyes, screaming, and worried neighbors.

Maria and Louisa in a fond, sisterly embrace.

*Side Note:  We're pretty sure that Louisa does have a super power--a sort of water summoning ability.  She doesn't have very good control of this power yet and all she manages to do is soak her shirt several times a day. We've ruled out drool because there's just too much of it.  "Aqua Baby," we call her.  Maria is "Galaxy Girl," for no other reason than she has a pair of star-covered leggings.

For more {pretty, happy, funny, real} go visit the party at Like Mother Like Daughter.

For the story of a real adventure, very different from the domestic variety featured  here, go visit my brother Dan's  Bailure Blog.  His posts never fail to shake me up.  It's a continual source of pride and astonishment that we come from the same gene pool.

The Baby Jesus Doll and the Ghost of Crafting Past

Isn't it a joy to get back a memory?  Something from life--a smell, an action, a face--throws a switch in the back of the brain.  Dusty cogs begin to whirl, pistons hiss--there's a rumble,then a clatter, then pop! Out comes a memory--vivid, pristine, and all the more dear for being locked in the machine so long. 

This post is about a little craft project--the making of a doll. I'm fond of this project.  It gave me back a few memories.  I'm hoping that it will seed a few fond memories in the heads of Maria and Louisa .

The doll was part of an Advent and Christmas activity that I discovered on one of my favorite blogs, Ginny Sheller's Small Things. In this activity,there's a manger--a box or basket--and the children of the family add hay to the container for any good deed or sacrifice they perform.  On Christmas morning, a Baby Jesus doll appears  in the padded manger; loving acts make ready a place for the Holy Infant.  Thinking that Maria was old enough to benefit from such a ritual, (hoping it might also distract her from her fascination with all things Pere Noel) I set about to find the materials.

Our manger was a box that held some fancy potatoes from Lidl.  Maria and I collected grass in our wet yard, and dried it in a basket over the radiator. (This was a fruitful activity in itself--good for meditating on poverty.)

Then there was the doll to think about--that is, of course, what this post is all about.  I loved that Ginny made her doll, and wanted to follow her lead and make a Waldorf style swaddle baby.  Waldorf dolls have intentionally simple, neutral faces--the better to allow kids to flex their imaginations.  Wouldn't this kind of spare representation be especially appropriate for a doll of the Baby Jesus?  It steers clear of kitsch and sentimentality, but still produces a unique, cuddly doll.

I hunted for Waldorf doll materials online and quickly grew frustrated.  Waldorf dolls are generally made from pricey organic materials that are often sold in kits.  None of the kits served my purposes, and it seemed a shame to spend money on shipping, when I needed such a small amount of material.  At last, I came across a thread on a German crafting forum.  A parent asked where to buy Waldorf doll supplies.  A grandmother replied: "Supplies?  In my day, we dyed an old white tee shirt with tea and used wool from our sheep for the stuffing."

Well, I didn't have any sheep, but I had a 4 Euro Ikea pillow that I wouldn't mind butchering, and plenty of old white tees.  I prepared my dye, first cooking the tee shirt in a vinegar bath set the dye.  We had some old teas that had been languishing in the back of the cabinet.  Into the pot they went with a bit of turmeric and some instant coffee crystals.  The cloth came out a sallow color--very close to the color of snot--and far from the pinky beige that I wanted.  Donnie encouraged me to continue.  A survey of my stash of embroidery thread showed some gold and brown floss that might complement the tea-dyed fabric.  With luck, the color scheme would call to mind an antique wax doll.   At the very least, using the cloth would give me practice and then I'd feel better about ordering pricier cloth.  I sewed a tube, and  followed this tutorial for making the doll's head.

As I sat sewing the little head, coaxing the polyester batting into a baby face, I realized that there was something awfully familiar about the work.  As I stitched and prodded a little bump of stuffing into a nose, I realized why.  This was very similar to a project I did when I was seven years old, trying with my rudimentary sewing skills, to sew a doll. The project was ill-fated.  After I finished the head, our  beagle-terrier mutt, Brownie, sensing that the doll head was an Object of Great Interest, grabbed it and had me chasing her around the house for it.  The head didn't survive the chase.  But here I was, sharing with my eight year old self, the joy of seeing a face emerge from fabric.

