Random Upates

Hey, everyone!

Hope your summer was a wonderful one. We moved one more child into college at the end of August, so we now have two at the Uni, although the oldest is now commuting from home. One out + one in = no net change, and yet so much has and will continue to shift and evolve. The youngest is a senior in high school, so I am subconsciously preparing my heart for the transition after. I could've sworn that it wasn't that long ago that I was blogging about their little-kid adventures, the manic birthday parties, the library craft fairs and Halloween costumes. And now, here we are on this side of the parenting experience, and the grass - as the proverbial saying goes - is not so much a different shade of green as it is an entirely different landscape altogether.

I've missed being in this space. I used to think my time was fragmented before, as a mother of toddlers and newborns and elementary school kids just discovering their appetites for creating and storytelling. It feels just as fragmented now, only outside the home instead on in, because there are fun activities at school to be involved in and teenagers (and their friends) to feed. Speaking of which: about a month ago, I cooked a meal for the neighborhood friend group who were heading off to college, like a send-off of sorts. When the girls were little, something of this scope would've been called A Birthday Party. These days, it is simply Having Friends Over for Food And Hanging Out. Same concept; fancier nosh. 

Anyway, we're three weeks into the school year and I'm finally sitting down to process it all - endings and beginnings, and all the bits in between. I have so much to update, so forgive me if this is nonlinear and jump-about-y.

In March over spring break, Emily and I went to New York City. We both had agendas: hers was a bookstore crawl; mine was food and, really, just being in a city that holds so many good memories for me. We hit Magnolia and Junior's and Levain and some other less-touristy bakeries, plus matcha cafes and Koreatown. We watched Hadestown on Broadway - an especial treat for Emily who plays trombone. 

The Center for Fiction, Brooklyn, NY

Our hotel happened to be in the center of the garment district so we visited Mood Fabrics.

Here's a video tour of Mood:

There were so many other, less famous stores, too. And cheap, both objectively but also especially for a place like NYC. Also extremely specialized. Here's one that sold mainly zippers, with just a few other random notions. I got to ask for stuff here in Chinese like I did back in the day in Singapore. It felt like home. I wish MN had something like this. 

In the same month, I started my fourth grief support group. I keep thinking that each one I'd led would be my last, because each runs for three-ish months, and 13 evenings are a lot to pull out of a schedule already full of swim meets and concerts. Then I keep changing my mind; every day there are people losing people, and if I can sit with some of them in their pain and help them feel a little less lonely or insane (or both), I want to keep doing it. We cry a lot, but there is also raucous laughter, both of which are awesome.

In April, I made a short solo trip to Singapore to see Mum and attend a niece's (second cousin, actually) wedding. This was Jenna's senior year, so each week in the spring was filled with something exciting and poignant, and I feel lucky to have been able to squeeze this in.

Lovely Mum eating a matcha dessert

In June, we threw Jenna a grad party. 

It was lovely to celebrate her, and to be surrounded by friends and family. In addition to an entree, and we also baked a buffet of cookies,

Cookie buffet 2025

and I drew the traditional party poster, like I'd done for the kids' birthday parties in years past. 

Digression: Apparently, I forgot to post about Emily's grad party from two years ago. There was a lot going on then, too, so perhaps I decided to let it go. Let me share just a couple of pictures. 

Emily and friends
Photo credit: our wonderful neighbor Robel Bezabhe

Cookie buffet (the original!) at Emily's grad party, 2023.
Photo credit: Robel Bezabhe

Emily's watercolor cookie labels

This was Emily's grad poster, consistent with the quick cartoon-animation style of all those birthday posters. Like those, this was drawn with my smelly alcohol markers, minus a blender pen, which I didn't think to buy when I was mostly doing lettering and graphics but which turned out I sorely needed. for portraits. 

This year I thought I'd experiment with a more realistic style than the usual animation approach - mainly because my girls are alike enough that cartoon Grad Jenna would look almost identical to cartoon Grad Emily. This was my test-run. I used the same markers, and this time with not just a blender pen but also more shades of skin and hair. I used a video tutorial on YouTube and was pleasantly surprised by how it turned out. 

Here are those stinky markers. And I'm not kidding about the fumes - a person would need to use them in a really well-ventilated room in order not to get all heady and silly.

Some in-progress shots. I used one of Jenna's senior photos as inspiration.

This was the finished poster. 

In July, I ran my second Menagerie workshop at the Minneapolis Textile Center. 

I should've publicized it here, but I was so busy prepping for it that I forgot. I do, however, have another, drafting (!!) workshop coming up in the fall which I am remembering to share info on  - look out for it in a later post, along with a report on that July soft toy workshop.

