more of the past months

Purim is a holiday of costumes and sillyness. Since my kids go to a Waldorf kindergarten, some order and seriousness have to remain in place.. each group has a theme and the children have to think of costumes that would fit within the theme. It is actually not such a bad idea, seeing how children in other schools and kindergartens go for the ready bought superhero or TV characters costumes, whereas in our community a bought costume was a rare sight and we avoided all the ben10s and bakugans and the rest. In Hilel's group the theme was "sea world" and he, after a year of planning on being a mamuth this year, shifted immediately to the idea of a killer whale. funny enough in his 3 years of kindergarten Purim celebrations he was already a squid

and a swordfish

and he only got out of the water once to be a monkey.

here he is this year, with Amalia.

Her group's theme was "circus", and she found the loveliest reference for an acrobat in our Pippi longstocking book, with the wonderful drawings by Ingrid Vang Nyman. She just had to add some plastic bits, the crown and a butterfly shaped key holder as a ring, and her fairy neckless.

It was a rainy Purim and we stayed mostly at home and made some masks together.

On fine, sunny winter days I try to take the kids out as much as possible. I pick them up from their kindergarten with some fruits and snacks packed along with my knitting, and we go to a playground. these are from February first:

and now that it became more spring like we had some really warm days, and started going to the small stream near Amikam, not far from here, usually with more friends. For these outings I add an empty plastic box, to collect tadpoles and then release them again when we're about to leave.

and this happened in our back yard, while I was hanging the laundry:

what a monster. They have been living in our yard since before we moved in, in a beautiful co-existance with a pretty big pack of eternally hungry street cats that wander through. A few months ago we found a tiny little turtle, I suppose there's a chance of that happening again sometime soon.

getting ready

this is yesterday. The mirror needs cleaning but I'm entering week 37, so I'm allowed to let it stay dirty for a bit... towards the end of this pregnancy I feel like a glass so full of water, that with every movement I might spill some. so I'm quiet relieved to reach week 37 with only reminders of the coming birth and not an actual beginning. Now I can be sure that this birth will happen at home, as the midwives only take a home birth from this pregnancy week and on.

both previous births took place at home. This time I feel less ready, less focused, so I'm trying to set my mind on home and family. I was very busy with getting as much work as possible done, drawing patterns, cutting fabric, sewing, passing some parts on to my seamstress. but somehow there isn't that much done...

Here are some things I was working on during the past few months:

a granny square blanket for the new baby. It's the first crocheting I ever did... it was fun. and the yarn is lovely soft Merino. I tried to save the knitting for any time when I'm outside or visiting someone, or at home next to my children, in short, any time I couldn't do more demanding work. It was fun to have strangers react on this activity in places like the dentist's waiting room or a playground. It's the kind of thing that immediately makes people feel friendly and smiley and talkative.

and now that it's finished, I feel the baby can finally come out.

This is Ayala. I participated in a doll making course organized and taught by Shiri, another mother in my daughter's kindergarten, who has the most wonderful talent for making beautiful things. it took quiet a while to make her, and my children were waiting from week to week to watch the slow developments. they were excited when she was done. here she wears some other doll's outfit, but by now she has a dress of her own and I'm hoping to find a moment to make some more clothes for her. Amalia doesn't want to part with her, so Ayala even tasted some strawberries once... I had to clean her and now her face is not as new looking. But it turned her (for me mostly) from some desired object that Mom worked so hard on, into a real toy.

new fabrics for an old design, these cord trousers are for ages 2-5.

Thanks to Amy Karol and her "Bend the Rules withFabric" book, I learned about the EZscreen kits for making home scale screen prints relatively cheaply and safely. so I ordered a kit and started playing with that. I made a bunch of these little blouses (ages 18 months to 4 years) and printed some of them with 3 different bird drawings. I only have this one photographed, the others are still at my seamstress' studio, being sewn.

A simple summer dress.

there are more clothes in the making, I hope to slowly be able to show more things. My strategy for these pregnancy months has been to just work and work as much as possible, and face the selling part later, when the baby will be here. so I might open an online shop sometime in the near future.