New GEMINI

Ooof. I have finally produced Issue 11 of my zine, GEMINI. For some reason, this issue just did not write itself as the first ten did (OK, maybe they didn't write themselves, but they did come together a bit more smoothly than this one has). I was just totally blocked on the writing front all spring (I think, looking back, that I was probably a bit depressed—which was no doubt evident to everyone who reads this blog, except me), then this summer I was working on material for the course I took, and then I just felt so busy, busy, busy all fall. Finally (when I started contemplating a full-time job) it occurred to me that, no, no one was going to hand me a large chunk of time to devote to writing—I had to make time. And that time, it turns out, was there all along. It's called 5 a.m. (or, more often, 5:18 a.m.). I never, ever, thought I'd become a morning person, but it's now my most favorite time of the day—and I am soooo much more personable once 6:30 rolls around and I have to start dragging kids out of bed than if I am just then dragging myself out of bed too!

Anyway, back to the zine, I picked them up from the printer last week, finally got some stamps yesterday, and, if all goes well and I make my way to Staples to pick up some mailing labels soon, they should be in the mail by the end of the week (which is, technically, still fall, so I'm not lying when I call it the fall issue). If you have a subscription or we trade, expect yours in time for post-holiday relaxing! If not, I'd like to offer blog readers a free copy of this issue. Just leave a comment on this post before Wednesday December 23 and email your mailing address to andreaelani (at) yahoo (dot) com. No I'm not a stalker and I will not give away your address or use it for any non-zine-related purpose.

In this issue (GEMINI #11: Along the Tangled Path):

In the Hot Springs Pool
The Fifth Circle of Hell: Halloween 2007
The Witching Hour
A Day at the Fair
How it Came to Be that I Was Thrice Saved by the Hausfrau

Plus poetry, cartoons, and lots of amusing kid quotes.

This is the stage at which I begin to doubt myself, think that this is the worst crap I've ever written, fear everyone who reads it will hate me and consider chucking the whole lot in the nearest dumpster (the only thing that stops me is all the money I just spent on printing—and my recycling ethic). But I send them out anyway, and then later—a few weeks or months or years (yes, folks I have been creating this thing for nearly FIVE YEARS now!!) later I'll pick up the back issue and read it, laugh a little, generally enjoy myself (except for the typos!!) and think, “Hmm, not bad.”

So don't worry...it's probably not bad, and who doesn't love to get mail?

Seasons Round Exchange

I just participated in my first ever blog-craft-exchange. I first read about the Seasons Round Exchange on Emma Bradshaw's blog and was instantly enamored with the idea of making/finding a few small items to adorn someone else's nature or seasonal table. I really had a ridiculous amount of fun coming up with and creating little treats that met the winter theme of "light"---so much so that I was almost finished before I was even assigned a partner (yes I'm easily amused).

Here's what I sent:

An art card by local artist Helen Stevens (I adore this picture of the little girl peaking into the treasure chest), in a card stand made with cherry twigs held together with sparkly gold twine. A soft tree made with some of my favorite Kaffe Fasset fabric, that I think is supposed to be flowers, but looks like twinkly lights to me. A star-shaped beeswax candle (it took me three tries to create one that looked decent, and I'm afraid it might not burn that well; does anyone know if beeswax candles require thicker wicks than paraffin?). A tiny Saint Lucia (no religious significance intended; I also didn't realize that she has seven candles in her crown...not four). And a little papier mache bowl made with some tissue paper flecked with gold tinsel and filled with bits of the Maine woods.

My exchange partner was Kendra from the blog Crafty Me. Here's what she sent me:

An adorable knitted Santa gnome and a lovely spiral beeswax candle.

Two little ornaments; a knitted lantern and a mistletoe made from felted sweaters (when I saw that making things from felted sweaters was a speciality of Kendra's I secretly hoped she would send something sweaterish; this little ornament is more wonderful than I could have imagined).

This beautiful rainbow-maker made of twigs, some blue light-as-air yarn in a six-pointed star (which made a nice addition to our Hanukkah festivities--such as they were--Saturday) and tiny crystals hanging down to catch the light (how did she know I love hanging crystals in my windows?).

It all came packaged with boughs of greenery and a big hank of lovely white wool roving which I can't wait to make into something (some Christmas tree gnomes are in order, I think).

E and Z had a lot of fun playing in the greenery with various little holiday characters.

Holiday Traditions: More New Celebrations and Overdoing

You realize Christmas is, like, next week, don't you? I'm really quite put out with how quickly this holiday is bearing down on me. I really am going to start a campaign to get it moved to the end of January (or perhaps even February), because really, where it is in the calendar right now, just makes winter start one month earlier than it should (it's still fall people!), and leaves us with nothing to look forward to but a long, bleak winter. Who's with me?