Miraculously, in the middle of everyone's busy schedules, we found a weekend in August for a short vacation in Canada. It was absolutely gorgeous, and the weather was kind. 

Moraine Lake

Creek on our rental property, Canmore

The Rocky Mountains have such character! And the glaciers! 

The Saskatchewan Glacier, seen from Parker Ridge, Banff National Park

I am so grateful that we live close to beautiful places. After the crazy-long plane rides to and from Singapore, the fact that a 3-hour flight could bring us out of the country to Canada seemed unreal. 

Now that the kids are back at school/college, I'm working on Menagerie 2 again. It's going on 7 years, partly because those years spanned losing Aunt Laura and Dad, and all the detours my life took while hibernating and healing. Designing and sewing animals are still gloriously fun, and I do snatches of it when I can. I've just finished documenting the hedgehog and eagle, and I'm only three animals away from the finish line. The final animal is a mandrill, because the collection had been missing something simian, and mandrills are the colorful-est of them. More photos to come. 

I'm watching All Creatures Great And Small on PBS. I loved the books, and I've been missing hearing English-as-it-is-spoken-in-the-UK so I've been enjoying this and trying not to binge. Twenty years in the US and there are still times when I say a word and have to pause and think about whether that means what I think it means to Americans. Like "flat" (apartment vs punctured tire) or "pants" (trousers vs underwear). Or the other day when I was trying to name the front part of the car where the engine is and all my brain could come up with was "bonnet", and one of the girls had to remind me it was called a 'hood'. I think that after you've lived in a place long enough, the languages from Before and After swirl together at some point, and not always harmoniously.

I'd love to say I'm in the midst of ten books concurrently, but I've hardly had the time to read this year. Most recently, I finished If Cats Disappeared From The World, but only because it was very thin, and even then, it had to come with me on two separate trips involving longish plane rides. On my metaphorical bookstand now is Babel by RF Kuang, which Emily recommended, and which, if the title is any indication, is consistent with this language theme I have going on in my choice of entertainment. I've just finished Chapter One. That's good, right? I've progressed beyond the contents page, at least. 

As I write this, I'm missing Jenna, just as I missed Emily when she was a freshman and newly vanished from our house. Eventually, we became accustomed to her coming and going, so that it actually felt somewhat normal, so I'm reminding myself that we will similarly adjust in time with Jenna. She was home to celebrate a family birthday last weekend and for an afternoon, the kitchen was once more filled with the sounds and smells of her baking. I also got to help her with some Physics (hurrah) homework.  We both know that the stuff she's learning at college will very, very soon be way beyond what I can remember or be useful in, so we're enjoying this tentative arrangement while it lasts. 

Emily has a full school and work schedule. She runs the university book club, her creative business Lavender Chai Co - in both retail and wholesale capacities - and is an intern at a local publishing company through the fall.  Kate is in the thick of the swimming and marching band seasons at the high school. Everyone is in some kind of music ensemble so very soon the rounds of concerts will begin, and our evening outings will shift from pool decks to auditoriums and music halls. We will be busy, which will make the weeks seem to fly by. This alarms me a little but I know I can't slow time, only my engagement with it, so I am going to try my darnedest to feel everything, and say yes to as much of this as I can fit into each day. 

Mum turned 80 this summer. I am unspeakably grateful for her in my life, and specifically that she is only a phone call away, and as funny as ever to talk to about anything and everything. I'm learning to live with not knowing when we will next be together, but hoping, trusting and planning for it anyway. There are so many factors that contribute to the uncertainty, with almost all of them related to being in different countries apart which require a non-easy and exorbitant means to traverse. I miss Dad daily and seasonally - I know that those of you who've lost loved ones will know exactly what I mean - and there are so many occasions when he would be the most perfect person to ask about a particular thing, and that conviction lands just milliseconds ahead of the realization that it's no longer actually possible. In those instances, I will let the entirety of that tension sit with me - something I couldn't have done, say, three years ago - and feel both bereft and blessed. Each makes the other significant, and meaningful, and therefore I'm learning to hold both together. 

And this seems a good place to end today. I hope you have fun plans for fall. Maybe new sewing projects for yourself or little ones in your lives. Maybe exciting ideas for handmade Christmas gifts. Maybe travel. Maybe a life transition, or a difficult situation turning a corner at last. Maybe a way to hold on to peace amidst the insanity that has been in the news of late. And maybe simply some internal self-work that's found traction or seen fruit. If so, hurrah! Hug someone you love. Eat chocolate. Be well. Until next time -

From the archives: Chalkboard Easels

Recently, someone left a comment to let me know about a broken link to a tutorial in a guest post. The tutorial was for my chalkboard/dry-erase board easels we'd made for Emily's school party in 2011, and it had been featured on a site called Whip Up. Apparently Whip Up no longer exists, so there was no way to access that tutorial. 