And while sewing the hair, another memory!   My family didn't have a creche set, so when I was seven, I tried to make one out of salt dough.   It came out of the oven, a doughy-looking, lumpy thing--a lost cause in my mind. But my Mum took it up and painted it--ever so lovingly--in bright colors, with patterns, like a medieval wood carving. It was the first time I can remember knowing the joy of having something I'd made (and even come to detest) perfected and made beautiful by someone else.  One thing she did was paint the infant Jesus's hair gold---a choice that struck me as genius at the time! As I sat stitching gold thread over the gold skin of the doll, it struck me that I was being visited by the gold baby of the salt dough creche.

I am pleased with how this gold Baby Jesus turned out--sweet and little uncanny. (That's how I would describe the face of a newborn--sweet and uncanny.)  Tucked in the white swaddle, the yellow color of the skin isn't so strange---just a touch of jaundice.  And there's the smell of the doll--the unexpected benefit of the dye--black tea, orange, berries, cinnamon, turmeric, coffee.   Delicious.  I'm hoping that the smell is riveted into Maria and Louisa's olfactory memory.  I imagine them standing in a Starbucks one day--coffee and tea aromas mingling in the air. A man walks in with a bag of Indian takeout. It hits them: family, happiness, mystery, Christmas.

How did  our manger filling play out for Christmas, 2012?  Maria didn't quite get the whole grass-reward system; it was mostly me filling the manger for her deeds and the odd occasion when Loulou put a book back on the shelf after taking it off .   The girls liked the doll perfectly well, climbing onto the toddler table to free him from the glass cabinet. They cuddled and tossed him around, which resulted in him going lost for a week under a bed.  (I worried this might be a sign of our spiritual state. Never good to lose the Baby Jesus!  I hoped we would find him wedged between some books on spirituality--in the temple, so to speak.)  Now he's tucked away in our box of Christmas things, waiting for next year. I'm looking forward to seeing him again.  I'm looking forward to remembering how I made him.  I'm  looking forward to  remembering the memories I had while I made him. ;)

Advent Traditions: Calendar

In 2011, I sprung for an eight euro chocolate-filled Advent calender for Maria.  All the cheaper options that I found had pictures of  Hello Kitty or Disney Cars--their manufacturers having abandoned all pretense that Advent calendars have anything to do with Christmas.  This expensive one had a pretty Victorian-inspired scene of Father
Christmas trimming a tree. The chocolates were gourmet.  I figured the eight Euros were the price of tradition.  

This year, I opted to make a calendar.  I wanted something that could hold a few treats and a little piece of paper with a Bible passage.  Here's the result.

A piece of cardboard with 24 origami cups made from Ikea wrapping paper. We had some paper beads and origami mini stars on hand, so I strung them onto some yarn for the hanger.  A simple little project, but I was pleased with how it turned out.
Maria sat next to me as I folded the cups.  I showed here how to make them, but she was a little too young for the lesson to stick.

Each pocket held a wrapped chocolate or a tinfoil package with gummi bears or crystallized pineapple.

We printed this Advent chain-- it has a Bible passage and a picture for the first twenty-four days of December.  I cut out the links and rolled them so that each pocket had its own little scroll. We read the text out loud while Maria ate her treat, trying to explain the text to her as best we could.  Maria colored in some of the pictures. My plan was to cut them out and use them as ornaments on our Christmas tree, though I ended up forgetting about them (and there was no room left on our tiny Christmas tree).
 
A few days after completing our calendar, Mum told me that EuroNews was reporting massive recalls of commercial calenders---the chocolates were potentially contaminated with machine oil. So our choice to make a calendar was especially fortunate!

