the squibix family blog

For Christmas my brother and his family gave our boys a subscription from Tingomo, a company that makes kits highlighting traditional arts and crafts from around the world. As I understand it we're getting four kits; the first one—the winter edition—highlighted wooden Dala horses (Dalahäst!) from Sweden.

The only problem is that the kits are made for two kids, and the gift was for Harvey and Zion. That won't fly in our household. Good thing we own a jigsaw and plenty of scraps of pine board! I defy you to tell my horse from the two which were industrially mass-produced to simulate traditional Dalecarlian artisanry.

Then we painted them. The kit came with not-totally-washable acrylic paint—great for turning out an attractive finished project, less-great for a three-year-old's painting style (that's why the kits are officially six and up). And then there were some tears when we didn't let Lijah use his usual technique of dipping his brush in each of the colors in succession. There were instructions for painting a horse in the traditional style, including some brush mixing techniques; we followed them to the extant of starting with a solid-color base layer, but from there creativity ran (relatively) wild.

All told, it was a fun craft with high-quality materials attractively presented in beautiful packaging. With our budget I'd never be able to justify buying a kit myself, but it was a fun gift to enjoy on a rainy day. Thanks, Tom!

About a third of Bedford was still without electricity yesterday evening, and there are limbs and trees down all over our neighborhood. We didn't lose anything important; the neighbors' lilac breaking onto Leah's car wasn't really a problem.

We had friends over for most of the day, in order to help their parents out with school being cancelled. After they left Harvey and I enjoyed some relaxing outside time. Even with dry wood from our newly-built woodpile shelter our fire wasn't totally successful—too much snow in the fireplace—but it made a nice smell and some cheery smoke. And nothing could be more successful than Harvey's snowmen. We can still enjoy winter!

I measure it at 18 inches, actually, but I hear from neighbors with reliable information that we actually got over 20; either way, it was enough to close school for two days. So our schedule—never particularly rigorous to begin with—was thrown out the window so our kids could entertain their friends who were suddenly deprived of their usual weekday framework. I missed school today too: I'm taking part in a class at work, and it was cancelled today. It's interesting and engaging material, to be sure, but I don't think I'll even get too old to appreciate a snow day.

Especially one like today, with some sun and reasonably mild temperatures. Just the thing for spending a few hours shoveling! I still fully trust that March will go out with a lamb, but it has plenty of time yet—and we have another 8-12 inch storm forecast for next week. Flowers or snow-forts, we'll enjoy whatever we get.

It was delicious. And the party was lovely and relaxing; all three of his friends came, along with their families, and enjoyed three hours of free play with a few short breaks for Pokemon sticker arts and crafts, a Moana singalong, and some eating. And then presents. Lijah has never yet been satisfied by presents, quantity or quality, in the short term; maybe his expectations are higher. But I think he was satisfied with his day, and his birthday week. He was roundly celebrated. And now he's just four.

With the coming of spring we're trying to get back into a little more focused schoolwork—unschooling kind of focused, which means that making cookies totally qualifies. I don't know about harvesting icicles and snow cakes to sell out of the playhouse, but they had fun with that. A fine way to welcome spring.

That's the stump where we split our firewood; it's black because Harvey and Zion were using it to chop their own charcoal the other day. I drilled a hole in the middle so I could use it to mount the wheelbarrow tire on the rim. It was much harder than putting on a bicycle tire!

Plastic is a fine material. I was glad to have a piece of thick PVC pipe on hand: I cut lengths of it to center one of the wheels on its shaft. I would have had a much harder time cutting metal parts, even assuming I could have found pipe with the right diameter (I have lots of PVC pipe, since I grab it out of the trash whenever I see it). But as I cut it I regretted the bright white plastic bits falling around my otherwise brown and gray workbench stump. When I finished up my hands were about the same color as that wood and rusty metal, which felt about right.

Though I suppose the money is part of it; I get depressed by an existence built on making money so I can spend it. Since I don't enjoy spending money, that process seems like kind of a waste of my time, and a diminishment of my agency. In buying things I feel like a prisoner of marketing and created wants, but when I make something myself I feel empowered and capable and generally happier. It's not a huge deal; it's not revolutionary or world-changing. It's just my preference. And maybe it is a little weird in 21st century America. Fair cop.