The weekly “little of this, little of that” feature here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
I told my college girlfriends that I'm feeling very mom-ish, since I've been sewing a halloween costume for one of my children for the first time.
I haven't sewn anything in such a long time! I do find the halloween costume thing daunting. On the one hand I want the result to be awesome. On the other hand, I don't want to spend any money, because I a) am trying to keep a tight budget around here and b) have strong feelings that halloween costumes should come from readily-available materials and pure cleverness and creativity (like that time I was Mary Poppins). But on the other hand (yep, there are three hands) I can be intimidated by all the social media sharing of other people's kids' costumes…
Well, I lucked out, because I found the perfect piece of material not only at a thrift store, but at the thrift store on half-off day. The ribbon was something I already had around. So, not counting the thread, this little cloak cost me $3.
And several hours of work, most of which has been very enjoyable, but some of which has been made slightly stressful by the addition of little people who like nothing more than to lean over my “Machine!! Machine!!” and ask me 100 questions while I wrangle a slippery polyester blanket into a Dream come True. Yes, I chose to do the sewing in the presence of the two munchkins, because I'm busy with commissioned work during the evenings and other chores during the (recently too short) naptimes! Keeping them amused (and not fighting nor strewing things around the apartment on rainy days) has its value, too.
Admittedly, the Dream come True has been mostly mine, since I was the one who persuaded my little Finnabee to want this costume. It was the only one I could think of that seemed manageable enough while also being warm (I just can't bear to see a beautiful fairy costume covered by a dumb jacket!); it also has the double-whammy benefit of coming with a little brother-appropriate costume: Big Bad Wolf.
If you're interested, I used the guidelines from this blog post as a pattern. My luck truly could not have been better in finding this thrift store blanket, because it was already double-sided, thereby saving me the work on several seams and finding a lining fabric. Recently I keep on being graciously handed the raw materials for my kids' sake; it's almost like the Lord knows exactly the level of crafting that I can handle. I'm very grateful.
On to this week's links!
- How a certain John Basinger managed to commit all of Paradise Lost to memory. I dislike the title of the article because of the use of the word “encoding,” which depicts man in the image of computer and seems to indicate that he used some fancy scientific process on his braincells in order to memorize. In fact, it's really about the techniques that people – and actors in particular – have used often, for ages — just applied on a massive scale. Still cool!
- An interactive feature on the Syon Cope, an extremely ornate and beautiful embroidered cope (yes, that heavy outer garment that a priest wears while celebrating Mass), currently being exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
- A National Geographic piece about Christ's burial place being exposed for the First Time in Centuries. I enjoyed the beautiful photos included.
- A surprising look at our country's geography: a neon map of all the river basins in the US.
- Some information about the rumored “minecraft sex mod,” in case this was a topic of concern for you. I admit that I could only skim this article, since the content was totally outside my comprehension and also made me feel a little sick (kids have better uses for their time, anyway!!); but it might be helpful to you or someone you know… From my mom: “this article has many good points — mainly, the online things don't jump at your child, YOU CONNECT and then that's when bad things happen. To me, a young child has too many important developmental areas to explore for any kind of screen time. If a child wants to play games on a device, they have to be older — it's like the latency period in sexual development — just don't give a young child access.”
- From Public Discourse: Calling All Electors: Throw the election to the House, and you just might save our country. This fascinating (and complicated!) piece has a lot of helpful information about the process that could, just could take place in the next few weeks.
- Have I already asked you to follow me on Instagram? I still don't totally get the medium, but I'm enjoying it and like to give occasional updates about my work (which I'll be doing less of on the blog here since I now have my website… so do follow along if you are still curious about my pysanky and random other art works!). Don't forget that all of our social media follow buttons are below.
Liturgical year: Today we honor St. Narcissus! (I honestly didn't realize we had a saint by that name!)
- From the archives: In my costume discussion, did I mention that I feel pressure to live up to the standards set by my sister? A Knight and a Piggy.
- If you're like me, it's that time of year. The days are shorter, sunshine-wise, and yet longer, struggle-wise. Trying to take deep breaths: 10 Survival Tactics for Rescuing a Bad Day.
~We’d like to be clear that, when we direct you to a site via one of our links, we’re not necessarily endorsing the whole site, but rather just referring you to the individual post in question (unless we state otherwise).~
M. says
Deirdre, I chuckled about your costume making with you wee ones asking questions. When my brother and I were wee ones, we used to like getting “in the shop”, which meant standing between my mama’s sewing machine and the wall behind the sewing machine. We’d “help” by raising and lowering the presser foot. Oh, my goodness! What patience my dear mama had! I can NOT imagine my own wee ones “helping” in such a way. My PATIENCE would be out the window! But the memories are fond and I hadn’t thought about being “in the shop” for a few years. Thank you for the memory prompt! I hope you and your children have fun with their costumes. God bless.