This is a little craft I hope to repeat next year.  Maybe I'll get some help folding the cups. 

Advent Traditions: Cookies

Our jam stars and chocolate roll out cookies. The beautiful madeleines were from Pauline's mum.  I've got to buy a mold learn how to make those!

I've already written about Maria's enthusiasm for cake.  She's no less enthusiastic about Christmas cookies. We did four baking sessions this Advent, building a stash of cookies that lasted through Epiphany.

Maria's little friend Pauline came over for one session.   Baking with two three-year-olds is neither neat nor easy!  But still lots of fun, as you can see.  There was plenty of tasting going on, and I spent a significant portion of my mental energy praying that I would not be responsible for giving our little neighbor salmonella poisoning.  By time the sprinkles and compacted bits of dough were vacuumed from the carpet, I felt like I deserved a medal!  But it was well worth the trouble!


During our baking, I found that not having the right equipment was liberating.  There was no regret when our cookies didn't turn out perfectly.  For our first session, we didn't have cutters so we made some out of a disposable foil container. We didn't have cookie sheets, so we made due with flipping the broiler pan upside down and baking  the cookies five at a time on pieces of aluminum foil.  I became quite adept at manipulating the cookie-laden foil, using a pot lid like a pizza peel to get them on and off of the upturned broiler pan.

Here are the recipes we used:
The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies
Best Ever Chocolate Cutout Cookies
Raspberry Star Cookies

It appears that I'm a sucker for recipes with the word "best" in the title.  The jam stars were certainly the highlight of our Christmas spread.   They disappeared so quickly and sent Donnie into such rhapsodies that we made three batches.  For variety, we swapped in a quince jelly that we picked up at the Church Christmas market, as well as berry, fig and apricot jams.  These cookies are so rich and pretty--I think they could be given away individually as party favors.

Dark Days of Advent

Now that I've finally put our sad, Charlie Brown Christmas tree in the compost, it's time to catch up on these Advent posts!



My grandad reminded me some weeks back that the historic birth of Christ is believed to have occurred in April.   The liturgical celebration of Christmas was set for late December because the Church, in her wisdom, knew that people (that is, dwellers of the Northern Hemisphere) needed to celebrate the winter solstice.  The return of the sun provided such an excellent metaphor for the coming of the Savior.  In this way, Christmas, in addition to being a season of abundant graces, is treatment for seasonal affect disorder!

I had fine hopes of having a prayerful and industrious Advent.  This was to be our first Christmas on our own,and I wanted to revel in the freedom of being neither traveler nor host.  Time to make our own traditions!  Time to start filling Maria's little head with shiny, happy holiday memories!  I had great expectations as I sat designing our card in the days following Thanksgiving. 

My ambitions were partly foiled by moodiness--December was a grumpy month.  We had  weeks of gray, rainy days.  I struggled to adjust to Maria's napless days. I missed my English-speaking friends at Mom's group ---Maria's 11:30 pickup from school prevented me from attending. (I find this to be the greatest difficulty of  being a stay at home mom--having a day short in both solitude and adult companionship.) Louisa had her first double-ear infection.  Maria continued in her refusal  paint at school.  Bad news of the events at Newtown and the fiscal cliff seeped in.   Donnie's energies were stretched between research commitments, administrative chores, and job applications. (Even when it's going well, the Job-seeking state of life is marred by uncertainty. ) These things, as slight as they were, conspired to make us irritable.

When Christmas came, it felt less like a carefully planned and highly anticipated event, and more like a reprieve.  We stumbled our way through Advent and fell gratefully on the lighted threshold of Christmas.

And that, perhaps, is how it must be!  Help comes from the outside--just as it did that night in Bethlehem.

Despite the December pall, we did a few Advent activities that I hope we'll continue in future years.  In the next couple of posts, I'll be sharing them with you.  If I were a savvy blogger, I'd probably reserve these for next year, when people are more in a mood to look at Advent calendars.  But you are all so terribly indulgent--even of my tardiness.  Thank you and Happy New Year!