Sweet By & By

It's sew time!

An Amazon gift certificate has been burning a hole in my pocket since Christmas. I finally sat down one night last week when the house was quiet and shopped to my heart's content. These books arrived yesterday and I am beside myself with book love -- I can't wait to sit down this weekend and become more adept at sewing, embroidery, and apron-making. 

The apron book has to be the coolest thing ever. I have a great affinity for vintage aprons and have many in my sewing chest that I've collected over the years. I also wear two of them all the time when cooking and have probably ruined them with grease spots and holes, but I suppose that's what they're meant for, right? Anyhow, this book discusses the history of aprons and their role as a domestic fashion item; it also provides many patterns for making your own. Oh, yeah.   

These are some of my favorite aprons that I keep tucked away (although I really should display them somehow). I love wearing the red-flowered one and do so often, over a pair of jeans as I am puttering around the house or garden. It's so cheerful. They all are!

 

The trippin' book

Anyone remember this song?  . . . "This is a song about colors, colors, you see them all around..." L. had a cheesy video that she *loved* when she was little, with this weirdo schmarmy man singing old kids' songs on it -- this particular song stuck way into my brain, never to exit. 

Anyhow, I am reminded of said annoying song because I have an amazing thrifted kids book that I bought around the time R. was born, with the thought of cutting it up and hanging up some of the pages in his room. It's all about colors.

I love the illustrations to bits. It's a book from 1969, so the images are a wee bit psychedelic in places (the honeybees are definitely on acid, as are the goldfish -- their eyes have that crazy super-dilation thing going on), but the deep saturated colors are just fantastic, and I love the simplicity of the pages. I never did cut it up, and I pulled it out last week thinking maybe I could manage to do so now for one of my collages, but nope, not ready to yet.

So, all you seek cool vintage/thrifted kids books, or those of you who drift off to sleep thinking about colors, the way I do, enjoy.

A true friend and a good writer

We took the kids to see Charlotte's Web over the holidays, and the film exceeded my expectations. Dakota Fanning was a very good Fern, and surprisingly, Julia Roberts really captured the spirit of Charlotte. Even Rowan, who can be squirmy in theaters, was literally on the edge of his seat at times, and at one point, turned to me and said in an exaggerated whisper, "Mommy, this is a nice movie!" It was very Babe-like in parts, and we wondered if Wilbur could actually be the same pig that played Babe ten years ago, although I cannot imagine a pig lives that long, ha!

The LA Times featured a thoughtful editorial about the book in early December that I really appreciated reading. It speaks to the enduring message of the book and the magic of the barnyard characters.

The story is one of my favorite children's books ever. What makes reading it to my kids really awesome is that I still have the copy that I owned as a child and that I read over and over. It was given to me in 1974, when I turned six. 

I memorized the entire first chapter and presented it at a city-wide speech pentathalon when I was in eighth grade. It was one of the speeches (out of ten) that helped me win one of the gold medals for the event.

However, it's the last chapter of the book that inevitably makes me tear up:

Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It's not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.

Master craftsman

I am rekindling my love for Pedro de Lemos these days. An artist, architect, writer, print maker -- you name it, this man did it. He was heavily influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement and studied under Arthur Wesley Dow, a preeminent A&C woodblock artist. I found his two Creative Art Crafts books from the late 1930's in a dusty old bookstore on Seattle's Capitol Hill ten years ago, when paying $15.00 a piece for them was a big deal, given my meager graduate student budget. I just couldn't pass up these amazing graphics,  incorporating step-by-step directions for making numerous artful items. The books appear to be directed at art teachers who instructed children, as there are many pages devoted to making toys and paper animals.  One can also learn how to batik fabric, make a birdhouse or rubber stamps, create patterns on leather, and fashion metal into all sorts of useful objects.

 

And to Betty Harding Miller, the original owner of both books  (and who lived atop Queen Anne Hill in 1945, just a few miles from the bookstore in which I found them), rest assured they are in good hands with a new generation of crafters.

Soothed like cinnamon

One of the perennial favorites in kid books around here is The Adventures of Jules and Gertie by Esther Pearl Watson. You know anyone with the names "Esther" and "Pearl" must write cool stuff. This particular tale tells of two heroes of the West, Jules, the fearless cowgirl, and her singing, dancing, über-clever horse, Gertie. Together they devise a way to outsmart the two bad guys, Mean Bulldog Pike and Bullet, Bulldog’s "skunk of a horse." The catch in reading this book is that one has to adopt a Western twang and a little swagger in order to read lines like "Shoot, they would even pry a dollar from a rattlesnake!" and "Just when Little Horn and the dusty folk felt that all hope was hog-tied, a cowgirl rode into town: a red bull’s-eye named Jules. Genuine like leather. Strong like licorice."

L. fell in love with these heroines when she was three and continuously checked the book out from the library. R. discovered it a few months ago, and I realized I’d better buy our own copy. A sequel called "Trouble at Sugar Dip Well" is also worthwhile, but not quite as clever as the original.

In the end, all ends well and ...

"As the sun set, Jules and Gertie rounded up the day singing a fiesta ditty and dancing a victory jig. A Mexican twist. A blur of hooves and boots. And the West was soothed like cinnamon. Yikki yea!"

Jenny Linsky, the little black cat

Esther Averill is currently rocking our storytime-world.   

                                   Born in 1902, Averill found prominence as an author within children’s literature with the 1944 publication of Jenny Linsky and the Cat Club, which told of the shy but spunky Jenny Linsky, modeled after Averill’s own mild-mannered cat. Averill continued the series with twelve more books, three of which we’ve devoured in the last week: The Cat Club, When Jenny Lost Her Scarf and Jenny’s First Party.

The illustrations are charming and so evocative of that golden era of children’s illustration. And the characters – nearly all cats – are quite comical and bring forth lots of chuckles and belly-laughs from L. We particularly loved Florio, the cat who dons an Indian feather head-dress to attend a cat party.