Caitlin says
Lovely! My daughter was Little Red Riding Hood last year (used red felt for the cape!) but my son was set on being a farmer. What did he want to do this year? The big bad wolf. 🙂 My daughter is Raggedy Ann because we came across the original stories in the library this year and she loved them- they’re really sweet. I don’t know how you did it with both kids underfoot- I tried a few times and relegated costume making to the evening soon after, mostly because making both costumes were way above my pay grade in terms of sewing skills, and I needed all of my faculties available!
Mrs. B. says
Not sure I want to read about Minecraft… But I just bought for my children 2 of the collected volumes of the St. Nicholas Magazine – year 1896 (thank you, eBay!): that kind of content was considered kids’ fare! I know I sound like an awful crank, but for all the gains we’ve made since 1896, it seems to me we’ve lost childhood somewhere along the way… I’m so tired of living in this echo chamber: we’re so much better than anyone who ever lived at any point in history! Progress! The truth is that we’ve lost whole chunks of civilization in our progressive march, and we’re not even aware of that…
Leila says
Mrs. B, Deirdre left a comment using my profile and she will have to post it again later 🙂
As you know, we are all about old-fashioned childhoods. And I’ve posted about St. Nicholas readers! So great.
I only think that people need to know how things work. It’s not that the “sex mode” will come out and grab you (and apparently the game doesn’t have a “sex mode” — not that I would know anything about it — the game, I mean). But you know, even a Kindle can connect to the internet. I just think we need to refrain from panic… and know how the things work. And then go back to our books 🙂
Mrs. B. says
I agree! And I never meant to imply you were somehow promoting gaming, etc.: I thought it had more to do with being careful about entrusting electronics to children (especially if you don’t know how they work or all they can do…) I totally agreed with what Deirdre wrote, about kids having better ways to pass the time. I was just in a cranky mood: these days we have to learn things like whether a game for kids (or supposedly for kids) has or has not something called a “sexy mod”… It seems wrong that we should worry about things like that, exactly because childhood should be made of different stuff. But I know we agree on this 🙂
Leila says
Oh yes, we agree 🙂
I want to be sure that we don’t fall into the error of not being able to talk to anyone who has never heard of the old-fashioned way of child-raising — of saying something to them about, say, a computer game, that just isn’t true and reveals that we don’t know how it works. And then, knowing how it works, we can understand how something — like the Kindle — that we might not suspect can connect to the internet, can do so.
And it’s more helpful, I think, when talking to a parent who genuinely just sees the computer game as fun and harmless (like the author of the article!), to be reasonable. If those of us who are convinced of the uselessness (and worse) of spending time this way fall into the trap of speaking in a panicked and uninformed manner, we won’t be very helpful to the others.
RubberChickenGirl says
Must*See*The*Costume!!!
RCG
Maya says
I did think the info about Minecraft was interesting but warn that the website it is on is rather disturbing. I did not panic when I saw alarmist posts about Minecraft – my children don’t play it and I’m working hard to keep it that way regarding video games in general. I also thought when I first started seeing the alarmist posts ( like the title: Minecraft has a sex mod) it sounded more like there was now a moderator to watch for sexual content not a mode that had sexual content 😉
Caitlin says
This is what I thought! But I also thought Minecraft was the one where you click the gray boxes and there’s a 1,2, or 3 and you put up flags and try to find bombs… [Minesweeper]. I was like, wow, that game sure has evolved since I was a kid… 😄
Kathy says
What a beautiful ribbon! Just the kind of thing I would keep around, too. I worked on a costume yesterday with my seven year old manning the foot pedal, and my four year old and two year old on my lap. I was just so happy that the baby was sleeping and that I was only sewing straight lines.
Logan says
I enjoyed the “Paradise Lost” bit, especially that gem of a quote at the end: “. . .a cathedral I carry around in my mind.” If that isn’t an argument for memorization I don’t know what is!
The way the psychologist spoke of the mind as “encoding” reminded me of this older article which pointed out the flaw of thinking of the human brain as a computer. https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer
It makes you wonder how long the paradigm will exist before we develop a more accurate way of describing the brain’s workings. And how limited will our understanding be while we persist in using such erroneous language to conceptualize our brains?
Julie says
“Admittedly, the Dream come True has been mostly mine, since I was the one who persuaded my little Finnabee to want this costume.”
I can so relate! The cape turned out beautifully!