In any case, the reason this is stressing me out is that I have (as usual) given myself too much to do in way too little time. If only I could be a normal presents and, you know, BUY presents, it would be fine, but something about this time of year turns me into Crafty Sue. I would blame the Internets and my obsession with craft blogs, but I remember one Christmas, way back in the late 1990s before anyone even used the Internet for anything other than term papers and weird chat rooms (when the only computer we owned was the Big Mac--one of those old, all-in-one Macintosh's--that definitely did not have any way to access the Internet), when C and I made the paper for 50 Christmas cards that we printed with a hand-carved wood block. So apparently it's my nature, not the interwebs' fault.

Anyway, this weekend was a flurry of celebrating. We had our annual Hanukkah feast Saturday night with our usual golden latkes made with half sweet potato using the Sundays at Moosewood blender technique (though I left half the potatoes unblended for a bit more texture). And, as usual, me acted like I was poisoning him, though Z gobbled his down and E, with a little help from me (is it wrong that I still spoon-feed my 4 1/2 year old most dinners?), ate his too. Sunday I got up early and made Lucia buns for St. Lucia day, and then the boys helped me cut out gingerbread boys, girls and babies. (Does it sound like our multicultural celebrations just involve eating? Hmmm...maybe I should work on this). I used the Lucia bun recipe from Christmas in Scandinavia, which we checked out from the library for the occasion, and I always use a chocolate gingerbread cookie recipe from a back issue of Martha Stewart Living (I don't often have good luck with Martha recipes--usually they involve a huge amount of work for kind of "meh" results--but these cookies rock my socks).

I'm really liking this new system of making one batch of cookies each weekend all December, and then just eating them, without worrying about saving them or giving them away (though if anyone is around, we do share!). I've also found that it works great for me to mix the dough Saturday evening after the kids are in bed--it saves me from the arguments over every 1/4 teaspoon of ingredients (my turn! no mine!), and it gives the dough time to chill, so that we're not all tired of making cookies before we even start making cookies--and then involving the kiddos in rolling/cutting Sunday morning (it also makes the day a bit longer--we were done with buns and cookies by 10 a.m.!). It also divides the dishwashing over two days, which is nice.

No pictures of either cookies or buns (which didn't turn out that pretty anyway because I had a bit of trouble with the egg wash--forgot to mix in the water and no longer have a pastry brush since mine got all moldy and disintegrated) because we also spent the weekend in Sweat Shop mode, with the kids cranking out holiday gifts and me cracking the whip...nothing like enforced creativity. Actually Sunday C took over for the most part, and things went a bit more smoothly than Saturday when their tired and cranky (because she went out to celebrate her last day on the old job) Mama was at the helm of the Fabric Marker ship.

Sunday afternoon we met friends in Waterville to see a performance of The Nutcracker. I've taken M the last two years, but this was E and Z's first time. They lasted until about the last 10 minutes when they got restless, but they were quite rapt through most of the show (though now Z claims to only have liked the soldiers!). We finished out the night with Thai food and drove home through the snow-turning-to-rain, for our Advent book of the day (Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas--a favorite around here) and early bed, so I could spin my wheels a bit on Christmas projects (I really am pushing the limit on making things that I need to mail to Colorado ASAP) before retiring for an early bed myself.

Holiday Traditions: The Tree Elf

We have a tradition of non-traditional tree-toppers in my family. When I was a kid, we always put a straw scarecrow on top of our tree. I have no idea where it came from or what the significance was--I've never seen or heard of a scarecrow in other holiday customs or traditions (have you?), but looking back I think, "how cool!" As kids of course, my sister and I begged for a big, shiny, sparkly star and my mother, bless her heart, let us buy and install this horribly tacky silver and red with flashing lights star one year. Thank god that thing only lasted a few seasons.

C and I have always put this little elf on top of our tree. His mother used to work at Annalee Dolls, stitching little elf bodies, and had given C this elf some time ago. C has an affinity for mythical woodland creatures (perhaps because, as our friend Andrea--no relation--conjectures, he was raised by the elves and gnomes in the woods), so he makes a perfect, friendly and pagan topper to our tree.

Our kids, like me when I was a child, of course beg for a big, bright, shiny star to top our tree, but so far I've held firm (E was on the verge of making one the day we brought our tree in, but we were so busy with visitors and getting ready to go to the town tree lighting and caroling event, that no one had time to help him--he has apparently forgotten this mission). I wouldn't mind one of those glass antique tree toppers that slides down over the tippy-top branch of the tree, but I haven't found one in my travels yet.

To carry the elfin theme down to the base of the tree, this year I made a tree skirt using Christmas Flower Fairy fabric. We've never had a skirt before--I've always just tucked a piece of Christmassey fabric around the tree stand, and that was fine, but now that I have one, I like the way it kind of defines the tree's footprint or personal space.