Fortunately, I still had the original email I'd sent to Whip Up containing the tutorial (instructions and photos!) so I'm bringing it home to ikatbag. Here you go:

_________________________________________

Hello everyone! My oldest daughter Emily is having a birthday party in September and one of the crafts are these cardboard easels made from pizza boxes. Long ago, I made largish tabletop easels, inspired by Maya's original easels. My girls loved them - we taped paper to them and they went wild with their paint brushes. For the party, I thought mini-easels would be the perfect size for the guests to make and decorate. 

This being a school-themed party, we're making them two-in-one: chalkboard on one side, and dry-erase board on the other. We're also throwing in a homemade eraser and some dry-erase markers and chalk that store inside the easel when it's closed. 

Because I couldn't find 14 small pizza boxes, I had to cut and assemble my own boxes. Obviously, you don't have to make yours from scratch - it should be easy enough to save one pizza box from a meal!

You will need:

• One small pizza box (ours was a 10")
• Extra piece of corrugated cardboard the same size as the top of the pizza box
• One milk (or juice) jug cap
• One small piece of foam (we used high-density)
• Chalkboard contact paper 
• Dry-erase contact paper 
• The usual suspects: craft knife, scissors, hot glue gun

Note: You can buy chalkboard contact paper and dry-erase contact paper online (try amazon) and at some craft stores. An alternative is to use chalkboard paint and regular clear contact paper over white card stock.

Step 1

Glue down the center flaps of the pizza box so the four shallow walls of the board are upright. 

Step 2

Cut a piece of corrugated cardboard the same size as the top of the pizza box. 

Hot-glue this to the front flap (the one that tucks into the front of the box) 

This is the finished bare easel, with its flap tucked into the base: 

Step 3

Cut a piece of dry-erase contact paper to size, peel and stick it onto one side of the open easel. 

Repeat for the chalkboard contact paper, sticking that to the opposite side of the open easel. 

The easel is completed! 

Step 4

Cut a piece of foam so that it is bigger than the milk jug cap. This piece will fit nicely inside the cap, but it will be too tall.

You can trim yours to the right height, and to a more aesthetically pleasing shape if you like.

Step 5

Hot glue the foam piece to the inside of the cap, 

squeezing it in so that it expands and fits snugly inside the cap. 

This works really well with the dry-erase side of the easel 

but we found that we had to dampen it a little to get the chalkboard absolutely clean.

Add chalk, dry-erase markers and play school! 

Or write silly messages to no one in particular. 

When you're done playing, store everything inside the easel, 

fold and shut the lid, 

and put it away for another day. 

Wizarding Wands in the Shop!

Thank you everyone who visited my shop in the last week - the kids have been thrilled to share their felt pizzas and twirling ribbon sticks with you. They were very excited to watch each transaction notice pop in my inbox, not just because it meant a sale but also because they were able to experience the entire Etsy process from start to finish in less than 48 hours.

I didn't mention this in the previous post because it was already very long, but Emily largely ran my Etsy store this past week. She took and edited all the solo shop photos, for instance, and uploaded them into the listings. I showed her how to create a listing, and then let her handle the rest. Yesterday, we worked together on how to weigh a product and estimate the shipping cost, then how to pack it and double-check the contents and address against the packing slip. And then we drove to the post office right after to drop off our packages. It was all very exciting to a twelve-year-old, I suspect, to learn how an online small business works - at least the retail front of it, anyway (I'll spare her the documentation and taxes for now!) She'd been familiar with face-to-face sales at craft fairs and the like, but it's another thing altogether to sell over the faceless internet while retaining as much personal-ness as possible with our customers. Your support means a lot to us, and has added so much to the kids' learning about how a business works.

Today, she listed all her wizarding wands in the shop, so you'll be able to find them there now. 

Most of them are original designs, but a few are inspired by actual characters in the Harry Potter universe. This one, for instance, was inspired by Queenie Goldstein's wand.

Because they're all unique, she's listed them individually, each with a felt wand sleeve that she sewed. They have very cool names!

The twirling ribbon sticks have been flying off the shelves, but there's still a good variety of colors left. 

There are also a few pizza sets which are great for a kid who's into play food. Many of our felt pizzas at the craft fair were bought by librarians who told us they were planning to use them for their felt board presentations.

Here's the link to the shop. 

Thank you for stopping in!

Thank you cards made by Emily. Watercolor and ink