Holiday Traditions: The Winter Village

Last year I wrote extensively (perhaps excessively?) about our Winter Village (here and here), but it's one of my favorite traditions of the season, so here I go again. My mom had this wonderful little village of tiny wooden houses, trees, people, fences and even a train. One of my favorite things to do at Christmas time when I was young was to set up, arrange and rearrange the village (I've always been a sucker for tiny things). A few years back, C's grandmother gave me some houses and people of the exact same type as my mother's village (it's possible she gave them to M when he was very small and they would have constituted a choking hazard, so I appropriated them). I began setting up my own little village--which is much less extensive than my mom's--for Christmas. Last year I hinted that I'd like her to give me hers, and this year I asked flat out. She decided, however, that it would be easier for my dad to make me a whole new village than for her to find hers in storage (they are now currently living in a scaled-down home, with a Norfolk Island pine for a Christmas tree).

So they sent me these:

I had already ordered little wooden trees and snowmen for E and Z to put into the goodie bags at their school, and I had six extra of each, so poof, instant village. I loved the way they looked all white and clean bare wood, and was loathe to paint them. I probably should have kept them white, because, despite what I thought was a genius plan for making windows and doors (I made a rubber stamp with a block of wood and tiny rectangles of craft foam), they didn't turn out well.

The boys of course want to bomb the village (that would be M) or attack it with a giant papier mache reindeer (E and Z)...but it's all made from wood and pretty bomb/reindeer proof.

I don't have a lot of fancy or delicate Christmas decorations (the "breakable" ornaments have stayed in a box ever since M pulled the tree over when he was one), but I love that the ones we do have are also playthings that spark the imagination of my children. Yesterday, E and Z played with this set-up involving two paper houses C's mom made, a paper tree that chocolates came in, three little gnomes we made last year and the pipe cleaner Grinch and troll I made for at least half an hour while I worked on the computer.

Holiday Traditions: Getting the Tree

When I was a little girl, I wanted nothing more (OK, I'm sure I wanted a lot more, but you get the idea) than to go out and chop down a wild tree for our Christmas tree. We had a little artificial tree that was so short it had to stand up on the cube--an avant garde piece of furniture my dad built--with a piece of white quilt batting tucked around its base to represent snow (we set the Christmas village up on this snow...more on that later).


As our family and our ornament collection grew, we started buying full-sized live trees from one of the many Christmas tree lots that pop up this time of year, but still it wasn't the same as that Micky Mouse cartoon where he goes out with his axe and cuts down the tree Chip and Dale live in...that's what kind of Christmas tree I wanted.

So the first year C and I lived together in a little apartment in Englewood, Colorado, we got a permit to collect a tree on Forest Service land. We had to go all the way to Colorado Springs on a designated Saturday in December, but we also got to get our picture taken with Smokey Bear.




Choosing the perfect tree is a bit like choosing the perfect campsite--you start out kind of casually looking around, taking everything in, letting possibilities settle into your mind, but not deciding on anything, until you start to feel a bit tired and like you've covered the same ground a few too many times. Then you narrow it down to two or three options and you go over the pros and cons of each one and kind of let the perfect choice rise to the top on its own merits.

That first year we found the perfect little tree for our little apartment. It even had a tiny bird's nest in one of the branches. Our apartment was long and narrow, with a very dark living room that we didn't use much. I want to say we kept our tree up until Valentine's day that year, until the needles rained down at the slightest whisper of air.

The next year, living in Maine in an even smaller apartment in a converted barn, we began our tradition of collecting a tree on C's dad's land, which we continue today (no Smokey Bear here, unfortunately). Once we built and moved into our house we didn't even have to drive to the woods, but now walk out our door and down our trail to the "Christmas Tree Forest"--an area that was cut over some years ago and now grows thick with young balsam fir.

Our children have always accompanied us, in the sling, the backpack, or the sled (now they can walk, though I did take the sled because E and Z were a bit tired and cranky by the time we left home, and I towed each half-way). They have little patience for the tree selection process, and want to take the first tree they see (Z had already spied one near our driveway, in the opposite direction, and I needed to humor him and walk up there and see it while everyone else headed into the woods--to avoid turning Christmas-tree-getting into yet another battle-of-wills) which is usually much too big, or lop-sided, or in any case does not conform to our process!



Before cutting the tree, we say a few words thanking it for bringing light and joy into our winter darkness, and when the season's done (Jan 6), I drag its dry and brittle corpse back into the woods (though not quite as far as where we collected it usually) to return to the soil it came from. It's so much more dignified than sitting by the curb, waiting for the trash truck to take it away.



In years past we've gotten the tree on Saturday and set it up and decorated it on Sunday, and at least once gotten it on Sunday and decorated it the following Saturday, but this year we managed to cut it, bring it in (still dripping melted snow), and begin decorating it Sunday afternoon into evening. E, Z and I finished the decorating Monday morning.

Please join me...

in a Happy Dance.

I just had an essay accepted for publication in the Spring issue of Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers!!!

I should probably be all calm, cool, and collected about it, but I'm way to psyched to hold it in.

What? You don't subscribe to Brain, Child? Quick, go do so now so you'll be the first to read my essay!